Love the baking - hate the mess!

I’m no Mary Berry but I love a bit of baking. And in our lockdown days a popular pastime with more people than ever seems to be tickling the tastebuds.
Many delicious baked treats are being createdMany delicious baked treats are being created
Many delicious baked treats are being created

But the problem with increasing the amount of baking is it inevitably leads to an increased amount of eating, as well as an increased amount of mess!

Now before anyone says it, yes of course there are ‘healthy’ options with baking and yes if I can take them I will.

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However the small people in my life have a love of all things unhealthy and want to help in both the baking, and the eating, of said delicious treats.

So as a consequence, butter, sugar and chocolate are among the favourite ingredients which feature in our bakes rather than a host of savoury ingredients no matter how hard I try (which admittedly isn’t very hard).

Fairy cakes, chocolate brownies and a factory-full of cookies have been created in my kitchen in recent weeks with varying degrees of success.

But top of our favourites at the moment is the classic scone which I have found myself making every single week for about a month now.

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I remember making them at school and at home when I was little with great enthusiasm, and I remember how much I enjoyed all of the mixing and eating with little regard for how messy I was actually making the kitchen.

It is fair to say that as an adult that care-free attitude has more than abandoned me as clouds of flour escape and find themselves on the worksurfaces, floor, door handles.

Apparently my suggestion that the children should be entirely responsible for cleaning it all up is ‘unfair’ as it would be ‘boring’. (Note to children - mummy doesn’t love mopping the floor either)

But of course even if they did clear up by themselves I would no doubt come in afterwards and retidy as part of my hunt for the escapee flour/chocolate buttons/sugar granules...

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I’ve also found that baking seems to breed other unnecessary cooking options. I had some strawberries which needed to be used up, so I made jam to go with a batch of scones.

And when those scones were eaten I still had jam left - so we made more scones to go with the jam as part of a never-ending jam/scone dependency cycle. The irony of all of this being that I didn’t even need to make jam in the first place as I already had some.

The result of all of this is, of course, my kitchen has been a source for far too many unhealthy food stuffs of late which I heartily encourage the family to eat because I can’t stand the boxes of goodies occupying prime space in on the worktop.

I just hope that situating said boxes of goodies directly next to the fruit bowl in some way makes it better by association, even if the scones are disappearing far quicker than the bananas!