Big Baking Day

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon baking. It started off with my Christmas Cake, which is an old favourite recipe from BBC Good Food Magazine, I have the cutting from the magazine from 1998 and again in 2002 - it's the same recipe and thankfully is also still on the website, so I don't have to type it all out for you! It's the Simmer and Stir Christmas Cake and it is just so easy. Last year I made the Nigella chocolate Christmas Cake, which was really lovely but decided to go back to my old favourite this year.

Then I decided to make the Banana Butterscotch Loaf from Maria's blog: The Goddess's Kitchen. I had taken the ingredient list with me when shopping last week, but there was no Green and Black's Butterscotch Chocolate, so I got the Ginger one instead. It was an easy recipe to make although using so much Green and Blacks Chocolate, would be one that I would keep for a special occasion. It is very sticky but very rich with an exceptional sugar hit. I forgot to put the pecans and demerara sugar on the top, which would have made it look prettier, but it didn't affect the taste. Also I didn't have a3lb loaf tin, so I used the one I have and made the rest of the mixture into muffins which cooked in about 15 minutes

Finally, I had to do something with the apples that had been lurking about in a basket for a couple of weeks. My MIL had got them from her friend and some were beginning to get past their best. I made some apple pickle, which I will blog later when I have put it in jars, and then made the rest of the apples into a crumble (cheating with a ready made crumble mix) which I have put in the freezer. I also froze the Banana Loaf, cut into slices, as we would never get through all that.