Baking is my first love and I was taught skillfully by my mum and my two Nannies. Hours stood on a chair at the kitchen bench, watching and helping just as Indigo does with me now. These women may be long gone from my life, but they are never closer than when I am cooking. Rubbing in butter, folding in egg whites, rolling out pastry, I see their hands on mine. I am the sole keeper of their secrets now and I really hope I have remembered well.
As much as I like to experiment and try new flavours and recipes, I realised recently that their currency was comfort food and that comfort came from familiarity. As a child, I wanted to eat the same things over and over. It had to be apple pie or lemon meringue for Sunday lunch, Belgium cake and date krispies for tea, cheese scones and lardy frumadiddles in winter and a deep, buttery Victoria glued with raspberries in June.
I'm never happier than when I have made a chocolate cake. The most basic all-in-one Victoria sponge sandwiched with some concoction of chocolate or cocoa, icing and butter. It seems too simple, almost like cheating. It never fails. And the children always want one on their birthdays.
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