Last updated 20:50, Thursday, 05 June 2008

THIS week I have been doing a bit of baking.

I haven’t done any for years, because there is no-one in our house who is particularly fond of cakes, but I came across grandma’s particularly yummy recipe for gingerbread, which I hadn’t tasted in a long time, so I thought I’d have a go.

Now, grandma did a great gingerbread, plus German cake and currant cake.

But my favourite was her Cornish pasty, which she made in an oblong tin and cut into portions. As her own mother was Cornish, I suppose it must have been pretty authentic. I wish I’d asked her for the recipe, but then she never followed one herself; it was all in her head.

Anyway, back to the gingerbread. I prepared carefully, bought two silicone loaf tins and checked the ingredients from grandma’s list. Treacle, sugar, milk, ginger, mixed spice, flour and bicarbonate of soda (or cabinet soda, as gran always called it) - all were mixed with my whizzo new mixer. I even added some chopped crystallised ginger as my own twist, then into the smart new loaf tins the mixture went.

All I had to do was put them into the pre-heated oven, set the timer and sit down to enjoy the Sunday papers, congratulating myself on a job well done and looking forward to a slice of lovely sticky gingerbread for tea.

Serves me right for being so smug. It wasn’t long before a blue haze began to seep into the room. The kitchen was so swamped in smoke that I had to open the back door before I could locate the oven and remove the two charcoal bricks that should have been my gingerbread.

How could this have happened? I had followed the instructions to the letter, pre-set the oven to 300 degrees . . .

Suddenly the light dawned. Grandma had written out this recipe about 40 years ago, when ovens were set in Fahrenheit. I should have set my oven to just under 150 degrees Centigrade.

No wonder I am West Cumbria’s answer to Alfred the Great. Fortunately, I won’t have to lead any expeditions against the Vikings.