The story of how a man over 40 with little cooking experience suddenly became obsessed with baking

I started this note on a whim, but
since I hadn't written about why I got hooked on baking in the first place,
I'm writing it down now as a prologue.

◎Cooking history up to age 40

I lived with my parents until I graduated from high school,
and since my mother basically made all three meals,
I had almost zero cooking experience.
The only time I cooked was in school classes.
It was a home economics cooking practice,
and I remember being devastated by how terrible the result was.
In particular, when I made gyoza,
the outside was burnt black,
while the inside was raw, or rather, almost rare,
a miraculous failure,
and this incidentplanted the subconscious belief that 'Oh, I'm bad at cooking.'

After entering university, I left home
and started living alone,
but at first I lived in a student dormitory that provided meals,
so I didn't cook for myself,
and even after I moved out of there,
my diet was basically dependent on eating out.
Occasionally I would buy retort pouches or frozen foods,
or get by on food sent from my parents' home.

Even so, by the time I was over 30,
I could manage to make curry
following the recipe on the roux package,
or make simple pasta or Chinese dishes
using store-bought sauce packets,
but I just got older without any expectation
of improving my cooking skills beyond that.

◎A word from my wife that became a turning point

I got married just before I turned 40,
but since my wife is good at all kinds of housework,
I still didn't have to do any cooking.
Even if I helped out occasionally as told,
I never once took the lead
in cooking a meal.

The turning point in my life
after living like that came in the autumn of 2022.
I had to go to my hometown for a business trip,
and to save on hotel costs,
I contacted my mother
and decided to return to my parents' home. It was a business trip combined with a visit home.

When I left my parents' home
after my two-day business trip,
my mother, as usual,
gave me a paper bag full of food.
I brought it home without really checking the contents,
and when I took them out after arriving home,
mixed in with frozen foods and Japanese sweets,
there was actually a bunch of Shine Muscat grapes.
Seeing them for the first time in a while,
they were literally shining.

When I was about to put them in the fridge
to chill them properly before eating,
my wife suddenly said to me.

“Wouldn't this look delicious if you made it into a rare cheesecake?”

I thought that was a good suggestion, but at the same time,
I assumed my wife would make it, but then

“You can definitely make it, so go ahead!”

…Huh?

My wife, of course, knows that I can
hardly cook at all.
So why?
However, it seemed she had her own reasons
for judging that I was suited for baking.

◎Reasons why I am suited for baking

I have a typical Type A temperament,
and I think I am basically a meticulous person.
I believe she said something about that being
what makes me suited for baking.

My wife is good at cooking, but
she is terrible at numbers and math,
and she seems to find it troublesome to follow measurements exactly.

On the other hand, as for me,
if it says 100cc of water,
I properly pour water into the measuring cup
up to the 100cc mark,
and if I have to raise the oil for deep-frying to 180°C,
I am the type who stops my wife, who tries to put the ingredients in early,
and waits patiently for it to reach 180°C.

And there is one more reason
I realized myself why I am suited for baking, which is

that I almost never use a kitchen knifeis a point.I am terrible at using a kitchen knife,
and anyway, peeling or cutting ingredients
takes too much time,
which was what I hated most about cooking.

After all, I am the man who took
5 hours to make curry
for the first time in his life.
Even though I finished university classes at 6:00 PM
and started making curry as soon as I got home,
the sight of the TV playing
“'Pus'Suma” by the time I started eating
was so shocking that I still remember it.
(The broadcast of 'Pus'Suma started at 23:09 back then.)

However, baking
doesn't have many steps that require a kitchen knife.
You might use one occasionally
for recipes that use fruit.
This was also a big point for me personally.

◎ The result of trying to make it with trepidation

My memory is a bit hazy now, but
this must have been the recipe video I referred to.

Checking each step in the video,
I made it very carefully,
and this is what I ended up with.
・
・
・

the moment I saw the finished cake,
I trembled with the joy that I had made
this beautiful rare cheesecake myself.
Considering that this is a cake made 25 years later
by the same guy who made those miracle gyoza,
this could also be called a kind of miracle.

After that, feeling encouraged,
I continued to bake sweets once every two weeks,
became obsessed with the charm of scones,
and have arrived at where I am now, calling myself the “Scone Uncle”.

[End]