You’re my sugar dandy

The weird gingerbread cake biscuits were a success. Note, sometimes improvising with baking does work (with a level of experience…). It reminded me of the rock cake cookies I made once with disastrous results. Again, I did not have the correct sugar so a friend and I made the executive decision to use white granulated sugar (instead of golden caster I believe). Now, they were supposed to be soft chocolate chip cookies. They were the Danny Dyer of biscuits – wouldn’t look out of place on Eastenders. They were hard discs of evil, so not for consumption. Funny though.

Marc suggested we walk on the dark side and visit Westfield and Ikea on a Saturday (the less last minute of the two before Christmas). Surprisingly, not that busy. It means I did finish off present buying, which is a major relief as I have now run out of days where I can pop out to buy gifts – baking head is on from now. It was a lovely day with Marc, we bitched pretty much all day which was comforting. It proves that after not really speaking to each other because of the damn time difference and equal quantities of laziness on both sides, we can easily snap back into YUSSSS KWEEEN action. I’ve just realised I didn’t pay homage to Jona Lewie in the kitchens of Ikea. Tut.

I want to finish 1990 before the end of the year, yet I’m listening to a Spotify playlist of “Songs you missed” in 2017. I don’t really need to listen to it because as we all know, I don’t know who anyone is unless the released an album prior to 2007. Anyway, Blondie was on there with her new album (which I did know about, thanks Jules Holland). I did promise some time ago that I would post my spreadsheet online – it’s a work in progress. I realised that embedding spreadsheets on here doesn’t work as well as I would have liked. It’s not terrible but could be better. Therefore I will most likely link to my spreadsheet each time I talk about it. Next time I speak about it, it shall hopefully be ready!

I ordered my food delivery for Christmas baking, and it took forever. I noticed Ocado had some great discounts, so put all my eggs in one basket (I’ve ordered 20 eggs) etc etc. Little did I realise that you must select your delivery first. No matter, I can still select it now. Oh. No slots. Apparently everyone in Wimbledon uses Ocado. Who knew. Sainsburys had plenty of slots, just no candied peel. And before you say “Oh, but surely you can make that yourself, it’s so easy!”…I’m making everything else from scratch. Nothing is pre-made other than the fucking candied peel that only Ocado had*.

*after looking only at Ocado and Sainsbury’s. They’re the only shops I’ll order from due to the incompetence of other Supermarkets, and their fuckward policies of not bringing shopping into the flat.

So the problem I have every year is justifying the cost of my baking. It’s quite a bit of money for end results that can be bought cheaper in the Supermarket, but there’s two reasons I do it:

1) I really enjoy cooking and baking. I find it relaxing, and as stressed as I may seem when doing 5 things at once, the end result usually outweighs the stress. There’s only a few occasions I can recall whereby the thing I had created (yes, thing. No happy thoughts so no nice name) went straight into the bin as it had not behaved in the oven. Worked out eventually that with uncooked cake batter, nuking it in the microwave fixes it enough to eat.

2) The ego boost. I won’t lie, watching people eat and enjoy my baked goods provides me with the same feeling a night of karaoke does.

This year I have decided to bake two of the favourites from prior years – Christmas Pudding and a Panettone. I’ve also made some cranberry jelly, lemon curd and gingerbread biscuits. Stuffing will be made on Christmas Eve, and cooked on Christmas Day (so hopefully that goes well..) I’ve made a gallery of photos for your enjoyment, because most of you won’t be eating any of it. Berry family, you are lucky sods.

Here’s a few pics of the baking event: