Man Sized

I often double, triple or even quadruple a recipe when I'm baking. As anyone with a large family knows, it's just as easy to measure out eight cups of flour as it is two. And our butter comes in 500g which is often three or four times the amount required in a recipe and it's so easy to unwrap it and use the whole lot rather than break it up.

But there are several disadvantages to this approach to baking.

Firstly, if you run out of a particular ingredient it's not as easy to improvise with what's in the pantry. You might get away with only half a cup of coconut instead of the three-quarters that the recipe calls for when making a single batch, but when you multiply that by four, half a cup isn't going to cut it. Trust me, you'll notice it!

Secondly, the family might get bored with the same treat day after day. However this can be a good thing because it could mean they won't eat as much and you might even have some left for when visitors unexpectedly turn up.

Thirdly, when faced with a bowl of dough that yields somewhere between 100 and 200 biscuits it's easy to forget about quality control. Somehow biscuits end up larger than usual - even saucer size - when they've been baked because the size of the ball placed on the tray was larger than usual either through laziness (who wants to roll out 200 balls of equal size?) or the inability to accurately calculate the correct size when faced with so much dough.

This was my experience today. I was low on golden syrup and after trying to make do realised it wasn't going to work so had to toss in some honey. Son#5 said he couldn't taste the difference and since he's usually the fussiest when it comes to baked goodies (he doesn't like anything with cooked dried fruit in it) I guess that means they still have the seal of approval.

I also didn't realise just how big my biscuits would be after they'd spread in the oven. Not surprisingly, no one in my family complained about the size - even when I told them that they'd not be allowed the three or four that they're used to having.

It seems that everyone is happy. Me, because I've got through the baking in record time and my men because they've finally got man-sized biscuits!