baking

Baking.

I have always enjoyed cooking and baking. My parents worked a lot of hours when I was a teenager, so dinner was left to me to cook. I soon learned all the usual family classics like spaghetti bolognaise, shepherds pie, roasts and cooked breakfasts. I became a lot more adventurous when I had my own family and quite often get the recipe books out to try something new. I only really got into baking once our boys came along and wanted to make them homemade cakes for their birthdays.
I remember the first cake I ever made was at school in cooking class. It was awful, it tasted like a biscuit, the icing was a terrible hot pink colour that ran off the sides of the cake as I hadn’t let them cool enough. It was a disaster but with age I have become a lot more patient. When I started baking I just tried victoria sponges everyone that tried them said that tasted delicious. So then I went on to experiment with different flavours like chocolate, carrot and coffee and walnut and a variety of different flavour cupcakes. I still haven’t tried cake pops even though I have a little machine to try them.
Not all of my cakes turn out perfect, some sink in the middle or burn around the outside edges. It takes a while to get to know your oven , what temperature is best to cook at and remember never to open the oven door to early. So now I had mastered the cakes it was time to get on with the decorating which is either easy and straight forward or a nightmare and you keep pulling the icing off and starting again. It can be really frustrating when the icing splits or cracks but what is really awful is when you’ve laid the icing over the cake and you turn and put your finger in it. That’s not so bad if your covering the cake with flowers or other decorations because you hide it but if it has to be smooth you have to restart it or try and patch if it’s not in a noticeable place.
The first cake I made was for my eldest when he was three. He was crazy for fireman Sam. Looking