'What can I do, Mum, I'm bored!' was a phrase heard often in our house when I was growing up - especially when it was raining - and, invariably, I was the one uttering it. Mum, who was probably trying to get some drawing done for her studies as a landscape gardener, had an infuriating way of answering this question - patiently, without looking up from her work, and with a generous smile:

'Well you could read a book...or paint a picture... or do a jigsaw... or play with your Lego, or...' The list of perfectly reasonable suggestions seemed practically endless, and as I knew she was teasing me I would be wincing and groaning and scuffing the carpet, saying 'bor-ing, bor-ing, bor-ing...'

She knew what I wanted to hear, and if she didn't say it soon enough, I would have to say it for her. 'Make peppermint creams?' I'd inquire, with a hopeless attempt at nonchalance, as if I was merely trying to help her in her quest for a sensible suggestion. 'Well, I suppose you could...'

My sister Sophy and I both loved cooking with Mum - when she was doing pastry, we'd get to make jam tarts with the trimmings. When she went through a bread-making phase we'd be allowed to customise our own little loaves: my sister would plait three strands of dough together very neatly, while I would shove as many raisins as I was allowed to get away with into my lumpy bread rolls.

But after she went back to college Mum had less time for cooking, and less time to indulge us with her constant presence. Sophy was as good at entertaining herself as I was hopeless. She would read voraciously, fill whole books with her drawings and invent frighteningly complex versions of solitaire using a chess set. I would hang around Mum's drawing board doing everything I could to induce parental guilt. I couldn't believe her resistance.

Making peppermint creams was the magic solution to this stand-off. It was the first bit of cooking at which I was allowed to go solo. There were (and still are) just four ingredients: icing sugar, egg white, peppermint essence and green colouring. And, most importantly, no cooking is required, so there was no need for me to go anywhere near the cooker.

To begin with, Mum would have to set me up for the session. Weigh out the icing sugar into a bowl. Separate the egg. Dust the rolling pin with icing sugar. Scatter some more across the table for rolling out on (in a beautiful even layer that was a wonder to behold). She'd probably get 10 minutes' respite before she'd be summoned back into the kitchen with an agonised, tear-suppressing cry: 'Mum...Mum...it's all gone wrong.' I'd have iced my hands, my face, the table and the rolling pin in minty green goo. She'd scrape me down, reassemble the sugar dough to perfect rolling consistency, and help me roll it out...

She'd probably get another five minutes' work in while I made a start at stamping out rounds with a little pastry cutter. Then it would be, 'Mum....Mum...help... they're all sticking to the table!' Any incentive to improve my technique was minimal. I realised, not quite consciously perhaps, that if I made enough of a hash of things, I could usually get Mum to abandon her work, and stay with me until the session was finished, and the cool green patties were laid out on a tray in neat rows. Then I would get to lick the bowl and the spoon, while she did the washing up.

I made peppermint creams so often that in the end I couldn't help but get good at it. Really good at it. Soon I could knock off a set in about 20 minutes flat, including cleaning up. Then I would be back in my mother's office, destroying the carpet.

So I graduated to chocolate-dipped peppermint creams - so elegant that Mum would serve them with pride (mine and hers) with the coffee at the end of her dinner parties. To make these required heat - enough to melt a couple of bars of Meunier chocolate (I was in love with the yellow-green wrappers). But Mum could double up the stove work with a coffee break from her studies, boiling the kettle, then placing the Pyrex bowl of broken chocolate squares over a pan of just-boiled water. She could then go back to work with her coffee, while I was entrusted to stir the bowl above the pan until the chocolate was smooth and flowing.

When I was finished with dipping, or half-dipping, the peppermint creams, there was usually a significant pool of chocolate left in the bottom of the bowl. Often more than I could realistically manage on my own, as chef's perks. So I would try and improvise some gleeful tea-time treat, stirring in a little butter, golden syrup or honey, along with handfuls of raisins, cornflakes or rice crispies, or maybe broken digestive biscuits. Squished into a tray, these concoctions might or might not set firm when placed in the fridge. If they did, they could be cut into squares, and served up for tea. If they didn't, we'd attack the goo in the tray, with spoons. Mum, Soph and I could clear a batch in a single sitting.

In the end, the only way Mum could hope to get any peace was to buy me a pair of oven gloves and begin to train me up on the safe use of the cooker. Inevitably cakes, biscuits, éclairs and profiteroles soon began to flow from my endeavours. By the age of 10 I was boiling up fudge, toffee and Turkish delight with, it seemed to me, only the merest hint of adult supervision.

By now I was equipped with the best weapons against boredom that any boy could wish for: a sugar thermometer, a piping bag and a well-stocked store cupboard. And, most importantly, an infinitely kind, loving and patient mum.