It was my son’s birthday on Friday. Rather astonishingly, my wife offered to his class teacher three weeks ago to bring in cakes for his class.
Then – she discovered she would be in Melbourne for his birthday due to work commitments.
Fine I said – no problem. I’ll just go to the bakery…
… but apparently that was not an allowable option according to my wife. So I got cupcake duty. So the photo below shows what happens when you make cakes when you haven’t made cakes since… oh, OK, never! Counting packet mixes, maybe 1988?
In my defence I grew up in an era when it was compulsory in year 8 to go do manly things such as drawing stuff and making stuff. It was most certainly not OK to go and cook stuff. I mean I do cook the odd steak & 3 veg, but baking from scratch is a whole different story.
Eventually I discovered two things about our oven:
- The thermostat is kaput – I put it on 180 degrees and I think it went thermo-nuclear fairly quickly.
- Setting 5 is the grill, not the oven. I was guessing because the guide on the oven has all rubbed away.
But I do think not having a thermostat is a pretty solid defence.
Eventually – after turning the grill on and off for 1 minute bursts (grr – took me 2 days to work out that I was using the wrong setting!) for about 4 hours – I managed to churn out some cupcakes for the class that, by all reports, went down a treat:
When cooking for children – and most adults for that matter – always add more sugar to compensate for lack of cooking skill. It’s my rule and I’m sticking to it.