Don't let brownies go the way of the dodo

A friends recent post on a well known "social network" was a rhetorical question while waiting to see if her trashed kitchen was worth it in the pursuit of a batch of home-made brownies.  And I say yes, YES! it's well worth a trashed kitchen in pursuit of any home-baking. 

I see, all around us, a vast and rapid extinction of the family food traditions of our youth.  I remember the weddings on my fathers side of the family, indeed all celebrations - mile-stone anniversaries, baptisims, confirmations and especially first holy communions were important - and thus were occasions to gather all the branches together in celebration.  And in true old-fashioned terms, this meant church-hall tables laden with so much baked goods.  Long tables upholding tray after tray of cookies the likes of which you can't begin to imagine.

The deliveries began the day before these events.  Husbands or brothers tasked to deliver huge Tupperware cake-keepers with layers of waxed paper to provide protection between strata of butter cookies, chocolate & spice "meatball" cookies, butter balls perfumed with ground pecans and rolled in icing sugar, cuccidati (scilian fig cookies) and biscotti di reginas or sesame cookies.  If it was an occasion to pull out all the stops, there would be other plates piled high with delecate aniseseed flavoured waffle cookies known as pizzelles as well as other assorted bite sized tokens of love. 

There is little evidence of today's children standing at the elbow of their mothers and grandmothers in the kitchen.  Learning the old-fashioned traditions handed from generation to generation. I wanted to begin my life here by bringing both my own flavours as well as the traditions of Wales to our combined holiday table and so have asked collegues and acquaintances here for their own tried and true family recipes... and to all my requests I've been told family baking isn't a part of their holiday tables.  Over and over again the answers I've received were recommendations as to which shop or brand of christmas pudding or treat is their family favorite.

Sadly, just as with home, there are even fewer home-bakers here - here in the land of Dickens and Shakespeare - and us just living a stones throw away from Pudding-Mill Lane!

And in these economic times the small independant bake shops are closing too.  Leaving us only the commercial mass-production loaves and machine peeled apple pies with stamped out crusts.  It's dreadful what passes for quality and how the next generation and those to come after will look at the Sarah Lee and Mr Kiplings brands as those things that are cherished from their childhood.

Please, please, find a bowl, let loose the spoon.  And even if it's a box mix - bake those brownies and mix those scones.  All is not lost when the effort is made to ensure those who will proceed will have been given the skillset to be able to turn out a yeasty loaf and be capable of providing a lovely cream tea for their friends and family.
d xx