I had one of my domestic goddess moments today. Thankfully they’re few and far between, but sadly they usually strike at the most inconvenient moments.
This one was triggered by the sight of two rather over-ripe bananas lurking in the fruit bowl. The timing of this observation was unfortunate as it was just as I arrived home with Lily from school, and we had precisely half an hour to do an about turn and get back out for her Tae Kwon Do lesson. As we had to ensure she had managed to have a snack, a drink, do her homework and squeeze a promised moment of Nick Junior into that half hour – time was already looking stretched.
‘Would you like to help me make a cake?’ I asked brightly. Lily’s face lit up – I could see she had visions of chocolate crispies again.
‘I’m going to make a banana cake in the bread-machine. Do you want to help?’
Lily’s face sunk, ‘I don't like banana cake,' she sulked, 'Can I watch Nick Junior instead?’
To be honest I was relieved. Making cakes with the help of little hands always takes much longer than anticipated, and I was confident that with her safely glued to the telly with an apple and a glass of water I could whip this cake up in no time, leaving the very capable bread-making machine to cope with the cooking bit while we were out.
In an attempt to speed things up, I put the flour in the tin, clicked it into place, and set the programme on its way, so the kneader was working as I was ladling in the rest of the ingredients.
I should have realised straight away something was wrong. As well as the kneader springing into action, I noticed the filament around the tin was glowing hotter and hotter with each beat of the motor. But I was in such a rush to measure the rest of the ingredients and get them into the tin before the kneading was over and the cooking cycle began – so I didn’t notice.
It was only as I added the final slurp of milk that it dawned on me that perhaps I had set the wrong programme going. By now the flour, eggs, honey and bananas were fairly congealed and some of the mixture at the edge was well on the way to burning.
With five minutes to go I rushed Lily into her Tae Kwon Do outfit, whilst blowing madly on the filament in the bread-maker - it stubbornly refusing to start on the proper cycle until the heat from the first one had died down. Fair enough I guess – the rapid bake loaf cycle was clearly a little extreme for my banana cake to handle. I also set about trying to remix the already solidified goo that was now a half-baked cake – one baked at far too high a temperature, before half the ingredients had been added.
With a bit of gentle oral persuasion (with Lily well out of earshot) I eventually persuaded the bread-machine to get going on the cake cycle, just in time to whisk Lily away from Dora and get her out the door.
I must admit I was a little worried all the way through Tae Kwon Do – not about the cake, I realised as soon as I shut the door on it that it was going to be a write-off – but worried that there was actually something wrong with the bread-machine and the house would be burnt down by the time we got home. But luckily when we returned nothing more than the banana cake had got a second baking, and the house honestly smelt delicious. Just as good as Nigella Lawson’s does, I’m sure.
Unfortunately the cake didn’t look as good as it smelt. I opened the lid of the bread-maker to find a pale congealed mass that looked more like melted toffee ice-cream than banana cake. For a second a flash of inspiration struck me – I’d scoop out little chunks with a spoon and mix it with vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce and the kids would have their very own sticky-toffee-sundaes for pudding. Magic!...
...My enthusiasm didn’t last long. Just long enough for Bill to pop his head over my shoulder and shudder in horror – ‘you’re not thinking of feeding that to the kids, are you?!’
...Besides, we’ve no chocolate sauce, so I’d have to start from scratch…and today is clearly not a cooking day for me…
I bet Nigella doesn’t have days like these…
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