Living History

Christmas biscuits

I loved cooking right from the beginning, especially making cakes and biscuits. We had tin biscuit-cutters in the shape of all kinds of things: hearts, stars, little men, Christmas trees even. (These days my young nieces use biscuit-cutters too, but they're plastic and therefore a lot less 'dangerous' for the kiddies.) We would decorate the biscuits we made with icing and pieces of fruit. When I was old enough, I would cook these biscuits myself from a family recipe, my mother looking on. I was what you'd call a very stubborn child, I hated having my things interfered with, especially my cooking (even then I fancied myself an expert). Mum and I would usually have conversations like this as she helpfully 'guided' us through what she wanted the biscuits to look like (i.e., perfect):

Mum: 'That looks nice, but are you sure that man wants two different coloured eyes?"
Me: "But it helps him see better!"
Mum: "I know, if you use the same colour eye, you can eat the other one. And while you're there, it looks like you may have accidentally made a mistake with the icing, let me try..."
Me, snatching the biscuit: "No! It's mine! I'm making the biscuits!"
Mum: "If you can't make them properly..."

And so on and so forth, amazing the biscuits always turned out so well, Mum used to say.

My elder sister had also tried cooking, but tired of it quickly, especially after a few disastrous experiences. She accidentally burnt cakes, had them sink rapidly in the middle, and once narrowly avoided setting fire to the oven gloves after leaving them right next to a hot plate that she'd left on. We often joked that she was cursed, as we couldn’t work out why her cooking almost always seemed to fail, even when she followed the recipes to the letter, recipes that worked every time for me. In a strange twist of fate, my sister ended up marrying a cook, and is now very proficient in the kitchen.

Hannah, Perth, Western Australia

Look at more contributions:

previous | next