... Bake!

Yes, choir practice coming up, so it's baking day. Now I have more time to bake than I did when I was working, I'm going a bit over the top. First I baked this cherry and almond traybake, which I saved from Kimberley Wilson's website ages ago. Just as well I did as her recipe site has now disappeared from the Internet. She was my favourite GBBO competitor -- she was really good and could have won if she hadn't made a pie with a soggy bottom in the final. But she always looked as if she was enjoying herself, rarely got stressed, and afterwards instead of trying to cash in with books and TV appearances -- which she surely could have done -- she went back to being a psychologist (helping people with eating disorders).

Anyway, it's an excellent recipe if rather involved: shortbread, cherry jam, frangipane, and a florentine layer on top. That done, I decided to make some cranberry and white chocolate cookies. And this evening, I thought, why not make some gougères? So I did. Inevitably they weren't as good as the ones I made on the patisserie course especially as I couldn't be bothered to pipe and just dolloped. But they still went very nicely with a glass of wine, while we wait for the chicken to cook.