So, I don’t really bake. I blame this on my mother.
What I mean is, I didn’t stand on a chair next to my mother watching her sift and stir, knead and fold, turning flour, sugar and eggs into magnificent confections. She wasn’t a baker. And she wasn’t that kind of mother – which is okay, because she taught me loads of other good things like how to deal with difficult people while smiling, and how to punctuate a good story, and how to make Chinese spareribs. A wealth of knowledge, my mother is.
But I lack the confidence for baking that often just comes from years of watching. About knowing what “well incorporated” feels like between one’s fingers. Or what “coarse meal” looks like as opposed to “fine meal” or what the stage of “stiff peaks” looks like exactly. (Okay, I know what all of these terms mean and I know what they look like… but baking from scratch often seems so scientific and cumbersome, I just head for mixes that say Betty Crocker or to boxes that have dudes in Quaker hats on them.)
Now here’s the thing: for me, baking anything for any reason almost always starts with the pretty.
Case in point: I recently bought a glass urn. It’s about fourteen inches tall with the glass lid on it, and about four inches in diameter. I needed to have it, so I bought it. It now sits on my kitchen counter with two other glass urns, all of which are differently shaped. The other two are smaller – in one, I keep a stash of toasted almonds just for snacking on, and in the other, I keep the last of the Halloween candy like Double Bubble gum and a handful of lollies. And Pez refills. (Ava Scarlett has a definite thing for cherry Pez. Out of the Heffalump dispenser. Who’d of thought?)
Anyway, this container in question is lovely, but a wee bit tall. So what, oh WHAT to fill it with?
Back when I bought it a few months ago, I was having a food-love afair with plain cake doughnuts. Oh my lord DELICIOUS!! And the bag of six I was buying almost daily fit in a very neat little tower that pleased me so very much and made me queeee with delight every time I walked past it, I even ingested the doughnuts at a slightly slower pace. (And by slower, I mean it took me more than one day to eat them all.) The trouble was, it never looked as charming with just 1.5 doughnuts inside, which only served to remind me that I needed to buy more doughnuts in the morning, which then felt rather like a chore instead of a joy. Not to mention that one really shouldn’t eat those fried-in-lard doughnuts every SINGLE day… so I had to find something else with which to fill it.
After the doughnut-love was lost, I turned onto crunchy, delicious little lady-finger cookies. They’re wonderful. A polite person might have four or five in one sitting. Maybe six. Okay, maybe eight. But I was eating about fourteen or fifteen in the evenings, with the open tray right in my lap. Delicious. Crunchy. Milk chocolate-covered. Oh! So instead, I’d empty the box of biscuits into the jar on the counter, and they’d look glorious. So glorious in fact, that I’d eat one or two each time I passed by them. Which was often.
And it was getting embarrassing buying them from the store every other day.
So imagine my delight in noticing a cookie mix with the man in the Quaker hat on the bag. I read the instructions on the side of the bag: Measure contents. Add water. Mix, spoon, bake. Voila!! Cookies. Oatmeal cookies. I vowed to try them.
And try them I did. I made some yesterday which were very good, but with a few tweaks, I knew instantly how to make them a wee bit smaller AND chewier-but-crispier for the next time… with chocolate chips added, and a sprinkle of fleur de sel.
I tell you, I just made the perfect cookie.
And? They fit inside my decanter in the ideal magazine-home kind of way (which is what I LIVE for, except the children keep fucking up my dream, what with their messes and all their noise…)
I like to make things pretty.
They’re awesome-in-your-mouth AND they’re eye-candy in my kitchen. Makes me feel on top of my life for the moment… it’s only bound to last for about about five minutes. Or until the cookies are gone. But they will be on the counter when Oliver gets home from school, and I will offer him some, with pink lemonade on ice in a short glass, and he will be delighted, and I will be the best mother in the world. At least for today.
Yay for me.
G.G.
