Bernard O'Shea: My first apple tart turned out like asbestos
Bernard O'Shea. 'I tried making an apple tart with my daughter, with Granny instructing via Zoom. It did not go well.' Photographs: Moya Nolan
Even with the help of my very own Mary Berry (my mum) over FaceTime I couldn’t get the pastry for a traditional Irish apple tart right. However, the fun my daughter had doing a virtual Bake Off with Granny made her day even if we couldn’t eat our disastrous efforts.
Home baking has gone through a glorious revolution in the last decade. The Great British Bake Off has propelled Mary Berry into one of the most loved and recognisable faces this side of the Atlantic and who would have ever thought that a handshake from Paul Hollywood would have made fully grown adults cry with happiness?
It’s one of the few programmes myself and my wife watch together. We’ve had several heated discussions with arguments ranging from, “His technical challenge was a disaster, he deserves to go home”, to “Bernard, you don’t have a clue what you're talking about, you have never made a croquembouche in your life you only heard of it three minutes ago”.
The ratings for the programme broke all kinds of records during the lockdown and its move from the BBC to Channel 4 hasn’t seemed to abate its ascent. The result? Most shops, even ones in Antarctica, now have baking sections and sell flour by the tonne.
Growing up, my mother baked bread, tarts, and scones every day. The biggest thing the kids miss in lockdown are her chocolate buns. So I just presumed that the baking genetics would have been passed onto me. I presumed wrong.
We first started by buying the ingredients: butter, flour, sugar. I assembled them together on the kitchen table and we were ready to FaceTime our own personal baking guru. Until I realised, “Oh, we have no apples”.
The next day we were ready to go. Olivia took a deep breath and firmly spoke to me like a tiny sergeant major. “Have you everything now, Dad, because you don’t want to be ringing Granny again and wasting her time.” If anyone is looking for a seven-year-old project manager, look no further.
The first thing my mother said to us over the screen was, “Are you sure you want to start with an apple tart? Scones are much easier”. This was to be sage advice along with, “Tart Pastry is actually very hard to do, Bernard, it can be very tricky”.
After 15 minutes of myself and Olivia trying to get the butter and flour mixture to look like breadcrumbs, my mother said, “just add the cold water to it now, Bernard, and bring it together with a knife”.
Why I had to do it with a knife, I don’t know, but it took a bit of negotiation. When I showed it to her she said, “Eh … put in the fridge … it might be ok”. Olivia started laughing. “That means it won’t be, Dad.”
After cutting apples and assembling the tart, or as my kids call them, “pies” (I blame Netflix for their Americanisms. I draw the line when they call the footpath the side-walk), I put my patisserie Frankenstein in the oven. I waited eagerly for my new spiritual career calling to emerge after twenty-five minutes at 180º.
After the twenty-five minutes had elapsed, it still wasn’t cooked. Half an hour later, it still looked raw. I thought that there must be something wrong with the oven. An hour had passed and it still wasn’t anywhere baked.
Three hours later I salvaged it out of the oven. Olivia took one look at it. “I’m not eating that”. Unbelievably it still looked raw. My wife clattered in.
“You should have put an egg wash on it.”
“Oh, thank you Paul Hollywood,” I sniped back.
I cut a slice and chomped on it. It was the first time since lockdown began that all three kids and my wife were looking at one thing happening instead of gazing at the usual horde of screens. I had to spit it out into the bin. When I had finished, my wife was standing beside me with her hand out.
“Well Bernard, it's not Paul Hollywood but it's the only handshake you're going to get today.”
Instead of feeling dejected in my very own personal imaginary Bake Off tent I quickly realised two things. Firstly, I had invented a safe alternative to asbestos and secondly, I never would have thought that my mum would have used FaceTime a year ago. It’s never going to replace human contact but it’s something I suppose until we can eventually meet up again.
We called Granny that evening and told her about my new asbestos recipe. “You probably overworked the dough and added too much flour towards the end.”
Then Tadhg, who has never expressed any interest in cooking or baking in his five short years on the planet, shouted, “Granny, what are you going to make with me next week?”
“Do you know what Tadhg, let's make some scones.”
We set a date and time for the following week. Hopefully next time I might be able to make something we can actually eat. As my wife so loving put it, “Well Bernard, if she thinks a five-year-old can do it, you might have a chance.”
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