Christmas Eve snapshot

  Cons: I need to catch up with the soup; the starter; the bread rolls; the stuffing; the bacony sausage things I worry about having under-catered for vegetarians I sound very croaky and my throat is still sore We have not been very generous with the giftage this...
Cake

Cake

Look at MsDD’s interpretation of a snow scene for our Christmas cake! She particularly likes the footprints in the snow. Can you make them out? This evening, we met up with the parents of MsDD’s friends at the Belair in Dulwich. (I’ve often felt...
In which an investment in silicone yields benefits

In which an investment in silicone yields benefits

I make mince pies on December 22nd every year, almost without fail. It’s a silly personal tradition dating back to 1981, when I was doing all the Christmas preparations for my family as usual but I was also going off in the evening to meet school friends for a...
Therapeutic Sunday baking

Therapeutic Sunday baking

Leafing through my signed copy of Simply Nigella, it caught my eye: the Date and Marmalade Christmas Cake that tastes of a fine Christmas pudding, apparently, that Quakers used to say was “The invention of the scarlet whore of Babylon.” Obviously, that...
Hot toddy time

Hot toddy time

    Boo. I should have been dressed up and at a party tonight with some of my choir members singing carols around their piano. I was going to bake some of Nigella’s sexy brownies with, for the first time ever, the correctly-sized pan. Instead I woke up...