Cooking 9/10ths of the time

I had mistakenly left the "s" off "Skillz" in the title, thus it read "New Killz" - which looks like a blog post title that some sort of annoying Gen Y contract killer would leave. As it is I am just an annoying Gen X food blogger aping Gen Y. So who's clever now eh? Hard to tell. I learned new things this month - My friend CC and I had decided many many many months ago to do a "Cupcake Masterclass". Sounds fairly splendid doesn't it? It took us a while to actually get there, we had some, ahem, issues getting a booking and then some hilarious misunderstandings and then some recriminations and then some tears and then some sulky apologies and eventually we were all friends again. I did not make this, but God, how I wish I did... I was under the impression that we would bake a cupcake and then decorate it, but it was pretty clear when we mounted the stairs and were looking at rows and rows of naked cupcakes that we would be decorati...

Initially Gabe's fifth birthday cake was to be a volcano. We enthused about it for quite a few months. I researched how to best tackle the cake and then how to make it ACTUALLY EXPLODE, in a way that would not take out the eyes of every small child in a 50 metre radius. Plus it had to be edible afterwards. The natives ran and screamed.. I had taught Gabe the phrase "pyroclastic flow" in readiness, so that other parents would be impressed with my child's precocious use of language and when told about it I would blithely answer "Oh did he? Oh well he does love to read!". An then I would have laughed my patented carefree parent laugh. It is a light sounding laugh, slightly distracted and adorably unselfconscious. I haven't really had much call to use it yet. Anyway after all that research and time and energy and sourcing a tin that would be a good mountain shape and discussing a plan of attack with my good friend Sue - and then getting her excited a...