When the good old girls network gets together, I try to stick with politics, books or what got out those stubborn grass stains.
When the subject of tasty home-baked goods comes up, and it usually does, my contribution gets more lame each passing year. I bake. Well, I have baked. I have baked quite successfully — just not since my children were born.
To clarify, I have baked since having children, but something has changed. These days things tend to burn or end up raw in the middle.
I used to bake to impress boyfriends or co-workers, so I took more time and attended to detail, but then I had time to attend to details. In trade for the joys of motherhood, time and attention to details have become screaming luxuries. It was way too easy to impress my toddlers, so somewhere along the line I lost my Doughboy touch.
I also lost my gas stove and oven, which were absolutely the only things in Los Angeles I regretted leaving behind.
Now, it seems, my baked offering will turn out tasting swell, but look so ugly, I am forced to eat it all myself, in the dark.
That’s my excuse. I’m sticking with it.
No sooner had I lost that edge than excellence was once again expected of me. Can we ever forget the award for Ugliest Cake, bestowed on our Cub Scout den, honoring my chocolate mud cake adorned with Gummi bugs?
The boys loved it but I saw the sneers on the other moms’ faces as they created the Ugliest category just for my entry.
Vicious, really.
Shoot, I’m sure I saw that same cake later on the cover of Better Kitchens or something, although my version may have lacked that cover-page polish.
All things weighing in, I can live with slightly burned chocolate chip cookies and somewhat uneven birthday cakes; unfortunately, now I have earned the high scorn of my culinarily precocious 13-year-old daughter, who was making her own breakfast by the age of 6.
She was inspired by my refusal to operate as a short-order cook, plus I tend to sleep late. If I wouldn’t fix what she likes, by golly, she’d make it herself. Oddly, my son was never moved to do the same. No matter how loud and royal his fit of protest, he manages to set aside his personal misery rather than lift a spatula.
My second mistake was to enroll my girl child in foods and nutrition at school and a cake-decorating class at night. She came home armed with 42 stainless steel, interchangeable icing tips and an entire tool kit full of other accessories. She can slap out a rose, a leaf, a jazzy border and a multilayer, cream-filled torte that’s downright impressive.
I serve as her scullery maid. When I’m not mixing shortening and sugar for her, I stand in awe. Whenever I try to bake, I get steady lectures on not measuring correctly, letting my ingredients go stale, how my meals lack nutritional balance, and that I couldn’t make decent pie crust if it would save the free world.
I hope it is a passing phase, but until we know for certain, please pass me that cupcake.
Jean Gillette is a free-lance writer with a still-baking, still-messy daughter and a pile of dishes to do.
