Recipe for disaster: how a quiet day baking with her children drove a mother over the edge
- What could be a better way to spend a staycation day than baking a cheesecake with your children?
- One shell-shocked mother recalls the flour, the eggs, the mess, the hope, and the sunken, puckered result
Day 14 of the summer staycation (in March) and the kids were baking – may the Lord have mercy on my soul! The kitchen was an unseasonal winter wonderland of flour and icing sugar. Millions of hundreds and thousands lay scattered across every surface. The back wall was now a Betty Crocker Jackson Pollock, the smoke alarm died from inhalation, and one of the cupboard doors has become unhinged in solidarity.
I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I’m not sure if it’s self-raising flour or if I’m actually that grey now? But I look like Julian Assange. My kitchen has eczema. My patience is in tatters. And I am literally and figuratively treading on eggshells.
Bake some cakes! Yaaay! It seemed like such a jolly idea. Something to kill a few hours of quasi-lockdown boredom, something to bring us together as a family, create a few Instagram memories. And then, at the end of it, you can eat cake!
Wrong! At the end of it, you have aged 50 years and ground several centimetres of enamel off your teeth. What you’ve in fact made is a burnt cowpat of despair and a mess that will outlast religion.
We all know that baking’s not really for kids. It’s about precision, discipline and technique. It is not about “enthusiasm”, or “fun”, or God forbid, “let’s just chuck a load of sweets in a bowl, add an egg, and see what happens”. Baking and kids go together like cheese and custard, which incidentally has formed the basis for my daughter’s “alternative chocolate cheesecake”.
Are you paying attention? Good. This is the way your sanity will be attacked …