MESSY BAKER

Did you know its only 38 days before Christmas? Its definitely beginning to feel colder and wintery and we might even get snow this Christmas! To be fair, I am hoping for snow every year, and so far I have only seen a white Christmas once in all my years of living in London.  I love Christmas, I really do, and I love all the traditions and foods that come with it, and no Christmas is complete in our house without a Christmas cake. Now, this is a rather new tradition in our house, I’ve only been making a Christmas cake for the last five years or so. I am not a big fan Christmas cakes (or any fruit cake to be honest) that you buy in the shops. They are too sweet, too sticky, too artificial for my taste, I can taste the sugar grains and preservatives on my teeth. Which is why I decided to try making Christmas cakes at the first place – to see if the real deal is going to be any better, or maybe I am just not a Christmas cake person.  Well, turns out I am a Christmas cake ...

What better treat can a girl have for her birthday than a home made lemon cake? I did consider making a chocolate one just for a minute, but decided it was far too hot, but a nice tangy lemon cake would but just perfect. You wold think that it would be easy enough to find a recipe for a Lemon cake, but I checked all the usuals – Marry Berry, Delia, Paul Hollywood, even Gordon Ramsey, but they were all either too bland or too fancy (three guesses who was the fancy one J ) So I went with my all-time favourite – Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. This is a book I keep coming back over and over, it has such a good collection of recipes, something for every mood and occasion, and the recipes are very easy to follow. I do play with the recipes, of course, as I find Hummingbird US recipes way too sweet, and I have had a couple of duds from the book, but its all part of a learning baking cycle.   Lemon and Poppyseed Cake Adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook 100g uns...

Has it seriously been nearly a year since my last post??!!! Shocking!! Well, I’d better change that!! Rightto , I am committing to post something at least once a month, but hopefully it will be more frequent than that, especially with Halloween and Christmas coming up. Man, I love holidays !! Any excuse to bake :) So far I am planning : -           Halloween themed cupcakes – I am thinking pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing and chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing -           Pumpkin and Bourbon pie -           Gingerbread house -             Panettone -           Christmas cake -           Mince pies Hmmmm….. I think that’s about it – pretty ambitious, but lets see how I go. Ju...