The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry... Similarly the best laid plans of the home and competitive baker.
There's only a few weeks to go until the Sydney Royal Easter Show and by this time I'm usually knee deep in preparations. I will have selected quite a few recipes and made a few test cakes, just to check the mixtures, the tins, and test the capacity of my oven.
My oven is an old one, and testament to being able to cook any cake in any oven, anytime. You just have to know what you're looking for. The heat is uneven and inconsistent, and the little dial markings have all but rubbed off the controls so that you really have to use your best guess when baking a cake. But my oven and I have gotten to know each other pretty well though, and that makes all the difference. There's a sweet spot on the second top rack, towards the back of the oven and ever so slightly to the left. The very spot where every cake rises evenly and cooks tall and strong. For cookies the sweet spot is a little higher, more to the centre. Have you ever thought about that before? Or perhaps your oven is way better than mine and you don't need to consider it at all.
Anyway, after years of working this out and establishing a relationship with my oven that at times has probably been more reliable than my relationships at home, this little guy is about to be retired. Yes, the builders are coming tomorrow and bringing a shiny new oven with them.
Now, I'm terribly excited about this of course, but this oven is a stranger to me and I just don't know whether we'll get along. Added to that we're just a few weeks out from Showtime and the pressure really is on. Bad timing really. I feel for him. He's been good all year, so it's a bit like the star of the footy team breaking his leg in the last game of the season and not getting to play in the final. Sorry oven, it just wasn't your year. But what is the guy you selected in his place was in fact, just really, really rubbish?
We'll soon find out, I feel a test cake coming on.