Cooking, on the other, has a more sustenance based place in my life; we can’t live without food but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the fuel that we use to keep ourselves going. 

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Of the two, I enjoy baking more than cooking and I am fortunate enough to have learned to bake from the two most important woman in my life: my mother and grandmother. 

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I remember making biscuits with my Nanna when I was young and, upon her passing, was fortunate enough to inherit her lovingly used and well-worn notebook of family recipes. In here there are memories of the times we made ginger creams, melting moments and chocolate cakes and in some instances, there are the residual remains of mixture smeared across the page that got there when we tried to turn the page. 

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My mother, on the other hand, is a perfectionist when it comes to baking and this is a trait I appear to have inherited. There is nothing that frustrates her more than a flat sponge and to date, the only time I have heard my mother swear is when the sponge has mysteriously deflated upon extraction from the over. 

 

Our own perfectionism has turned us into competitive bakers, particularly with each other. Recently I mastered (not perfected) the art of the coffee sponge cake; a recipe that has long troubled my mother despite the fact she is perfectly capable of turning out a flawless Ginger Fluff sponge on a regular basis. 

 

As a result, my mother has since made it her mission to master this sponge herself, and, much to the delight of my father, has amassed a freezer full of sponge cakes as a result. 

 

As I get older, baking now holds a serene place in my life; an action I turn to when I need a moment away from the stress of the world and complexities of life. It’s something I do, simply because I can and because I choose to, not because I need to. Some people seek the waves, or run laps of a footy field; I bake. 

 

There is also a quiet sense of satisfaction when you watch people consume something you have crafted with your own hands; to see someone you love enjoy something you have made for them is, without a doubt, worth more than seeing their reaction to something you’ve brought in a store. You hear people talk about the added ingredient of Love, but there is a mystery in baking, in how something someone else makes does not just seem the same as something you’ve made with your own two hands. 

 

I am the go-to person in my workplace for cake recipes, biscuits, slices and so on. Somewhere, whether it be in our families well-worn cookbooks, we have a tried and tested recipe for just about everything and I love nothing more than sharing these with those around me and seeing them achieve the same level of satisfaction that I do when I bake for those I care about.