I think of baking in much the same way as I think of drawing or writing creatively - spending some time throwing stuff around to prove that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

As a child I never baked at home because I never had an opportunity - Mum was generally out at the stables at any time that there might have been time to bake anything, and due to various amounts of bad behaviour I wasn't allowed to be left alone in the house until I was about 16, by which time I was far more interested in playing loud music and nicking the vodka out of the drinks cabinet. I don't think that this not baking is due to my having a working class background, but who knows? I probably became more middle class at some point during my late teens I think, but my baking started when I was a post grad student, as a direct result of getting a great recipe card collection and lodging somewhere with a great kitchen and a child who also wanted to bake. So we'd spend Saturday afternoons baking biscuits and bread, and attempting cake (which I'm so bad at I think that Dunlop should hire me for their research for tyre compounds).