Baaaaad

Ok, I had help but you just know I've been ears deep in a chocolate nose bag for the last week!

64 days and counting...*gulp*

I'm not one of nature's dieters. In fact, (even though I think horoscopes are intrinsically mince) I trot out the line "I'm a Libran, I don't do denial" as I slide a slightly podgy hand into the mega-tonne-super-skip of Celebrations with tedious regularity.

Ah, Celebrations, somehow an altogether dirtier chocolate than many of the others, that leaves you feeling like the Monday after a good festival. If you have more than one, you end up hollow, seedy, grubby and with a residual undertow of guilt because you've been dragged into a whirl of Dionysian excess, where somewhere in your head there are young oily men in short shorts and a glamorous woman riding a white pony through the room while wearing a silver lame' jumpsuit while you're eating them.

However it's a nasty come down when it's over. I went through the Festives patting myself on the back, for *somehow* I had managed to avoid the worst excesses and was feeling quite snappy. This is,however, due to the fact that getting up at 6am with a fractious toddler (with bio-hazard arse) with a hangover is hell on a stick and having tried it, the memory is a wonderful resolve stiffener when you're tempted to let your imbibing inhibitions down.

Then the Christmas sweets got opened and 7 days later here I am committing myself to weaning myself off the stuff like a penitent sinner. I also can't get out for a walk today because I went yesterday and I ache - ah, pregnancy, it's been about as good for me physically as being pushed down a flight of stairs wearing a suit of armour..

More cooking - Part Deux

So at roughly 11.35 on Christmas Eve I ran out of wrapping paper and also managed to finally get 24 red velvet cupcakes out of the bloody oven.

For info, I've been planning to make the damn things since June, but considering that was when I went back to work, the opportunity and enthusiasm to complete the job has been in tragically short supply. So like a total muppet I decided that Christmas bloody Eve was the optimum time to do this. Because I am a f**kwit.

To be honest, from a baking perspective, there are two things I bake regularly (i.e. more than twice in any ten year period) - and they are Victoria Sponge and my mothers gloriously easy chocolate cake (which is rather fab BTW).  Red Velvet turned out to be significantly more complicated than I anticipated  That possibly has something to do with a) a mate having a *really* bad Christmas Eve b) Cava - lots of, cunningly being filtered by my kidneys and de-alcoholised by my liver c) trying to finish off Christmas for my wee boys 1st Christmas - having suddenly been driven that weird state of guilt /insanity that grips parents from time to time - even though there's more chance of him remembering his 12 month jabs and d) I ran out of wrapping paper for the child who *won't fecking remember it anyway*.

So yes, the perfect state of mind for attempting this sort of thing. And then ended up decorating them in a fury of "I've got this far, I've got bloody finish it" (I'm a compulsive completer/finisher and unfinished projects tend to haunt my thoughts).

Not very bloody red....

Some had a strange bicarb of soda globule patina on the surface.

I tried to ponce on piping...then decided that trying to refreshing an old skill while growling at cake is probably quite a rubbish idea.

Quite pretty, eventually.

Here's the link to the recipe again -  and everyone who tried one liked them, but next time I'm not going to do it at a really stupid time. And I'm going to buy a mixer. I had one popeye-like arm for 4 days afterwards.

So of that cooking sh*te I threatened earlier - Part Un

Magnolia Bakeries Red Velvet Cupcakes

Hello, I'm going to attempt this half cut and knackered on Christmas Eve. I'm clearly having a frigging giraffe, aren't I?