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.