Half-baked

My local newspaper is bemoaning the fact that young women don't bake any more. Well I'm sorry, but we do. I made a batch of flapjack just last week, and on Saturday I'm baking Ian a rather belated birthday cake (which in theory's going to be Nigella Lawson's clementine and chocolate concoction...). And I suspect there are more of us out there, who'd chuck a pie together for tea or maybe sling a few biscuits in the oven.

But what we don't have time to do is bake in any quantity - certainly I wouldn't produce enough to sell on a market stall. It's something that I'd love to do, but there just isn't the time, what with having a full time job, freelance work, running www.pie-man.com and ooh, yes, somehow trying to shoehorn in a bit of a social life as well. It's all very well saying that today's generation don't bake, knit (although knitchicks may not agree...) or sew, but then we don't tend to have the time to be able to do that. It's not that we don't want to, just that we have to concentrate on the day job first, seeing as that's what's paying the mortgage and buying the ingredients.