They say if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.
But when you're an under-pressure prime minister visiting a marginal electorate you step right in.
Malcolm Turnbull dropped in on a pie-making class at Bateman's Bay High School on the NSW south coast on Friday, helping prepare some for the oven.
"I do more munching than making as far as pies are concerned," he said of his hospitality skills.
Amongst the students he found a Lucy, just like his own wife, and was bemused to hear she too gets Lucinda when in trouble by her mum.
After helping brush the pastry, Mr Turnbull turned his hands to woodwork - arming himself with an electric drill on a wooden deck.
"Miraculously I haven't broken anything," he said at his contribution.
In a lunchtime sea of excited teenagers, and a fortnight of debate over citizenship, Mr Turnbull found another Turnbull.
If she asks her dad if she is a descendant of the Turnbulls of the Hawkesbury River they could end up being distant cousins, he joked to the student.
Earlier local Liberal MP Ann Sudmalis faced questions about her own ancestry and advice from the UK Home Office which she asserts states she's not a citizen.
"As soon as Bill Shorten puts his paperwork on the table I will," she said.
And in a case of history coming back, the school's principal had a request of Mr Turnbull.
Could he sign a copy of The Spycatcher Trial?
Its author - now the prime minister - was delighted.
"The law's loss is education's gain," he wrote to the former aspiring lawyer.
