Hits announcer Megan Banks 'fills the tins' during lockdown

I think Mary Poppins said it best when she sang, "just a cup full of sugar helps the baking go down, when you're in lockdown, when you're in lockdown" …

Who else has been baking up a storm with cupfuls of sugar being flung about willy nilly??

In a way, it's great to rekindle this lovely skill that I really used to enjoy. My mother was a great baker and the tins were always full. I had an Aunty Merle that lived on the farm next door and she was renowned for her melting moments.

Mrs Henderson down the road was always asked to make her famous cinnamon oysters whenever it was requested the women of the district had to 'bring a plate'.

And there was the mum of one of best friends, Joyce, who was so famous for her caramel slice that we renamed it Joyce's cake.

So baking runs deep in my clogged veins, but to be fair, I have only baked a handful of times in the last 20 years. I usually leave that to Ernest Adams, or the bakers at
Greenmeadows New World who make a fantastic fresh filled cream sponge that I could never replicate.

However, in a bid to 'fill the days', I've been on a campaign to 'fill the tins'. Although, they're not tins any more much to my dismay. They're Sistema containers that no one can find the lids to.

Which is fine, the baking doesn't stay in them long enough to have to worry about the lid. In usual Megan Banks' fashion though, I haven't really planned ahead to be doing this level of baking.

While I may have got the last bag of flour on the shelf that day, I didn't really get anything else.

In the last 16 days I've made jam drops with no jam, cinnamon scrolls with no cinnamon, banana cake with no eggs, playdough with no cream of tartar - the list goes on.

I've googled 'how do you make sante biscuits with no condensed milk?' and have come up with no options, which I'm gutted about as for once I do have the chocolate chips!

Do you know what the biggest winner has been though, and it pains me to say it as I know dental nurses all over Hawke's Bay will be shaking their heads ... bubble cake! Or rice bubble cake.

And the best thing about it is that it's a great fitness workout at the same time. Never before have I moved so fast to get that hot bubbling honey mixture through the rice bubble and into the cake tin.

One wrong move and you're destined for it to set in the bowl and around the spoon that you're mixing it with. And then it definitely wouldn't go down 'in the most delightful way'.