Barbara Scully: ‘Kate Moss was wrong… there are some things that taste better than skinny feels’

By | November 25, 2019

So, there are always bananas in my house. But the problem with bananas is that they go soft very quickly, and I like a firm banana. So along with my firm bananas there are usually a couple of ‘gone beyond’ bananas which languish, unloved and untouched. In the past this hasn’t been a problem as I also (surprise, surprise) love banana bread and it is best baked with overripe bananas. But dear reader, the new me is afraid to bake banana bread and so my soft bananas keep getting softer and blacker until I finally throw them in the bin.

In fact, I am not only afraid to bake banana bread, I am afraid to bake anything. Because baking speaks to some very deep part of my female soul. Baking is witchcraft, a very special kind of magic and is intrinsically linked to my mothering. I can sense your eye roll as you read these words but bear with me.

Back in another life, I was in full-time paid employment outside the home. But when baby number three came along, I dropped all the balls. The juggling became too much and I surrendered. I just couldn’t to it anymore. So, I took a ‘year out’ of paid work to be at home with a baby, a toddler and a teenager. That year became 10 years and I think might just be one of the happiest decades of my life, which was a huge surprise. I never, ever thought I would be a ‘housewife’ (and I hate that term) , never mind a happy one. But happy was exactly what I was.

And it was in that decade that I learned to bake. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am no Mary Berry but I have a limited repertoire which includes my beloved banana bread, scones, buns, Victoria sponge and a mean pear and chocolate cake.

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The magic in the transformation of a sloppy mess of ingredients into a sublime, light and fluffy confection is almost sacramental. Every time I lifted a baked success out of the oven, my heart did a little jump with the excitement and wonder of it all. And this particular witchery was conducted as my kitchen would be wrapped in the wonderful, aromatic fug of baking. It represented peak mothering to me.

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Of course, it will be of no surprise to anyone who has read my previous columns on my diabetes, which was diagnosed back in August, to learn that I was my own baking’s biggest fan. I especially loved tucking straight into a cake while it was still warm. Weekends were best started by baking a batch of scones on Saturday morning.

A warm scone slathered in butter and tart blackberry jam is possibly the nearest I will get to tasting heaven while still on earth. I was such a slave to my own baking prowess that I once made a chocolate cake at ten o’clock at night because the craving triggered by watching The Great British Bake Off would have come between me and my sleep.

So I am now marooned in a place where I am afraid to bake in case (and I must give my youngest daughter credit for this phrase) I ‘reawaken my inner cake monster’ who will return with a vengeance singing “come on Barbara, you know that cake tastes much better than skinny feels”.

I am going to have to come to terms with all this very quickly as Christmas is just weeks away and I will shortly have to begin making my puddings. I think I will limit it to two this year instead of my normal three. I give one to my dear mother and the other will be served at home where there will be 10 of us for Christmas dinner. Whatever is left after that, I will then possibly share with my foxes. (Yes, I have a community of foxes who visit me every night for supper -but, as they say, ‘sin scéal eile’).

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Christmas is also heralding another very specific food dilemma this year and one that will be right up there with trying to limit my intake of pudding. And that’s jelly.

Yes, I know I mentioned before that I am a vegetarian and so shouldn’t be eating jelly. But jelly is another sublime dessert that I have loved since I was a little girl. Of course, being an adult has meant that my opportunities to indulge in jelly have lessened as my kids grew up and now that they are all adults (glory alleluia) I never get to have jelly. Or didn’t until I became a grandmother.

My darling granddaughter is now two and lives in Australia but on her last trip home, in the summer, I introduced her to the delights of jelly. It was a masterstroke.

Herself and myself enjoyed jelly most days, well, until the day I forget to make some and there was war. Last week I got the news that she is coming home for Christmas, not on her own of course, she is bringing her Ma and Da too.

But she will be expecting jelly. Because Bap (that’s my granny name) means jelly, as far as she is concerned. The problem now of course is that jelly, like scones and banana bread and Christmas pudding, may well wake my aforementioned inner food monster.

Because Kate Moss was wrong. There are some things that taste better than skinny feels.

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