Today, I did something that I’ve been meaning to do more of since Lewis was born. I made a new friend. In fact, I made more than one.
It’s been a lonely summer, a combination of people travelling, having family in town and so many people having left my ‘inner circle’ over the last couple years, it was quiet. Too quiet for my social butterfly self. So, to combat this, I had joined a ‘Meet-up’ group, and aside from one lady Danielle and her little one Gigi, I just didn’t feel like I fitted in with that group. I gave some thought to how to go about meeting some new friends, and I decided to join the SSA play groups, I stepped up to lead the Lunch Bunch activity and, after pondering my interests, decided to start a new group, a baking group.
A baking group with a slight twist. A friend of mine, Frances, had created a ‘baking and babies’ group after she moved home from the US to the UK. Mums and their babies come along, they share in the baking process of making one recipe, and share it at the end of the session. If a baby kicks-off, another mum takes over and the baking continues, need extra hands? Have no fear, other mums are here!
Having SSA Funding to purchase the ingredients, enough interested generated to warrant holding the activity, I picked a really simple Mary Beryl spiced treacle sheet cake recipe for our first gathering. Simple, quick, tasty and it would give us time to chat about what we wanted to bake next, and other details surrounding the group.
We had a group of five mums and five babies, a nice number of ladies and the process was easy (essentially throw everything in to the mixer, mix, pour and bake). For snacks while we waited for our bake, we ate what my Great Irish Bake Off buddies and I baked yesterday at our monthly get together, a Gluten Free chocolate slice and a raspberry cheesecake brownie bar – deeeelicious!
The little ones are all fairly close in age, ranging from around seven months to around seventeen months, they played well, didn’t cry or fuss and that’s just the moms 😉 haha!
Next month we are meeting at one of the other ladies houses, we are hoping to make a GBBO recipe, chocolate and salted caramel Swiss roll – yum!