Why am I so bad at baking?

And I go down an Angel Delight rabbit hole.

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The build-up to the TV spectacular that is the Great British Bake Off has begun. It’s already at such a crescendo you’d be forgiven for thinking it starts this week. Like I did. And then forgave myself.

But it returns next week with a whole new batch of amateur bakers to leave me feeling - how did you get so good at this? Some of you are still teenagers.

And the reason I feel this way is I’m terrible at baking but I can’t understand why.

I’ve wondered if it’s something you’re born with. Can I blame my genes? I know my mum has never baked a cake in her life as she sometimes proudly tells me. And I’m certain my dad never has. Or maybe it’s like skiing, tennis and languages and it’s much easier if you learn as a child.

My childhood home was devoid of cake tins, piping nozzles, measuring cups and I’ve now run out of baking paraphernalia that I know. Dessert was not a regular feature but when it did excitingly appear it was a Mr Kipling’s treacle tart or a Birds Eye Supermousse or Bird’s butterscotch Angel Delight.

There are a lot of birds and eyes in the names of these companies, but it hasn’t seem to put anyone off. And it certainly never put me off my Angel Delight. Whisking that beige powder into milk was the height of my patissier skills. And it certainly was a skill to ensure no clumps remained stuck to the side of the bowl. (Which incidentally was also the family sick bowl).

You know when they talk about ultra-processed foods being things you wouldn’t find in your kitchen cupboards and give you a list to look out for? Well, that list is basically the ingredients of Angel Delight. Modified starch, Maltodextrin, Propylene Glycol Esters of Fatty Acids. Yes please!

Alfred Bird, the genius behind Bird’s Angel Delight, also invented baking powder. This amazed me as I didn’t think it was something that could be invented. I thought it just existed like chalk. This is the level of ignorance we’re dealing with. I’m basically saying I assumed it was a natural substance. Please don’t tell me bicarbonate of soda is the same.

We did have a baking cookbook at home when I was growing up. The Mr Men cookbook. It featured the delights of Mr Tickle’s jam roly poly, Mr Forgetful's chocolate mice on chopped jelly and the quite sinister-sounding Mr Strong’s egg flip. But the only thing we ever made was Mr Noisy’s peppermint creams, which was just mixing icing sugar, water and peppermint essence.

Icing sugar was then and now the bane of my baking attempts. Within approximately three hours of opening the packet, it somehow comes together, possibly out of spite, to form huge rocks harder than diamonds. I have to get the hammer out.

I’m going to tell you something insane about icing sugar now. And if you already know it, I’m going to feel even more like a baking idiot.

Here it is. Icing sugar is just normal sugar but really ground up. This is mind-blowing to me. I thought it was a special species of sugar. But you can make your own icing sugar by putting ordinary sugar in a grinder or food processor.

The reason I discovered this was I once needed some icing sugar for a recipe so Googled, ‘substitute for icing sugar’. The fact I did that is possibly some insight into why I am so bad at baking.

This probably happened in 2020, when like many others I experimented with baking. Or rather I wanted to experiment but when I went to the shop they only had weird flour left like tiny tubs of quinoa flour. We really went mad for flour in 2020, didn’t we? It was a bad year for us but a fantastic one for weevils. It will go down in history as their Belle Epoque.

Here are three things that confuse me about baking.

1. How am I supposed to get a flat piece of baking paper to fit in a cake tin? It’s not cake-tin-shaped. I feel like I need scissors, a pencil and ruler and a paper architecture degree.

2. When you’re checking if the cake is ready and it says to put in a knife/skewer/toothpick and see if comes out clean, what does it mean by ‘clean’? It’s just been in a cake, it’s not coming out pristine, ready or not. I’m not putting it back in the drawer. So what level of cake residue is acceptable?

3. The phrase used in recipes, ‘take care not to over-mix’. How am I supposed to know when I’ve crossed that threshold?

Maybe once I’ve cracked these things I’ll be a good baker. Or maybe there’s something else going wrong. My friend

Zena Birch

was once made a cake by a Dutch friend, who took one bite of her creation and said, “Oh no. I have to apologise. I am so sorry. I forgot to add the love when making this. Which you will clearly taste.”

So maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. Not enough love. To be honest, I don’t have much to spread around and certainly none for banana bread. So I’ll never be in the Bake Off tent. Or make a decent cake. But who needs that when you’ve got butterscotch Angel Delight?

Tell me…

• about what’s on your dream 1970s/80s dessert trolley.

• about the amazing baking fact I won’t know. (Bearing in mind I didn’t know what icing sugar was so it’s quite a low bar.)

• why you think I’m so bad at baking. Is it the love?