This is a not-so-great photo of the Wiggles cake Mr M and I made to 'celebrate' his return to playschool after our holidays. Well, really it was a bribe to get him to go. Mr M loves to bake. He loves putting the ingredients into a bowl, doing a bit of stirring with the smallest spoon he can find, and then using the biggest spoon he can find to conduct a taste test. He's also very concerned with the kinds of cakes we make - Wiggles' cakes are popular and often requested. So, too, are Bob cakes, Thomas cakes and Spiderman cakes. These requests have created some challenges - then I realised that all I had to do was put a picture of the Wiggles, Bob, Thomas or Spiderman and that would satisfy our director of cakes. He's quite explicit about what colour the icing should be too. The cake above was originally going to have purple/Jeff icing, then the request was changed to blue/Anthony icing. I was very relieved when the final request was for white icing.I have been doing quite a bit of baking lately. This week alone I have baked Nigella Lawson's blueberry muffins (which have to be one of the world's most forgiving recipes), banana and chocolate cakes for a work afternoon tea, and Vicki's wickedly delicious chocolate slice (it's incredibly easy to make but incredibly difficult to resist). Partly it's the result of having been on leave and having a bit more time to potter in the kitchen but also I just love to bake.
I blame Sheridan Jobbins who, when she was eight-years-old, made a television show called Cooking with Sheri. That was in 1967, the year I was born. So I must have been watching re-runs when I was three, four or five. Her cookbook, my copy of which is still on Mum's bookshelves, was published in 1970. I remember baking simple things like scones from that cookbook while pretending I was filming my own cooking show. Sheri was probably the first 'celebrity tv chef' and, until 2006, she held the record for being the world's youngest television host (this is according to Wikipedia. I suspect Bindi Irwin stole her crown).
It was baking that precipitated my cookbook collection. I wasn't really into buying cookbooks until I discovered How To Be a Domestic Goddess and Nigella's style has influenced the kinds of cookbooks I buy. I'm not particularly interested in those that just list ingredients (although I do have two of Donna Hay's books that follow that style). But I am a sucker for those that include a bit of narrative - I've been known to sit up late into the night just reading Nigella. You've got to love a woman who writes about baking like this:
The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces isn’t good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don’t want to feel like a post-modern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.
(From How To Be a Domestic Goddess)
