It's snowing!

Ingredients

OK, so there's more rain than snow and what little snow there is is very soggy-looking, but it's snowing!!!

That's starting to feel like Christmas; more so if you see the television news - lots of places have snow settling on the ground.

I've been concentrating on going to the gym - mainly swimming, but some really good classes, too - and haven't had anything to post...

Fruit & cider

Apart from the Christmas cake, but obviously I didn't do that!

Short story shorter: I made the Christmas cake, I'm not sure it's OK [I used wholemeal flour, and couldn't cook it till the next day, and then worried that it would be too dry, so scraped it out of the tin and added (probably too much) more liquid] as the top cracked [too much extra orange juice, I think?], and as all the cake-cooking/storing kit is in boxes in France, we are taking it still in the cake-tin and greaseproof paper!

I've "fed" it, so hopefully that will keep it happy, but ultimately there's no way of knowing whether it's a good one or not until we take it from the tin and cut the first slice...

Needs boiling up

It's also one of the most expensive cakes I've ever made: all the cake-baking stuff is in a box somewhere [see above], so we had to buy a mixing bowl, cake-tin, greaseproof paper, cooling rack, etc., and I got mixed up in my head and believed we needed a 9" tin which was a real shame as there was an 8" tin on sale.  I thought that would be too small, so didn't get it, and had to buy the full-priced 9" tin.

So, reading the recipe and finding out the 8" was what was required, we decided to increase the quantities and use the 9" tin [rather than waiting another week to buy an 8" tin], so that means the cake is 25% bigger than planned.

Who knows, maybe this year there will be enough for other people, too?

Boiled fruit

[Assuming that it's edible!]

Have I got my Christmas presents?

Some, but not all.

Have I done the Christmas cards?

Mine, but I offered to do David's, so I'm only halfway there.

Mixture ready to bake

Am I ready for Christmas?

No,  but yes...

[No, I'm not Vicky Pollard!]

The main point of Christmas is to relax and spend time with my lovely husband, so in that respect I'm totally ready [we have a cake, some drinks, candles, & wood-burning stove (and food, obviously); what more could we ask for?].  If you include having all presents bought, wrapped and sent to relatives, house tidied etc, then no I'm not ready.

Fnished cake

But who cares; we get a second bite of the cherry with distant relatives by having a present-swap after New Year, and I know that last year those same relatives hadn't bought our presents at this time, so I'm only following their precedent.

Anyway: Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to anyone who has waded this far, as I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get around to posting again in the near future!