I don’t know. It’s coming to something when a girl has to bake her own birthday cakes! But it means I get to choose the exact flavour and as it’s my birthday, no one is allowed to complain.

Smallest person has a cake sale at school tomorrow so I spent today making cookie dough and then cutting out and baking about fifty Daleks. Of course now I have fifty Daleks to ice in various colours. It’s going to be a late night.

On the plus side, I have my extra ball of Kauni and can now knit the second sleeve! I’m off on holiday next week, so will take the Tomten Jacket with me, along with the manly socks (about half a sock left of the pair to finish) and something else, just on the off chance that the weather is crappy and I get to spend a lot of time indoors playing with yarn!

If I don’t post before I go, see you all in a week’s time.

Torta alla Gianduia, aka Nutella Cake, from How to be a Domestic Goddess

A final slice of cakey goodness before I disappear for a few days.

Next week I will be back blogging, possibly with lovely gifts to share and definitely a couple of pounds heavier. All this baking has to be eaten by someone, after all… Happy Christmas to everyone!

I cheerfully admit that for a cake decorator, I’d make a good bricklayer. One day I’d like to do a fancy sugarcraft course and make dainty flowers and swans and do painfully smooth royal icing and stuff, but for now, my hamfisted approach works fine, especially when the cake inside is what I’m *most* interested in.

My “decoration” is made up of blobs of ready-to-roll icing in various colours and a bit of writing icing for the features. Note the fetching “handknitted” scarf and hat. Even penguins can’t escape my festive knits.

Chocolate Christmas Cookies from Nigella Christmas

After cooking for eight people on Sunday, I’ve been left with the washing up; Mr B having escaped by conveniently working away from home for the next few days. So I figured I may as well add to the mountain. These cookies are for the small people to nibble while the rest of us enjoy the mince pies.

Fifty-eight Fifty-seven tiny mince pies (well, I had to try one!), each one barely a mouthful and therefore calorie-free, possibly.

The mincemeat comes from a jar, but the pastry recipe is from an old Sainsbury’s magazine and makes the BEST pastry for mince pies: slightly sweet and crumbly.

Now I just have to freeze them before Mr B comes home and wants to have his own taste sample.

I’m a little late this year, but yesterday I finally got around to making a Christmas cake. For the entire day, the scent of warm fruit and brandy spread through the house and I was almost whistling Jingle Bells by bedtime.

I wish I could say that the recipe was handed down my family through the generations, but this one comes from a Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Cookbook published in 1998. But what is most important is that the recipe makes the BEST Christmas cake. One year I strayed and used Nigella’s recipe and much as I love her cupcakes, muffins, cookies and general chocolately goodness, the cake was a disappointment. I have never strayed again.

The cake has been bathed in brandy and is now sitting wrapped in the back of the larder until I decide that maybe it needs a bit more feeding in the run up to the Big Day.

Add together an army of Dalek cookies…

…a plate of caramel crispy cakes made with melted Mars bars…

…and Malteser flavour cake covered with Maltesters, and you have sixteen happy children, sent home to their parents full of sugar.

(All recipes from Feast by Nigella Lawson)

I’ve been baking again. This time it’s because the smallest of the small people did not approve of chocolate and cherry cupcakes.

These are basic sponge buns with chocolate drops in, which *do* meet with approval. It’s a recipe given to me by my grandma, and it’s my fallback recipe whenever I need to whip up cakes without having to buy fancy ingredients. You can use the same recipe baked in two sandwich tins to make a Victoria sponge (preferably filled with whipped cream and fresh strawberries) but buns are best for small people. The recipe’s main advantage is that as long as you remember the ingredients and method, you never need to remember quantities.

So, because chocolate and cake are proven to help when puzzling over a complicated stitch pattern, I present the recipe in all its glory.

Ingredients:
2 large or 3 medium free-range happy eggs
Self-raising flour
Unsalted butter
Sugar
Vanilla extract (optional)
Chocolate chips
12-cup bun tin lined with paper cases

Method:
Weigh the eggs. Weigh out the same weight in the flour, butter and sugar. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and soft and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs one at a time with a little of the flour. Add a teaspoonful, or as much as you want, of the vanilla extract, if using. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find it in the cupboard and I might not actually have any… Fold in the rest of the flour with a metal spoon.

Mix in as many chocolate chips as you want (just one packet is considered a bit miserly in this house) and spoon the mixture into the cases, remembering to scrape out all the excess with a spatula so there’s no reason for any arguments about who gets to lick the bowl.

I prefer the contrast of plain chocolate with the sponge, but my corner shop only has milk chocolate drops, so that’s what I’ve used.

Note: I use larger than average cake cases because they come decorated with dinosaurs and footballs and other things. If you’re using the regular white Supercook bun cases from the supermarket, you’ll probably be able to make around 18 buns. The mixture will be fairly thick, so just dollop it into the cases; it spreads out when it’s in the oven.

Bake at 190ºc/gas mark 5 for 15 to 20 minutes, turning tin around halfway through this time if you have a crappy oven like mine. Turn cakes out of tin and leave to cool on a wire rack for as long as possible. Add icing and sprinkles and other doodads if you can be bothered, but they’re quite interesting just as they are.

Chocolate cherry cupcakes from How to be a Domestic Goddess, including one special one for someone’s birthday tomorrow…

Having a ten year old makes me feel ancient. But I can take my mind off it with cake.

Pear and Ginger Muffins from Nigella Express

Spending all day working deserves a bit of a muffiny treat, wouldn’t you agree?