What's Cooking?

I baked a chocolate cake today and it tasted delicious. I feel like I want to write that sentence over and over for the whole of this page. The truly glorious, wonderful, warm feeling that is currently pervading my body comes close only to passing my driving test and having the babies. I have grown up with sound of my mum and sister’s laughter ringing in my ears when they’re confronted with my cooking. Sometimes it wasn’t entirely unjustified. I am the woman who made chicken in tarragon and cream without the tarragon or the cream and, when lacking in ingredients for spaghetti carbonara, replaced the bacon with prawns and cream with milk. I also woke up one morning to find three (cooked) lamb chops in my bed but that’s another story. So, my track record is not great and my family, resembling as it does a herd of not altogether forgiving elephants, doesn’t let me forget. Even when I dish up a really decent Sunday lunch, or knock up a very appetizing smoked haddock chowder, or even make my own ice cream, there are exchanged glances and “very good” is bestowed upon me in much the same way as we praise our youngest for the mass of scribbles that is presented to us as “Fairies going to see a Princess”.

And it has started to bug me. Mum and Emma are by common consent both great cooks, in that sort of effortless, throw together what’s in the fridge, not really following much of a recipe way. I know that I have to read and re-read the instructions lots of times, but my efforts aren’t bad at all. So, in order to prove myself once and for all, I decided to turn my hand to baking. For it is the flour-dusted, rosy-cheeked, bosomy-aproned mother who is the epitome of all that is nurturing.

After I gave birth to Oliver, I made a trip to John Lewis. This is in the days of course before Olly knew what shops were. The days where you could wheel him round for hours, beaming at all and sundry and he nestled comfortably in my arms. Now I would rather re-take my maths ‘O’level than go shopping with either of them. The memory of Billie lying flat out on the floor in John Lewis for TWENTY minutes refusing to move while the lift doorsd and closed (as did the mouths of all passers by) remains with me still. Anyway, on this trip to John Lewis I purchased cake tins, spatula, state of the art scales, apron, and mixer. I came home determined to fill the house with the smells of buns and cakes. Buns and vomit more like. I had no sooner worked out how to put the batteries in the scales before the little bun that was in my oven took over my every waking minute and rendered even making a cup of tea a total nightmare.

But things change, four years on and the magic of the TV, together with a packet of crisps, can buy you up to twenty minutes and here I am in the kitchen contemplating making a chocolate cake. It is to Nigella that I turn. Though I do truly love Delia, she does rather remind you of those girls at school who always used to say that they hadn’t revised and then you’d look over at them in the exam and they’d be writing for all they were worth for the whole thing, emerging from the hall rosy, smug and ready for the next one. She says ‘all you have to do’ and ‘simply’ a bit too much for my liking. I remember trying a coconut cake of hers once where all you had to do was desiccate your own coconut. There was so much blood and shredded nail by the end of it I didn’t know whether to eat it or submit for the Turner prize. With Nigella, you feel that she’s not pulling any punches, if she says it’s easy, it is. And her store-cupboard chocolate-orange cake, like her looks, is effortless with fantastic results.

My mum arrived as the cake was cooking. As soon as she got here the phone rang for her and she was chatting away on it while I handed her a spoon with a bit of the cake mixture on it. She tasted it and had to rearrange her face to speak. I kept my face pressed against the cooker door willing and praying for the cake at least to look ok when it came out. It smelt fabulous and fifty minutes later as promised, it emerged looking fantastic. Of course the kids could not wait to decorate it, consequently the shaved chocolate melted rather on top and the buttercream filling slid about a bit, but all in all it looked fine. And it tasted wonderful. So I’m sitting here tonight having had three slices and I am just in heaven. You see I have passed a milestone, I have made a cake that everyone has eaten and enjoyed. I have impressed my mum and delighted my kids, and I can’t resist saying it, I’ve had my cake and eaten it.

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 4) and daughter Billie (aged 2 and a half) in Hertfordshire.