There’s an expression about bakers, or at least about cooks baking, which is that people tend to have either cake or pastry hands. I’m definitely the former; I can bake any kind of cake or perform endless variations on my mothers basic scone recipe, either sweet or savory & all improvised. I can freely substitute in or out every ingredient, and still end up with something everyone but an Atkins crazy would want to eat, every time. But I’ve made pastry less than about thirty times in my life, all more than a decade ago, and never had what I’d score even a partial triumph. Any good results came about despite the pastry, not because of it.
I know people with the opposite skill who can whip up a pie at the drop of a hat, and will bring them to a party like other people bring wine. I have no idea how they got that way.
When I was a kid, however, I’d ‘help’ in the kitchen, even before I was tall enough to reach the counter or old enough to read a recipe. My mom would pull out a shelf and stick a tray on top, and that was my counter. She’d give me a mixing bowl, and I’d make up cake recipes. I remember this as being entirely driven by my sometimes strange decisions about what to add, but there must have been a great deal of subtle maternal guidance that I was unaware of, because it worked, nearly every time that I can recall. I’d add, mix, and then dump the ensuing glop in a single 9 inch pan for baking.
At worst the result would be more custard-like than cakely, and sometimes at desert time I was the only person in the family willing to give it a go, but most of the time I’d produce a small, edible product that even my sweet-toothed sister was happy to eat.
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I can’t say that any of this lead to anything that could be called Learning to Cook. I can remember the first children’s recipe book we had, and the first time I followed one and made something (pancakes). That was some time later, and unconnected in my memory. I’d stopped making up cakes by the time I began school, and I could both read and reach the counter by the time I made those pancakes.
However, I wonder if what my mother taught me then was that cooking isn’t something that has to be feared. I’ve noticed that for more adamant Can’t Cooks, the issue is usually fear. They cook rarely enough that it’s always stressful; shit goes wrong and they don’t know why or what to do. Most of the things I cook these days I’ve blown and then recovered (or tossed) in nearly every way possible. You can only get to this position by practice, but no cook is born with that. Maybe that’s what my mother taught me.
I prefer baking things that aren’t very touchy, so you can make major changes when the whim hits. I do cookies much more often than cakes, and cobblers more often than pies.