While I was making Spiced Plum Squares

While I was preparing the ingredients for the Spiced Plum Squares, grating the orange zest, weighing the flour, rubbing in the butter, and getting the sweet smell of cinnamon, in my mind I was happily running back to my days when I first got the hang of baking.

I just wonder how on earth I got my hands in baking when I was in my primary school days, perhaps 10 or 12 years old (got to ask my mum one of these days)? I remember I baked banana cake (my speciality then) and my aunts loved them, it was like so "famous" it went to become the "talk of tinseltown". And I will be so perked up and proud of my "creation" that I went on to try out other recipes. How did I get into the baking frenzy when I was so young, in a small little town called Teluk Intan, Perak? I wonder.

My mum does not bake although she cooks for the family, she only cooks those dishes which were passed-downable ones, like usual steam fish, black sauce chicken, stir-fry vegetables and usual Chinese family stuff. But I went on to bake banana cake and I don't know what else I baked but the most memorable one was the banana cake, yeah, I could have baked chocolate cake too.

I remember I got a big round plastic pail (yeah, it was a pail), a big long wooden spatula (it was long because I was small then, don't rememeber if my mum bought me all these utensils or I just rummaged her kitchen for anything that I use to whip). I put the ingredients in the big round plastic pail, I sat down on a wooden stool, and put the pail on another wooden stool and held the pail in-between my legs. Now I remember I held on to the pail so hard my thighs hurt because I needed to mix the ingredients - flour, butter and sugar before folding in the crushed banana. It was a very tedious job, it was in the 1970's, so imagine I was young, no electric mixer or any other electronic baking equipment, I stirred until my tiny hands went numb. Then I rest for a while and whisked again, I think I could have stopped and rested a few times before the mixing was done. Come to think of it, quite comical then. And no one taught me to bake, not my mum, not anyone, I just sort of picked up the fun of cooking all by myself.

But the funniest thing I could remember was the crushing of the banana, I just thought they looked kind of mushy and sticky- no wonder it sticked in my memory for such a long time.

Talking about evolving consciousness, I think perhaps I was a chef some past embodiment, so I can pick it up so easily at so young an age and without much supervision or coaching too.

Well, that was really a nostalgic time for me while thinking what I did when I was younger and whisked up this Spiced Plum Square recipe one morning.