My almost cake disaster!

I am useless at baking. I am always envious of people who manage to make delicious cakes with seemingly the minimum of effort. However there are moments when I kid myself that it is not that hard, and that I can make tasty treats from scratch.

One such incident was when I decided to hold a charity cake sale, and needed to bake something to sell.

Mum beat a hasty retreat from the kitchen when at 7pm one evening I decided to create my masterpiece. Fairy cakes were the plan, as they looked pretty simple.

Following a recipe from one of mum’s old cook books I was ready to go. All started off well, with me carefully weighing out the ingredients, and putting them in the bowl. Disaster was narrowly averted by mum, who informed me that I needed a tea spoon of baking power, not a table spoon!

However chaos seems to follow me around, and I ended up wearing most of the ingredients when I got a bit too adventurous with the electric mixer. A quick clean up and an apron later and I was ready to try again.

This time it went to plan, and I soon had cakes in the oven cooking. Feeling smug I was ready for my next challenge, making the icing.

20 minutes later, there was water and icing sugar over the floor, and a bright blue runny mess in my bowl. So I did what I usually do in times of need, admit defeat and call for mum. She is used to sorting out my messes, but I don’t think she expected to be making icing and washing the kitchen floor at 10pm at night though!

With mum on the case things went much more smoothly, and soon there was a line of neatly iced cakes. Step forward guinea pig Dad, who was given the task of trying a cake. He looked pretty apprehensive, but is still alive to tell the tale, so I believe my baking attempt was a success.

Relieved I put the cook book away, and packed the cakes into tins. Next time I am thinking of buying cakes from Tesco, and passing them off as my own. I think mum would approve of this plan!