Yesterday was Mum's birthday.
At a time when people are losing loved ones, livelihoods and lives, I'm all too well aware that just missing a family get-together is nothing at all. And yet a wave of sadness still hit me; big family meals, with lots of different dishes, and noise, and children going feral in the garden, and adults lingering over wine and Trivial Pursuit (with steward's enquiries and robust accusations of cheating/denials of same) are the glue of our family life.
Handing over gifts and cake is a poor substitute, but the only one we have at the moment. So, what best to hand over?
A large cake seemed a silly decision for a household of only two people (although I'm sure Dad would have done his best to take on the challenge). A batch of something, then? Something out of the ordinary. Something that would give me and the child labour force (9 and 12) a chance to try a new skill. Something with cinnamon...?
Aha. Kitty Tait's cinnamon buns - a recipe printed and handed to me by Mum when I last saw her at a distance of less than 2m. Her focus was actually the no-knead Marmite bread - which is fantastic, by the way - but I had mentally filed the Swedish-style cinnamon buns under 'looks lovely but fiddly, to try One Day'.
Yesterday was that day. The dough was assembled with minimal flour-scattering, and the boys smooshed butter, sugar and cinnamon with gusto to make the filling.
Rolling out the huuuuuuuuuuge rectangle of dough probably counted as the day's exercise, the folding into thirds was less messy than it could have been I suppose, and the pizza wheel was deployed to cut 24 strips and no fingers.
Twisting was good fun after some help from YouTube, glazing with a simple sugar-water mix gave a final polish, the prettiest were selected for Nana's birthday batch and the top one garnished with a candle (we kept the more deformed and wonky ones, which I am cheerfully blaming on the child labour side of the enterprise. They're still DELICIOUS).
At the appropriately socially-distanced handover, Mum was chuffed: "You've gone to so much trouble!"
You can still say it with food, even at a distance.
[PS: You can also still have a properly wine-sodden and recriminatory family quiz over Zoom, we discovered last night. Good to know life can go on, even in lockdown.]
At a time when people are losing loved ones, livelihoods and lives, I'm all too well aware that just missing a family get-together is nothing at all. And yet a wave of sadness still hit me; big family meals, with lots of different dishes, and noise, and children going feral in the garden, and adults lingering over wine and Trivial Pursuit (with steward's enquiries and robust accusations of cheating/denials of same) are the glue of our family life.
Handing over gifts and cake is a poor substitute, but the only one we have at the moment. So, what best to hand over?
A large cake seemed a silly decision for a household of only two people (although I'm sure Dad would have done his best to take on the challenge). A batch of something, then? Something out of the ordinary. Something that would give me and the child labour force (9 and 12) a chance to try a new skill. Something with cinnamon...?
Aha. Kitty Tait's cinnamon buns - a recipe printed and handed to me by Mum when I last saw her at a distance of less than 2m. Her focus was actually the no-knead Marmite bread - which is fantastic, by the way - but I had mentally filed the Swedish-style cinnamon buns under 'looks lovely but fiddly, to try One Day'.
 |
| Construction |
Rolling out the huuuuuuuuuuge rectangle of dough probably counted as the day's exercise, the folding into thirds was less messy than it could have been I suppose, and the pizza wheel was deployed to cut 24 strips and no fingers.
 |
| Birthday-worthy finished result |
 |
| Deformed and wonky (but still tasty) also-rans |
At the appropriately socially-distanced handover, Mum was chuffed: "You've gone to so much trouble!"
You can still say it with food, even at a distance.
[PS: You can also still have a properly wine-sodden and recriminatory family quiz over Zoom, we discovered last night. Good to know life can go on, even in lockdown.]
I like that that boys definitively have butter-squishing as a lockdown skillset. That's impressively transferrable once reality returns. Glad you managed to get something over to your mum, though it's not entirely the same.
ReplyDelete(Living in fear that the Zoom family quiz will happen. Is bad enough at Christmas. No.)