Hello, lovely.
I'm Maria.
And my name is Rory.
And we are the hosts of the IELTS Speaking for Success podcast, the podcast that aims to help you improve your speaking skills, as well as your listening skills along the way.
We've started this podcast to give you delicious grammar and yummy vocabulary for your high IELTS school.
Rory, are you ready to get started?
Yeah, it'll be a piece of cake.
A piece of cake?
Let's talk about cake, dear listener, again for the third time.
We talked about cakes in May 2020 and in March 2022, dear listener.
So, this is Cakes Part 3 starring Rory Tequila Godzilla. and Maria Cheesecake Tiramisu.
Have you ever made a cake yourself?
Oh, nothing about...
I think 20 years.
And even then, I had help from my parents.
I think the closest thing I've come to making in terms of something like a cake was syrniki.
And that's like a Russian cheese dessert, I suppose.
But...
Nothing like a cake.
I'm absolutely useless at baking.
I hate to think of the kind of mayhem that would ensue if I tried baking a cake in the kitchen.
Even my cerniki turned out burned, and that's a very simple recipe.
Do you like cakes?
Every now and then, yeah.
But I don't eat them terribly often because my gut bacteria don't respond very well to that much sugar in me and I get all bloated and feel ill.
But it's nice to have something sweet every now and then and then abstain for another three months.
Did you like cakes when you were a child?
Yeah, a bit too much, probably.
I remember my grandmother would give us cakes almost every time we went to visit.
I liked the icing in particular, which is basically just pure sugar.
And that is not good if you're a child with poor impulse control, which I definitely was.
Do you eat cakes or other sweet things after a meal?
Well, as you might have guessed by now, not really, no.
I have, I think the closest thing is the bland protein flapjack I have every day.
Although I'm fine with that because I think it makes me appreciate the rare sweet things when I do have them.
So it's not so bad.
Dear listener, we have our premium episodes for you where Rory and I are discussing speaking part two and three.
This week on our premium, Rory is describing a place where he can relax.
And in Speaking Part 3, we talk about relaxing in general.
We are using fresh, current IELTS speaking topics to check out our premium episodes.
The links are in the description.
Right, dear listener, so we can make a cake, we can bake... a cake.
We can have a cake, we can eat a cake.
Yum, yum, yum.
We can have a homemade cake okay, for example.
Or a slice of cake, a slice, a piece of cake, a slice of cake.
Rory told us that he is useless at making cakes.
I'm useless at baking cakes.
I am.
Useless.
I am not good.
I can't bake.
I mean, I could do it for myself.
But if I baked for other people, I would be so worried I would poison them.
So I just don't do this.
So I'm not good at making cakes.
I'm useless at baking cakes.
When I do this, a cake turns out to be burnt.
So my cakes turn out to be burnt. turn out, they kind of happen.
Well, my syrniki turned out burned.
My cakes, I don't even want to imagine what that would be like.
I've not made one in a very long time.
So...
God only knows what would happen.
You can say that once I was making a cake, a cheesecake.
Once Rory was making syrniki.
Syrniki is, well, they call it like Russian curd cheese pancakes.
It's not a dessert.
It's not?
Oh, I thought it was.
I'm sorry.
No, it's not a dessert.
It just goes to show you don't have to be factually correct when you're giving an answer to Niall's question.
You just have to make sure that you use the appropriate vocabulary.
And if not, then I did say it's kind of like or it's a kind of.
So it's not exactly what I said.
Mayhem is a very good word.
So every time I try to bake something, there is mayhem or I create mayhem.
So mayhem is like?
Well, it's similar to chaos, or just a really unregulated and disorderly situation, which is exactly what would be the case if I did some baking, because I don't have a clue what to do, even if I followed the recipe book.
It would just be a mess.
Do some baking.
Okay.
I did some baking when I was a child.
Heads up.
I sometimes have cakes.
Rory, what did you say?
You didn't say sometimes, but you said something else.
What did I say?
Oh yeah, every now and then.
Every now and then.
Like, do you have cakes?
Every now and then.
Like, sometimes, not often, not always, sometimes.
If you don't, then you can speak about your gut bacteria.
Gut is like inside your stomach.
Now, inside your belly, you have guts here.
And Rory has some bacteria in his guts.
And his bacteria don't respond well to sugar, to cakes.
And Rory gets all bloated.
So when you get bloated, you feel an expansion of your stomach.
It's not very pleasant.
It's a nice feeling.
Yeah, so kind of like a balloon.
I usually get bloated and ill after I eat a cake.
And then Rory has to abstain for three months or abstain from sugar for a year.
I might be exaggerating slightly there.
When you abstain from something, what do you do?
You just don't do it or don't have it for a period of time.
So usually I don't eat that much sugar.
Maybe not terribly often.
I said once every three months, but that was just kind of a joke.
It's probably maybe... once every two weeks or so.
It's not often.
You could say it's once in a blue moon.
When you abstain from something, you don't do something enjoyable.
Okay?
So I have to abstain from sugar.
Sugar, I love sugar.
I have to abstain from coffee or from smoothies. you enjoy.
Can you abstain from English?
You can, but only if you, I mean you'd have to lock yourself in a dark room because English is everywhere now, isn't it?
Dear listener, here you can show off your vocabulary about cakes.
I usually eat New York cheesecake or chocolate cake or carrot cake.
Carrot cake with walnuts.
Walnuts are kind of types of nuts.
Or I prefer cupcakes, like little cakes, cupcakes.
Or I prefer gluten-free cakes.
Or vegan cakes.
You can also say, like, apple and strawberry crumble.
Crumble is a kind of, like, type of cake.
Like a vegan banana cake.
Like, choose, like, two types of cakes which are kind of, like, nice.
Like a strawberry crumble.
You see, like, nice vocabulary.
Also, Rory, did you know the recent trends in cake industry?
No!
Who follows this?
Well, you should, okay?
In addition to everything else that you're doing, like getting ready for IELTS, you should also follow the cake industry.
Well, you speak about cakes in the 22nd century, 21st century now.
So, Delisa, I'm going to tell you now.
I've researched.
Now, shaped cakes are really popular.
Shaped, you can get a cake with any shape you want.
Okay?
So, for example, a dinosaur cake.
A cake with the shape of a dinosaur.
Or, like, they're called dimensional cakes.
3D cakes.
3D, dear listener.
Okay?
For example, a cake in the shape of freaking Titanic.
Who has the time and money for this?
No, people do that.
Believe me, there are like many companies now.
So it's Rory's birthday.
What kind of cake are we gonna give to rory for his birthday?
A regular cake, please.
I don't want anything like the titanic.
A cake in the shape of a scottish flag, a kill.
