Cool to Cook

This week I am demonstrating the art of Cupcake decorating to groups of eager women who want to learn how to pile mountains of whipped up butter cream onto little mini sponges!

It got me thinking about the rise of baking? Why are so many women, young 20 to 70 somethings, wanting to learn to the kitchen skills that our grandmothers and great grandmothers undertook as part of their weekly errands?

Surely, the kitchen its association to women's work is a burden that the woman's liberation army would have shunned. Shouldn't we be burning our aprons along with our bras? Instead, educated women, professional women are now desperate to rekindle the forgotten arts of cooking. We are reclaiming the kitchen, our mixing bowls and spatulas and creating decadent, calorific, creations to tempt our friends and family.

10 years ago I was a student, desperate to fit in, be cool and trendy. I wanted a successful corporate career and thought I would be a highflyer; dressed in a powerful suit and elegant high heels. I dreamt of working hard and partying hard, of commercial decisions and risk taking! I would be too busy for a home life and far to important to be cooking the food I secretly loved to create. The only other mother Hubbard, who loved to feed and nurture, was ridiculed for her motherly charms. I didn't want to be that person.

So what happened in those 10 years? Now its cool to cook! The celebrity chef is king of TV, programme listings full of cooking shows!  The nutritionist is the medicine man of the 21st century, with celebrities following their every word and everywhere you look we are being sold the home cooked dream!
Its not cool to eat the convenience food that became popular in the 80's and 90's. Instead, it is avaunt guarde to eat fresh, shop local, cook ethical homemade grub.

Fern Cotton, DJ, sex kitten and rock fan, famously loves baking;  recently snapped in a black biker jacket and clutching a cake tin full of goodies under her arm. Her fashion forward profile inevitability finds young girls desperate to rustle up a batch of cakes.  Celebrity Great British bake off for sports relief will send thousands of amateur bakers out ready to try their first sponge. Cake and Sport? Really?

It seems that cake is cool, cake is King and if that is true, then the endless weekends spent baking with my Grandmother paid off. Baking is cool, Home cooking is cool!

The Happy Cupcake Kitchen runs Parties to teach ladies to bake again! It is therapeutic, you learn a useful new skill, you meet up with the girls much more fun than going to a souless wine bar in town! Plus you get to get messy and eat cake. Our classes are the ultimate indulgence! Women of Wales book now.