A comment on one of my recent posts about baking cakes reminded me of the time when I did indeed bake cakes for a living and reminded me of days some 25 years ago when my children were small. So, dear reader, here is the story of me and my days in the kitchen. I was a Naked Chefette before Jamie Oliver was born and using four letter words before Gordon Ramsay arrived, I can tell you.
When I had two small daughters and a musician husband who by the very nature of his work, had sporadic earnings, something had to be done. I had always liked cooking, my mother Newcastle born and bred, used to turn out the most fantastic lardy cakes, sponges, scones and rock buns, and I imbibed a love of baking just by watching her as a child. So when the opportunity arose to take a stall at a friend's house where she was holding a craft fair, I decided to have a go. I baked Victoria sponges, chocolate cakes, coffee and walnut cakes and some loaf cakes (banana bread, etc) and to my utter astonishment sold the lot in about half an hour and came home with a profit which fed the family for a week. Onward and upward I thought. I started going to more craft fairs (this was in the late 70s and they were very popular then), noted that they were attended by a lot of people dressed in cheesecloth and into whole foods, and then started producing whole food cakes (you could have used some of these as door stops, I kid you not, but they sold like, well, like hot cakes really) and jams and chutneys.
I was offered a stall at a Christmas craft fair, a big one in the local arts centre, and knew that I this was a chance to make some serious money. I joined up with a potter friend of mine who produced loads of hand thrown little jam pots, complete with lids and sold them to me for the princely sum of £1. I then filled them with home made jam, probable cost 30p, and sold them for £5. These flew off the stall. I had gone to town with some upmarket sounding jams, plum with sherry, apricot and walnut, marmalade with whiskey all done up nicely with printed lables and material tops (ends of fabric lines bought cheaply at Laura Ashley covered dozens) and these too sold well.
Then I got cocky. I placed an ad in the local paper - 'Home made Christmas puddings made to order'. I 
ended up cooking over 200 puddings that year. Blind panic had set in when the phone started ringing but I sat myself down and planned my campaign. I went out and purchased three plastic buckets from the local DIY store. I raided the supermarket (later on I had a card for the cash and carry but not then) and bought up all the dried fruit they had on their shelves and all the other ingredients I needed. I then took my recipe for a 2lb (yes halycon pre-metric days) pudding and quadrupled it thus meaning I could make 8 lb puddings (my father was a mathematician and you can see I inherited his talent....) and filled up one bucket with this mixture. This was repeated with the other buckets and ended up with enough for 24 lb puddings. (My daughters 'helped' me with the mixing though quite a lot of it ended up in their hair and on the floor but I remembered my days in the kitchen with my mother and let them get on with it. I cleared up afterwards). One large bottle of cooking brandy was divided between said buckets, clean tea towel over each one and then left for 24 hours while I dealt with small children, laundry, housework, fun things like that.
Then when the mixture was all matured nicely and the kitchen full of brandy fumes I divided the mixture into foil containers (had made a clean sweep of those as well in all the shops I could find them) and covered them all with greaseproof paper. But how did you steam them all I hear you cry? Rowed them up in three large roasting tins, poured boiling water around them all and then totally enclosed each one in huge sheets of foil thus creating a mini steamer. These were then put in the oven and every two hours I rotated them. What I used to do quite often was put them in the oven on very low gas and leave them overnight. This had the advantage of not only cooking while I slept but the kitchen was lovely and warm and smelled marvellous when I staggered out of bed in the morning.
You have probably had enough of my culinary adventures by now but just remember after all this, came the cooling down and then the wrapping up in foil (bright red, with green for the veggy versions) the labelling etc and dispatching.
This was the start of my cooking career which kept body, soul and family together for many years but enough for today.
It will come as no surprise to you all I am sure that I now get my Christmas pudding each year from Marks & Spencer....
