Yesterday morning was lovely. I met my mum for coffee and a wander around the shops.  I had some important shopping to do for Mr SW19 but no more details as I know he will read this!  Mum and I have started doing this regularly and I must admit I do love seeing her, just the two of us.  We catch up about anything and everything and have a wander together.  It was such a beautifully sunny day, it was warm and the sun was so warm and low in the sky.  Everything seemed awake and glistening, even as I saw on the top of the bus on my way home after a quick whizz around the old German supermarket. I was dashing home to a coffee and catch up with a friend. It's strange when your child leaves primary school, off they go confidently every morning to their secondary school, with their friends.  It's wonderful to see how quickly children adapt to new circumstances and challenges.  As a parent it's also time to adapt to a change, no longer going to school in the morning and meeting up with girlfriends at school. It's really important to me to stay in touch and I think so far it's going well.

I was making christmas mincemeat yesterday. It's a Delia recipe using fresh cranberries.  I had some in the freezer that my neighbour gave me after christmas last year as she didn't want them or know what to do with them.  I had a couple of bags of fairly old mixed dried fruit skulking in the cupboard and some muscovado sugar that had gone as hard as a rock.  Soaking them overnight seemed to bring it all back to life, and after three hours in a warm oven I had four jars of absolutely delicious mincemeat.

I don't know if any of this will be added to any christmas hamper or given as gifts to SW19 Jnr's music or form teacher, I have a sneaky feeling a lot of it will end up in mince pies and in our tummies!

As somebody who loves baking cakes for us to eat and for anybody else who would like me to bake for them, I have been giving a lot of thought to a christmas cake.  Mr SW19 doesn't care for the icing and marzipan on a traditional cake, and I'm not wild about glace fruit that often adorns alternative christmas cakes.  So anybody who has the Nigella Christmas book may have seen the Chocolate Christmas Cake recipe and I think I shall give this a go.  I have tried it as my friend made it last year and it was delicious.  It has stacks of prunes in it, and it really was spongy and tasty, but still a proper fruit cake.  Unlike a traditional cake it doesn't need weeks of feeding so I think I shall make it soon and freeze it, then I can order some delightful golden cake decorations for it when we take it out the freezer.

Right, that's it for today, off to clean my oven!

I can't believe it's been a month since I last blogged. Not quite the way to go about it eh?  Anyway, half term holidays and a bout of norovirus accounted for most of that time away. More than enough about that!

In that time I've been busy making all sorts of things.  We got back from holiday on 30th just in time for Halloween.  We had been invited to friends for a get together. Time was a little short so I decided to make a cake (of course).  The plan had also been to make jelly eyeballs from fruit and jelly, however a distinctive lack of tinned lychees meant those plans had to be abandoned.  So I made a graveyard cake and it worked very well.  I have made it previously and decided MR SW19's suggestion of putting various children's names on the gravestones was just way too ghoulish!  I knew there would be a couple of people attending who are gluten intolerant, so I made it with GF flour.  It went down very well indeed and resulted in an order for a birthday cake ... more of which later ... unfortunately the picture on my phone really didn't do it justice.

I've been putting a lot of thought to making gifts for Christmas.  As I love making and cooking so much I have decided that one or two people will be receiving home made hampers this year.  As a start I've made a stash of sweet chilli jam which is a permanent feature in our kitchen so I try to keep a supply of it available.  I've put some into small kilner style jars as gifts.  Yesterday I turned my hand to making mango chutney for the first time.  It was very straightforward, a bit of chopping and grating of the ingredients, and then a long slow simmer, best part of three hours.  It needs to mature in the jar for a month or so, perfect for Christmas.  Next on my list will be a few jars of mincemeat.  I love small mince pies, but they always cost an absolute fortune so this year I shall make some mincemeat and make my own mince pies. Not sure if any of that will make it into the hampers, possibly not.  However I've seen a recipe for mulling syrup so think that could be another addition along with a suitable bottle to add it to.

So back to the cake order, I was a little nervous about this one as I was asked if I could put a bicycle on the top as the birthday girl is a keen cyclist.  Now my strength lies in making cakes that taste gorgeous, but have a slightly more "freeform" shape to them ... definitely not a novelty cake baker!  However as the person had seen my graveyard cake they asked if I could do a bicycle cake.  After a bit of a trawl of the internet, I realised that my idea of buying a small model just wasn't going to work, they either cost huge amounts of money, came from the US, include a bride and groom, or there were instructions to make a bicycle out of icing which looked very beautiful, but also looked like it would take me several weeks to perfect.  Finally I came to the idea of making an outline bike in white chocolate that could sit on top of the chocolate icing.  Thankfully Mr SW19 is extremely good at drawing and sketching so he came up with some great shapes for me to use.  I chose one, recreated it in white chocolate, and the end result looked like this ... Ta Dah!!

It was packed up and hand delivered bright and early yesterday morning!

So dear Blog, I will be back far, far sooner, updating you on what it is I've been making and doing.