Resurrection

Well, I’ve been very quiet over here for a very long time. So I figured the time was ripe to stir the dregs at the bottom of the blogging pot and produce a delicious word stew. Or maybe a small, faintly tasteless snack.

I could wax lyrical for ages about the state of the world over the past eighteen months, but I’m pretty comfortable that topic has been done to absolute death and you do not need me to start blathering on about the pandemic, or the associated awfulness that has gone hand-in-hand with it. As you may (or may not, I’m not the boss of you) remember, I work for the NHS and am acutely aware of the impact the whole thing has had on the system and the people who work within it. Suffice to say, tough times for all and we aren’t out of it yet.

I am avoiding discussing it because the whole thing leans too closely into politics, conspiracy theorists and that collective group of utter crazies we call the ‘British Public’ – three topics that send me off into a state of ranting, so let’s avoid that and keep the blood pressure down, shall we?

Let’s start with what’s changed over the last couple of years.

The Son finished university, somehow completing his final year in the middle of the pandemic and emerging, blinking into the sunlight with a 2:1 Bachelor of Engineering degree in Biomedical Engineering. To say I was proud is the ultimate understatement. That he got such a good result under some pretty weird and unexpected conditions is nothing short of spectacular. It also means he has decided not to move back home and so my nest has remained empty since the day I drove him down to Uni in 2018. I’ve gotten used to it more now so it’s easier. I still miss him every day and his former bedroom has become a waste ground of ‘things we need to put in the loft but haven’t got that far’ yet.

Work remains work. Nothing has changed for me on that front, although I am more confident with the more complex parts of my role.

The Husband goes from strength to strength in his post-retail working life. Within a year of him starting what was basically a call centre job, he was identified as Someone Who Knows Their Stuff and has climbed the corporate ladder with an alacrity that is nothing short of startling. It also allows me to say ‘I told you so’ when he reflects on how glad he is to have left retail.

There have been films. We have even been to the cinema a few times once restrictions were lifted enough to allow us to do this. There have been TV shows. There have been computer games. Overwatch still makes me furious, Apex still makes me laugh… to a certain extent, because I live my life as a hermit, things don’t feel *massively* different to how they did before we weren’t allowed to go anywhere. The difference, I guess, is that in the Before Times, I could CHOOSE not to go anywhere. Now I feel annoyed that those decisions are taken from me.

What I have done a lot more of since lockdown, along with just about everyone else, has been baking. I subscribed to the Baked In baking club and it’s been one of the best decisions I ever made. There’s something inherently joyful about that letterbox-sized parcel hitting my doormat once a month without knowing what exciting contents it is going to contain. The quality of the ingredients is first rate, the recipes are nothing short of endlessly delicious and the community is an utter joy. If you’re so inclined, I suggest checking it out here! Tell them I sent you. That link sort of does that anyway. But you know what I mean.

Combined with the fact that I have just had my kitchen ripped out and replaced (a mammoth task that has given enormous stress, but resulted in what is frankly, a room I now love to be in instead of the small corridor through which I hurried to the bathroom), I am thinking of resurrecting my blog to do more stuff about Baked In. I think it’d be fun to do blow-by-blow accounts of my occasionally ridiculous Adventures in Baking. I have a backlog of delicious treats to engage in at the moment:-

Jaffa Orange CakeChocolate Brookies (brownies with a cookie base – have done these before and they are amazing).Mocha Swiss Roll (another one I’ve done previously and ordered again because… coffee. Chocolate. What’s not to like?)Toffee Apple Drip Cake (see picture below. This one has caused chaos in the Baked In Community. When is too soon to take your toffee off the heat? When should you pour it on the cake for Optimal Drip? I mean, I’m that impatient that I fear I would end up with a lava-like puddle on a plate).Olive and Thyme Bread Heads-up. My cake will *NOT* look like this. There will be a lot more drip and a lot less cake is my prediction.

That’s a lot of cake.

Is it too much cake?

Is there such a *thing* as too much cake?

Discuss.