the forgotten bakes of 2017

Hey folks! It's been a few months (other than my brief post a few weeks ago.) I'm surprised anybody still visits this space as it looks somewhat abandoned. However despite the tumble weed it appears people do visit as I've had new follower notifications on Bloglovin'. Wow... thanks and hello new people!

I have to admit that despite best intentions I'm struggling to find the blogging enthusiasm I used to have. Blogging fell by the wayside last year as I was dealing with a lot of negative things. Usually my blog is my positivity life raft but it just didn't work last year, and now I feel out the habit.

I think I also feel a bit weird about the fact that I no longer identify this space as a baking blog. Admittedly I've always shared other creative bits and bobs alongside the baking, but there has been a definite shift in balance over the last couple of years. I'd hazzard a guess that I have a bigger following for my sewing now than my baking. Would it be worth renaming the blog to something which encompasses all my creative interests? I have zero inclination to start a completely new blog/address, but a new title might help push past the mental block.

Anyway, I digress. I still intend to finish sharing all my makes and bakes from 2017 despite it being the end of February. Today I'm presenting the baking.

Last year was not a great year on the baking front, sadly. There was a long period where everything I baked seemed disappointing: overbaked and dry, underbaked and sunken, the icing was the wrong consistency or it just didn't taste as good as I had hoped. There were, however, a few successes. Not everything got documented, but here's a selection of what I did photograph but didn't get around to posting:

My (new!) sister in law and I baked the maple and pecan triple layer cake from the Hummingbird Bakery's "Cake Days" book for my brother's birthday and wow, what a tasty beast of a cake that was. The sponge was so creamy and fluffy and our addition of cream cheese to the maple syrup icing was utterly delicious. Did I remember to photograph it? Nope! But this is it as a cupcake. We had so much left over icing (Hummingbird Bakery, what is with your icing quantities?!) that I halved the sponge recipe and baked a tray of cupcakes. Perhaps not the most stunning cupcakes as there wasn't enough icing to pipe pretty swirls, but they were yummy.

When it felt like everything was going wrong, I went back to basics with my Granny's fool-proof recipes such as kisses and rock buns. I used to bake these a lot when I was at uni much to the delight of friends and flatmates. They're basically viennese whirls: shortbread sandwiched with butter icing, except you don't need to bother with the fancy piping. Granny always coloured the icing pink and I like to do the same as it looks pretty.

This appears to be when I abandoned my camera in favour of my new phone, haha. This is a favourite recipe I return to every year. It's great with raspberries, blackberries, blueberries or a mixture of all three. If you're a fan of almond, fruity flavours then you need this recipe in your life.

Another favourite recipe as it's a great way of using up bananas without being an obvious banana cake. If you want to see a more photogenic version of this cake then check out my original blog post for it.

Yeah... I had one of *those* situations. Stupid bundt tin. Or stupid me for running out of cake release spray and thinking the tin would be fine greased with butter. IT'S NEVER FINE, ALWAYS USE THE SPRAY!

I started baking this cake a few hours before I had to be at a friend's house for dinner so this was not a good time for a cake to fail me. Thankfully I just had enough time to bake a different cake and my family enjoyed the mangled crumbs of this cake with custard the following day.

Another Granny classic! I made a lot of shortbread at Christmas to give as presents to family. So much shortbread in fact that I deprived myself of the need to bake my annual batch of saucy gingerbread people. Don't worry though long term readers, I baked some in the new year. :D

Good old Scottish tablet, so sugary and sweet. I only allow myself to make this at Christmas and give the vast majority away as little presents because it is so dangerously more-ish.

Wow, that is a shockingly unattractive photograph, why did I even bother?! Hahaha. If you can get past the craggy appearance of this Mary Berry number,  this was actually a very tasty, sweet, fruit cake. It used condensed milk instead of sugar (hence the sweetness) which appealed to me. However if I was forced to choose between this cake and the mincemeat cake I made last month in a battle of the festive fruit cakes, I'd pick the latter. Sorry, Mary!

And that concludes my baking for 2017. Perhaps not the most exciting and definitely not the most beautifully documented, but there you go. Thanks for following and here's hoping 2018 will be more successful! I really want to get back into blogging, so hopefully it won't be too long before my next post..... the knitting round up!