I was born to bake you happy.....

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was 5 years old and loved watching her Mum pottering about in the kitchen making dinner or baking cakes. One Sunday the little girl perched on a stool at the end of the worktop watching her Mum take the hot Yorkshire pudding pan out of the oven ready to pour the batter into it. For reasons unknown, the little girl stuck her finger in the sizzling hot fat whilst asking "is that hot?". The mother, shocked at her daughter's staggering stupidity, administered cold water to the now blistered finger and berated her telling her to "get out of the kitchen and you are not allowed back in".

Fast forward eight years to secondary school. That same poor girl had to endure Home Economics classes. Week after week the teenage girl ruined perfectly good ingredients while all her classmates smiled smugly from their stations laden with perfect replicas of the teacher's recipe. After yet another disastrous practical of making fruit buns, the teacher finally lost her patience with the girl and told her "don't worry about bringing in ingredients from now on dear. You can just stand and watch the other girls".

That girl grew into an adult and a mother, completely incapable of cooking anything without either burning it, or not cooking it properly and making people sick. The latter happened with monotonous regularity and she regularly sent her kid's friends home with mild food poisoning when they came to tea. Sunday roasts consisted of frozen roast potatoes (burnt), frozen ready made Yorkshire puddings (burnt) and various vegetables (boiled so much that all nutritional value was lost), but the show stopper was the meat, which you would be hard pressed to identify as beef, pork or chicken as it would all be grey or charcoal black.

Yes, I am sorry to say that the little girl was me. I didn't set out to be a bad cook. I always really tried to make something decent, but I always expected a disaster and therefore it was a self fulfilling prophecy. Then one day something amazing happened....

In October 2007 I attended a course on project management skills and techniques, the same course that my Director had attended years earlier. When I returned to the office, he asked me what I thought of the course. I said that I had enjoyed it as it played to the logical, organised side of me. He said that he only ever used the critical path analysis, but even then not for work, but for cooking. He went on to say that he cooked only once a year - at Christmas - and he treated the meal as a project. The objective was the dinner, so he used the critical path analysis to work backwards to plan what he had to do, by when and in which order. He swore by it as he freely admitted that he too was a lousy cook and this helped him.

That night on the way home, I pulled a recipe out of the evening paper and bought the ingredients. I treated the recipe like a project and organised myself. Before I started, I made sure that I had all the necessary equipment ready to hand and everything measured out in bowls. I wrote down the time that I wanted us to have dinner, and planned everything right down to the minute. I served up the gammon and chickpea casserole that I had made from scratch and held my breath.....

If this moment had been one of those films that they show during X Factor, (you know the kind with the sob story of a contestant right before Simon tells them that they are through to the next round?) there would have been mood music from someone like Snow Patrol while I nervously tended the casserole on the hob and then the uplifting bit of the song would kick in as my family all took their first bite and then looked up at me, holding their thumbs up in approval. It was an edible success! Of course, before it could be declared a complete triumph, I had one more hurdle to jump. The long wait began to see if anyone would be ill overnight. No-one got sick!!!

I'd broken the curse and buoyed by my success, I made a chocolate mousse the following night - another success and a roast dinner on the following Sunday, making actual real roast potatoes AND homemade Yorkshire puddings from scratch! Even the meat was the right colour and delicious! My transformation into a decent cook was almost complete. Only one challenge lay before me. Baking. At the recommendation of a work colleague, I bought Nigella Lawson's book 'How to be a domestic goddess' and set myself the task of making her coconut macaroons. They didn't come out looking like the picture in her book, but they looked even better AND they tasted equally as good!

With the continued help of my friends Nigella, Jamie, Rachel and James I am now a confident and able cook. I still treat each recipe as a project and I always measure out my ingredients in little glass bowls just like Auntie Delia does on the telly. But my most favourite thing is baking. These days I love nothing more than locking myself away in the kitchen, donning my pinny, listen to a play list of cheesy pop at a loud volume and bake lots of lovely goodies.

I still live in fear that the rubbish little girl will come back, but it's been nearly 3 years and she hasn't resurfaced yet. Besides, I think that it's good to be a little bit fearful of her as it means that I put more care and love into what I am making and that can only enhance the results.

I have broken through the cocoon of being genuinely the world's worst cook to emerge into the sunlight as a domestic goddess. This transformation was complete when after a baking session, Kid 2 stood in the kitchen watching me pull out another tray of deliciousness and said "I love your cooking Mum". Naturally, I began to cry because that's something that I never thought would be said to me and something that I will never forget. In fact I seem to have inspired Kid 2 as he wants to be a chef and starts a course in professional cookery at college this September. He says that I have proved that if someone like me can learn to cook, anyone can!

HH
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