For most of his life he’s not been interested in cooking. He doesn’t like me to explain what to do. When he roasted a chicken once he added a whole big bulb of garlic. He can cook poached egg on toast, he does cook bread, he tries to cook bacon by frying it for a minute then microwaving it.

Today he wanted to make a loaf out of self raising flour. With no yeast. I explained that would be more like pastry, and that you use self raising mainly for making cakes. I told him he could use about eight ounces of flour, four ounces of butter, four ounces of sugar, but as we had none he could use a couple of heaped spoons of sweetener. This is a granular one you can cook with. A couple of eggs, and milk, not water, which he was going to use.

I went upstairs on the computer while he went out to get butter.

I was going to explain. He knew about Crumbling flour and butter together, then I told him to add sweetener, then the eggs and milk, then some de-stoned cherries if he wanted to.

I was upstairs, and it was terribly quiet. A friend rang so I came downstairs. Hubby was just about to put the cake in the oven. I looked around, he’d used about twelve ounces of flour (not weighed it out) three quarters of a tub of margarine. Two eggs a bit of milk and a teaspoon! of sweetener. To this mix he’d  added half a bowl of cherries and then kneaded the mix! I tried to explain you need the mix to be more liquid and that you gently stir in the milk to keep the cake light.

Well he tried. The cake is cooking, gas mark 4,initially for 45 minutes in the centre of the oven. I’m worried it will be a bit heavy when it comes out.

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