We caught up with adored bestselling author FIONA MCINTOSH to discuss her book Harry and Gran Bake a Cake, a celebration of family, food and fun!
What sparked the idea for Harry and Gran Bake a Cake?
I was given a grandson – our first – and although I didn’t feel ready to become a grandmother, I became hugely excited. On his arrival everyone thought I’d burst into tears and carry on but I was silent … completely in awe of this perfect little newborn and next to me stood his father who had once been my perfect little newborn. It was privately emotional, uplifting, optimistic and I was so thrilled at the start of a new generation of our family that I had to mark it. The only way I could think to do that was to write something in Henry’s honour. So I wrote a funny little story called Henry and Granny Bake a Cake, which I thought I’d handwrite on big sheets and fold up to form a book we could read together someday and especially because I am someone who bakes for a hobby so I was looking forward to Henry and I baking together in the future. I was telling my publisher about my personal project and she said she’d like to read it. Next thing I knew Penguin wanted to publish the story as a picture book. I was surprised and delighted of course but decided to give Henry a little distance so I called it Harry and Gran Bake a Cake. It was always meant to be a fun tale to make my grandson giggle.
The humour in the book comes from the mistakes Harry and Gran make while baking. How do you think humour helps children feel more comfortable with making mistakes in their own lives?
Well, firstly, the point of Harry and Gran for me is that Gran is the adult; meant to be the responsible one and Harry is her grandson whom she’s responsible for and sharing happy times with. But I deliberately made Harry the responsible one and Gran the person who needs supervision because she’s the character making mistakes and having accidents.
I think that alone will subliminally help any child to realise that grown-ups make mistakes all the time. In Harry and Gran Bake a Cake the mistakes are easily cleaned up but perhaps it shows that one can always make amends for mistakes and life is often about trial and error and learning from those trials, maturing, getting better at something, managing oneself and not getting overly upset at small fails because they’re part of life.
Do you like baking in real life? Was there ever a time when you made a cake or something and things didn’t go as planned?
I love baking. It’s a hobby and it’s also something I do to slow my mind down because when you’re measuring and preparing bake tins, or weighing out ingredients, it can take you into a sort of Zen state. I’m not really thinking of anything else but the recipe, especially if I’m making one up or tinkering to change an existing recipe. I can have music on. I’m very cheerful usually when I’m baking. I might even dance! When I’m writing I’m sitting still, lost in the story, focused on my characters and I work in silence. Baking releases me from work.
Oh yes, I have had many, many spectacular fails but that’s part of getting better and these days I have far, far fewer because I’ve been learning and now a lot of my baking happens in memory. My hands know what to do. My mind might also trip on a recipe that I don’t trust because I have so much more experience now and I might automatically adjust sugar or liquid content because I feel I know better.
I think my best ever catastrophe was making a wedding cake for my son. I really didn’t want that responsibility but he pleaded with me because my brother was a full time wedding functions and caterer at the time and he had told us all horror tales of uncooked wedding cakes, or collapsing cakes, or cakes that melted in even the spring warmth and worst of all, ridiculously expensive cakes that had zero flavour and were dense to hold up several layers.
How do you say no to a son for his wedding day? His twin is a great baker too so he offered to help me. This was going to be a cake baked with a major ingredient that professionally produced cakes lack … and that’s love.
I did about six trials until I hit on the perfect balance of a vanilla and white chocolate sponge cake that Casey, his bride loved. And then I did several trials of icing. We discovered that a Swiss buttercream would give stability. So having tried a few times I couldn’t bear all the faffing and heating and whipping and decided in the end to go with a white chocolate, lemon and mascarpone icing, which seemed straightforward.
So now the eve of the big day occurs and I start baking two cakes of differing sizes and they came out perfect. Big sigh of relief. And the icing making begins and it all starts to go spectacularly wrong. The white chocolate seized twice. The mascarpone curdled on another occasion. I am based on an isolated farm so panicked calls to Jack’s twin, Will, who was at the barber getting spruced for his role as best man but he had to jump out of the chair and into his car to buy new mascarpone and lots of white chocolate and dash up to us in the swelter of a mid-north December to help me start yet again with his calming presence. I was suffering the terror that I wasn’t going to have a cake for them to cut.
We were exhausted with all the other arrangements we were involved with but the pair of us worked until midnight of the wedding’s eve, banishing the bride who wanted to help but needed her sleep, and finally, finally got both cakes cut into three layers each, sandwiched with my home made lemon curd, icing and then all those fiddly layers re-assembled and in the right order, placed on top of each other to be iced beautifully and then realised no fridge could the height. So into the laundry it went – coolest room in the house. It made it through the night and with two people holding it, it also made it to the venue some 40 mins away in the heat, and then it stayed all through the service and reception looking the best it possibly could for a home-made cake with Jack hoping with all his heart the top layer would slide off and look hilarious for the home movie.
It didn’t. It cut beautifully and the caterer began to tell us her personal horror stories of wedding cakes but she said ours was cooked through and was a first that tasted as good as it looked. Guests requested seconds in boxes to take home which was thrilling. I recreated the flavour for Henry’s first birthday cake.
Do you have any personal experiences with baking that influenced this story, or did you draw on your own memories of time spent in the kitchen with family?
I have often knocked a bag of icing sugar over to explode all over the kitchen, or I’ve turned the stand mixer on forgetting that flour will just go everywhere, and yes I’ve certainly dropped eggs much to my horror. So I really just went for a series of mishaps that could take place in any kitchen while maintaining the humour and affection on every page.
What do you hope young readers take away from your book?
I want them to laugh. That’s my only intention. And I’ll hold to hope they’ll immediately say to their grandmother who may be reading it with them, ‘shall we bake a cake?’
I love the idea that young readers will look forward to making a cake and perhaps even trying the chocolate cake recipe we’ve included at the back of the book. I did a gazillion trials for that cake too, working hard on each new trial to simplify just a little more without losing flavour.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fiona McIntosh is an internationally and million-copy bestselling author of novels for adults and children across several genres. Alongside her highly successful historical fiction titles, for which she has been nominated at the Australian Book Industry Awards for commercial fiction book of the year, her popular Detective Jack Hawksworth series will soon be released across the UK. Several of her historical titles as well as the ‘world of Hawksworth’ crime novels have been optioned for the screen. Her debut children’s picture book, Harry and Gran Bake a Cake, will be published in 2025. Fiona roams the world for her research and lives between Adelaide in South Australia and Wiltshire in England.
Visit Fiona McIntosh’s website
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Sara Acton is an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books. Her first picture book, Ben and Duck, won the 2012 Children’s Book Council of Australia Crichton Award for new illustrators. Sara lives on the Central Coast of New South Wales with one husband, two children, a mischievous dog and a cat called Poppy, who’s definitely in charge.
0 Comments