The right baking kit

OK it's true. I was one of those people who, years ago, rushed out to buy Delia's latest cookery book, read through the first few pages which detailed what exactly you needed in your larder to be a committed cook, ran out and bought it all, suffused with guilt at the prospect of Not Being A Serious Cook. Fast forward five years and most of that stuff was mouldering away at the back of my overstuffed food cupboard. Because you see, to be able to be in constant supply of nigella seeds, among other things, you need to be someone who actually has a Larder. Which I didn't at the time, still don't, and probably never will. Should anything approximating a larder ever become available in the vicinity of my kitchen it will almost certainly find itself instantly and ignominiously stuffed with bikes, mops, muddy wellies and old jam jars. Thus it is in my home: a whole room just for food feels somehow spurious. Gluttonous. Excessive. Even for food in a kitchen. Besides, where would the mops go?

But I am a serious baker and the better I get, the better hardware I like to use. I'm not particularly precious about the type of chocolate I melt - I get that Valrhona is going to possess a sheen that Cadbury's fruit and nut is never going to attain in a month of Sundays etc. But I also get that when I make Rocky Road, the people who scoff it won't give a monkey's what chocolate I used, as Rocky Road is the kind of thing that will disappear in seconds no matter what you use to make it. But I do draw the line at an electric mixer that takes ages to whip up egg white into a meringue base when a better piece of kit will not only achieve this in seconds, it will be sheer fun to do it. So when my electric hand mixer started to make weird noises after about 8  years of honourable service, I headed to the Boxing Day sales. It was Time to fork out serious cash for the right mixer. I came back some hours later, flushed, dishevelled but victorious, with a Kitchen Aid model. The only other piece of Kitchen Aid kit I have in my kitchen is the standalone mixer, which cost hundreds, was a birthday present from my parents who got sick of me talking endlessly about the silver model, and I absolutely love not just its efficacy, or even its look, but the fabulously productive sound it makes as it mixes. Let's be clear - baking is about ALL the senses. Not just how things taste, smell or look, but how the whole process sounds. So the second I got home I unwrapped my mixer with its attachments, fixed on the balloon whisk, pressed the on button, tried out every one of the nine (nine!!) speed settings, and listened to each one. A gloriously even, hardworking hummmmm. Oh boy. I am going to love using this baby. Meringues for dinner tonight.