October Create: Piece of Cake!
Created | Updated Oct 11, 2015
We knew this would happen when Create announced that theme.
Piece of cake!
Up until recently there were two things I know I'm dreadful at, but my heart keeps making me believe things will turn out better next time.
Firstly, and probably my least favourite thing, is gardening. If it's green I can kill it. Our garden often looks like Jumanji until I get that urge to pick up a spade and pretend I'm Alan Titchmarsh for a few hours. Once the lawn is ruthlessly hacked to bits and I've half heartedly pulled up a few weeds (well, I think they were weeds) I quickly tire of being Mr T, give up and let it grow wild again.
Secondly, I am dreadful at anything and everything to do with carpentry. Give me some perfectly straight bits of timber and I'll disappear into my garage and emerge hours later with a bit of badly sawn, wonky and totally unsuitable for purpose garden furniture that falls to bits the first time somebody even thinks of putting anything near it, let alone on it! Me and dead trees do not mix well.
I say up until recently. Take two things I am pretty good at, cooking and following instructions.
I will try my hand at any recipe, or happily concoct new meals for friends and family. Give me some savoury ingredients and I'm more than capable of producing something tasty; unless it's sweet. I have no sweet tooth, and happily leave all things puddingy to my wife.
I can also follow plans and manuals quite happily. From motorcycle manuals to fiendish Swedish flat packs. As long as it's not wood, I'm perfectly capable.
So when my wife's birthday loomed I decided I would produce a masterpiece of confectionary for a surprise birthday cake. How hard can it be, cookery skills used to follow a set of instructions?
Our home is bursting at the seams with recipe books and gadgets for cake making. My wife turns out bespoke cakes for friends and family without breaking a sweat. Anything from my daughters wedding cake, Harry Potter spell books and giant Spider-Man cakes. Candy filled piñata rainbow cake? No probs. Life sized porcelain tea pot cake? Easy peasy!
So with the kids at school, wife at work, I set about choosing a recipe from her secret files and surrounded myself with probably every gadget known to womankind, and set about my task in a cloud of icing sugar , chocolate and vanilla.
A few hours later...well...erm..lets just say I'll be baking as often as I do the gardening or woodwork in future!
