baking cakes

My eldest is 10 the day after tomorrow. How on earth did that happen? I am trying (and failing) not to calculate that another one of those will make her 20 and she will be off in the big wide world.

At the weekend we took her, her sisters and three friends bowling and then for pizza. Earlier that week she had posed for a cute picture , clad in a onesie and clutching her teddy bear, it appeared on a shop bought cake from the supermarket that prints photos on cakes.

However, I like to bake. So they usually get a homemade one too for the actual, special day. We blow the candles out at breakfast and have a piece then too. (Europeans eat pastry and cake for breakfast don’t they?) My cakes are lop-sided and often a tad crispy around the edges but they taste good, they never last long. The children like to bake with me. Our most celebrated cake was daddy’s robot birthday cake, unfortunately the shop bought icing was vile and rendered our work of art inedible.

I loathe baking programmes, they just make me feel inadequate and can send me on a spending binge in expensive supermarkets for arrowroot and ground almonds and other stuff that will fester in my baking cupboard. I don’t like to see contestants having panic attacks over their decorating or firm, family favourites being rubbished by the softly spoken judges. It’s worse when it’s the junior version and some ten year old Arabella or Tarquin is  in absolute bits because their Eiffel Tower creation has not worked out the way they planned. I end up screaming at the telly “She’s cooked a bloody cake! On her own! Give her a bloody medal !”  Then my own children lead me away from the television to my haven; my kitchen where homework projects, art creations and hairbrushes invade our eating space. Nigella and Jamie don’t have to contend with this sort of stuff in their kitchens do they?

I bake when I am stressed, it helps me to think and plan. If there is a particularly important family event or work commitment on the horizon, I will make puddings, cakes and pies before tackling the actual job in hand. I think it is also another protest at the fact my mother didn’t bake when I was a child and my only memory of licking the mixing bowl was occasionally at my grandma’s. I obviously felt I was missing out and have determined my own children won’t feel that way, but also in response to my mother’s practice of always having cake in the tin since marrying a farmer…who eats fruit cake for breakfast every morning, not just birthdays.

Which brings us to the day after tomorrow, and the cakes that wait to be eaten. The icing is drying, the decoration is amateur and the cakes are lopsided and crispy. I’d be thrown off bake off and I don’t care!