My younger daughter is a big fan of process. “Let’s make bread!” (Highly successful experiment). “Let’s make a dress!” (Not so much.) “Let’s make dinner!” (Not only successful but useful.) “Let’s make butter! Ice cream! Ravioli!” (Delicious, if eccentric.)

As of yesterday, I am informed that the kid intends to be a cook. Or rather, a patisserier (sp?)–a baker and chocolatier. Where this came from, I’m not sure, other than her to-the-death fondness for Godiva chocolates. And today she decided that we were going to make chocolates. Nothing simple like chocolates in molds, or even truffles: she wanted to make raspberries in fondant and chocolate, just like the pros. From five o’clock onward tonight my life was a) a delightful round of sugar, melting chocolate and raspberries, or b) and chaos with a great potential for 3rd degree burns. YG, dancing around in alternate states of panic and glee, was at least as much help as hinderance, and the results–60 really scabby looking chocolate-raspberry candies–will, God willing, go in to school with the girl tomorrow to be shared around.

The kitchen looks like a warzone. She washed the pots; I’m taking on the dinner dishes.

Can I confess that I love this part of my child? When I was her age I had taken weaving lessons for four years; I taught myself to knit and sew–neither professionally well, but well enough. I taught myself to bake, and spent the summer between 7th and 8th grade baking to order (three days a week I woke at 5am, put the first pot of milk on to scald, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and put the first shift of bread on to rise). I made 20-24 loaves of bread a day, brioche, rolls, pies, croissants–I was fearless and fortunate, and decided at the end of the summer that this was too much work for too little return (my net for the entire summer was $47–even by 1967 standards that was pretty poor). I have never been a spectacularly good cook or baker or seamstress or weaver or floor-layer (yes, I put down a hardwood floor in my bedroom when I was 18, mostly because I was really tired of plywood underfoot). But I love knowing how to do things. And it appears that this, at least, is genetic.

And the chocolates, no matter how eccentric looking, taste fine. I mean: chocolate, raspberries, fondant–what’s not to love?