Cooking for kids
Ex-Bake Off winner tells Ella Walker how his mum shaped his food philosophy
GREAT British Bake Off 2019 winner David Atherton was a rare contestant in the feted tent.
He was a calm and collected baker – qualities that have kept him grounded during the post-win melee.
The 37-year-old said: “Everything is all new and very exciting but you also feel very lost and like you don’t know what you’re doing.
“You just want to be able to take the opportunities without burning out, basically.”
This style of pragmatism has also served David well during the coronavirus pandemic.
He has now released his debut cookbook – although it might not be what you would expect from a Bake Off winner.
My First Cook Book is for kids and not a glorification of sugar-spun, candied concoctions. Instead, its bedrock is nutrition. David said: “People who had an upbringing like myself – where their mum was in the kitchen with them all the time – tend to understand food and diet better.
“My mum, Judy, was very different. She would definitely be called hipster now but back then she was called ‘hippie’.
“She had five kids and cooking from scratch is obviously the cheapest way – and also the healthiest. Food was just one of the things we did. We weren’t allowed to watch TV really, so we had to spend our lives playing with each other and cooking and baking.”
David said Judy whipped up homemade bread for the family of seven. He added: “We never had shop-bought bread and she saw that as a way of keeping us entertained.
“She made massive batches twice a week and we’d spend a whole morning playing with bread dough. I’m not sure how much of that got cooked and eaten.”
Judy didn’t shy away from letting her kids use knives either. David said: “We were allowed to stir pots on the stove, use a knife to cut things and crack eggs. Yes, we’d get shell in but by the age of three, we could crack an egg.” He said he still meets adults today “who can’t crack eggs properly” so the idea of My First Cook Book is to get all ages in the kitchen, learning about food and spending time together. He said: “It’s
really important to capture kids young. Instead of trying to make it seem like a chore, food has got to be fun.”
In the book, there are a mix of sweet and savoury dishes to try – from a “magic” tomato sauce he makes all the time to octopus-shaped pizzas, tacos, sushi and veggie summer rolls.
The alternative route moves away from capturing kids’ attention purely through sugar. David said: “In the same way that if a child is brought up with McDonald’s, they probably think a dried fig is disgusting.”
He added: “I remember feeling physically sick when I’d see people spreading butter on bread before jam. We just put peanut butter or jam straight on, without anything else.
“That’s why it’s so important to start with kids. If you condition people to think lots of refined sugar is normal, your tastes will be very, very sweet. Coca-Cola? I just don’t understand it as I never had it growing up.”
He considers the book “a little more wholesome” but notes the food doesn’t “taste healthy”.
My First Cook Book: Make, Bake & Learn To Cook, by David Atherton and illustrated by Rachel Stubbs, £14.99.