General News
25 November, 2025
A Mum's World: Cake tin draw
I can’t fit all my cake tins and baking trays into my kitchen drawers. I inherited a couple of classics from Nanna and then Mum, who had the rest of Nanna’s array of magic vessels, so my collection has become extensive to the level of extreme.
My kitchen simply isn’t designed to cope with this degree of obsession, and I designed it, so I should have known better.
Mucking around in your cake tin drawer is one of the noisiest things you can do in your kitchen – no such thing as a silent night when I’m banging around in there – but while I was trying to cram everything in, I rediscovered a set of nativity scene cookie cutters gifted to me years ago.
Bummer, I was packing up after a full day of Christmas baking and had only exhausted my gingerbread man and angel cutters – and myself of course.
No nativity scene for me this year, although maybe I shouldn’t speak too soon?
After completing lots of essential tasks around the house like mopping the deck, washing the windows and weeding, I rewarded myself with a day in the kitchen baking – my happy place. Mostly.
There was that Espresso Bundt Cake that didn’t come out of the tin well, but I’m already devising a cunning plan to disguise the damage with a chocolate ganache when it comes out of the freezer to eat.
Thank goodness for the freezer – I figure that anything frozen is good to go for months.
Please don’t correct me on that or threaten power outages because I have an $80 leg of ham in there waiting for the big day too.
I do get a little panicky about Christmas now and then, because we mums make the whole thing happen, don’t we?
Food, gifts, accommodation, relationship management and all the one-on-one counselling that comes with each of those.
I’ve adjusted very well to this empty nester thing, and with my husband away on the header, I’ve adjusted extremely well to doing exactly what I please whenever I like.
Feeding a crowd again, gosh.
My tree is up, has been for a couple of weeks actually, and I’ve got most of my decorations out.
Luckily, my 21-year-old daughter was home last weekend to save the day.
Apparently, the tree was all wrong, so she completely undressed it and started again from the lights and tinsel up.
I honestly can’t tell the difference, but heck, what would I know, and phew, disaster averted right?
It would have been terrific if she’d cleaned the gutters instead, because now that job is still on my list.
Maybe I’ll just hang some baubles on the weeds growing out of the gutters?
It’s okay, I’ll do it. If only Santa could pull them out while he’s up there trying to fit down the chimney.
Surely the reindeer clattering around up there would prefer some of my fluffy gutter weeds rather than more boring carrot tops to munch on during their busy night?