Dyspraxia in the kitchen: you’re not competing with Bake Off!

I recently had a load of friends round for an Italian lunch. Everything went down well, especially the dessert – torta caprese, a simple Italian cake, with a mascarpone and Marsala cream on top.

Not the most aesthetically pleasing of desserts, but so delicious.

From what I’ve read, some dyspraxics find cooking and baking really tricky – the fine motor skills involved in using kitchen equipment, the visual-spatial and sequencing challenges, and the dizzying difficulty of having multiple things going on at the same time.

This simple cake made me reflect on how I adjust my approach to suit what’s comfortable for me in the kitchen.

I really enjoy hosting friends and family. I find cooking and baking really satisfying. However, my cakes and cookies are always at the easy end of the difficulty scale.

While I admire beautifully decorated cakes, my focus is always on simplicity. I’d much rather bake something simple that my guests and I enjoy than set myself up for stress and likely failure.

This is a good example of dyspraxic self-accommodation – fulfilling my desire to provide my guests with something delicious while keeping it firmly within my comfort zone.

Butter, almond flour, caster sugar and cocoa powder in one mixing bowl; icing sugar, mascarpone and Marsala wine in the other.

Easy!

And I guess that's the point.

Self-accommodation doesn't have to mean giving something up, or full-on avoidance. Sometimes it means finding a way of doing it in a simplified fashion that works for you.

I still get to bake. I still get to feed my friends. I still get the satisfaction of making something myself.

I just don't make life unnecessarily stressful for myself in the process. I don’t set myself up to fail.

The moral of the story is: be kind to yourself. You're not competing with The Great British Bake Off.