Amuse bouche... Baking buds

Jennifer really wanted to bake. Jennifer didn’t really want to bake, but her daughter, Lily, really, really wanted to bake.

Jennifer wanted to go home after work and sit down and play word games on her phone.

But Jennifer wanted to make Lily happy and she knew if she just got off her arse and did the baking, she’d be happier, too.

The baking had been promised and put off over several previous evenings.

One evening, Lily chose to play with her friends on the road. The next evening, Lily had soccer and was too exhausted. The last evening, Jennifer had been too exhausted. Just too exhausted.

Not too exhausted for the word game, however, and Lily had spotted this. So, tonight, Jennifer and Lily were baking.

Luckily, Jennifer remembered to buy more blueberries for the muffins on the way home from work. She’d put the last of them in Lily’s lunch that morning, in a flurry of lunch-box desperation.

Lily would have noticed that, too. Lily was noticing a lot of Jennifer’s shortcomings lately. That was the nature of being 13, Jennifer supposed; it became your job to pick holes in your mother’s every effort.

All the more reason to get off her arse and bake with the child, while she still was a child.

Lily had ideas about how they should do the muffins. She had a tin from Ikea that made tall, thin muffins. She said that if they used this baking tin, their muffins could then be dipped in white icing, and turned upside down and they’d look like chef ’s hats.

This was stretching the exercise a bit beyond basic baking, but Jennifer was going to go with it. She’d be letting Lily do the icing and the inverting, in the name of independence and all.

Jennifer was not going to point out that the baking time on the recipe — which was for muffins of a regular width and height — might not match the baking time of tall, chef ’s hat muffins.

That was called being a spoilsport. Jennifer was committed to enjoying this.

Lily got flour all over the floor. She didn’t melt the butter enough for it to mix successfully. She definitely overmixed the batter and was probably going to end up with some very rubbery muffins.

While the blueberries sank to the bottom of the muffin cases before Lily remembered to put them in the oven, however, she mentioned a boy in her class who was ‘really funny’ and a worry she had about maths.

It wasn’t about the muffins, Jennifer remembered. It wasn’t about baking at all. It was about this girl, slipping through her fingers all the time. Jennifer really wanted to bake more.