A cautionary chocolate tale

'They're so impressive, yet so easy!' Yeah, right?

So the year is 2008 and our daughter is in the Brownies. A fundraising Easter fete is happening in our small Scottish country town, and the Brownies are having a home baking stall.

How lovely, you might think. How quaint!

As I do, until the chilling memo is sent out: ‘Could every parent please bake something for our stall?’

What? When they said ‘home baking’ I imagined said goods would be flowing from the kitchens of floury-handed grannies accustomed to this kind of thing. Not OUR kitchen in which even ‘my’ fish fingers (ie, Findus fish fingers) have been mocked by a neighbour.

(This is the neighbour who said, ‘Whenever I feel bad about the state of my home, I come down to see yours and feel so much better’).

Oh, I suppose I should show willing.

I pull out my cookbooks and stare at intimidating recipes for cakes.

I can’t make cakes. Just can’t hack it. If I try, it’s either: eerily highly risen, yet greasy. Or: flat like a biscuit.

Then I come across a recipe that looks so easy, even I could do it.

All you do is bash up Shredded Wheat, add molten chocolate and (I think, if memory serves) some syrup and maybe a bit of butter. Then you shape the resulting fibrous gloop into little nests.

Allow the nest to set, pop in some of those tiny pastel coloured sugar eggs and voila!

You’re officially a genius, granted admission to the club of Fully Functioning Brownie Mums!

Proudly, I trot off to the park, where the fete is happening, and Scary Brown Owl (the lady in charge) is manning the home baking stall.

I do think it’s bizarre, this adoration of home baking, when shops - and actual bakeries - are filled with tempting cakes. I mean generally speaking, whenever we need a specialist service, we go to the experts, right?

Would you try to highlight your own hair at home? Install a gas boiler? Operate on your spleen?

If the memo said, ‘Could you please donate a bottle for our bottle stall’ would you set about fermenting your own wine in a big burping demijohn like it’s 1976?

I think not - but let’s not quibble.

‘Here,’ I say proudly, handing over my plastic box of nests.

‘Thanks-put-them-there,’ snaps Brown Owl.

Well, I’d have expected a little more fanfare considering I’ve spent around £975 on 80% cocoa solids chocolate but never mind!

I go off to browse the other stalls and then come back.

By now the home baking stall is laden with towering sponges and plumptious muffins and a multi-layered red velvet cake covered with hand fashioned fondant roses. Unnecessary fondant roses, if you ask me. Someone’s definitely showing off.

There are also delicious looking brownies, blondies, perfectly iced cupcakes and sugar-dusted raspberry tarts like you’d expect to see in a French patisserie, not a wind-blown park in South Lanarkshire…

But where, pray, are my nests?

Perhaps they’ve all sold! What a resounding success that was, I decide.

Then I spot them hidden at the back. They’re not even labelled or priced. They’re just there, like the embarrassing farting uncle you felt obliged to invite to a family dinner.

I wander around some more, popping back now and then to see how many nests have sold.

Answer: NONE.

The other items have sold like, well, hot cakes. Now it’s starting to rain and Brown Owl is hastily packing away everything that’s left, apart from - I can’t help noticing - my nests.

And next time I look, they’re the only items still sitting out, now slowly filling with rain. Does no one CARE?

It does occur to me that my nests could double up as small vessels to hold liquid, but this doesn’t cheer me. Feeling quite embittered, I avoid the stall for the rest of the afternoon.

Then, from a distance, I spot Brown Owl tipping my nests into a bin.

Well, thanks a bunch! After all my bashing and shaping and money spent.

Remind me, next time you’re sending out demanding memos of this nature, to press delete!

What can we learn from this sorry Easter tale? That, if you don’t possess the baking gene, simply buy your donation from a shop, rough it up a bit and present it as home made.

Or I could knock you out a batch of nests?

Happy Easter!

Love,

Fiona xx

PS Handily, Nigella’s seasonal creations lead me neatly my new novel, The Full Nest! It’s the story of Carly, whose home is filling up… and up… and UP as family members decide they’re moving back in. When there’s no room for you, where do you go? It’s currently just 99p in ebook and you can order here!