200+ MINCE PIES?!

It's become a tradition at Christmas that my mum and I bake over 200 mince pies each year.

"Why so many?" I hear you ask.

My mum is a caretaker/cleaner for a lot of elderly people and instead of buying them all naff gifts we always bake for them - they always appreciate a home made gift! Alongside that, we've always taken them to family get-togethers over christmas as well as each taking some in for colleagues too. On top of all that, we need some for ourselves too right!!

We don't make our own mincemeat (we actually use Sainsburys own brand) but we always mix a teaspoon or so of brandy to give it a little kick! Funnily enough, we also don't follow a recipe for the pastry, it's just something we've made enough to know when it's going to work and when it's not.

Instead of making 200 of the same mincepie, we decided to make 50/50 (ish) of standard pies with a little pastry star and the other half with the spiced orange crumble that we made last year.

Quick tip: If you sprinkle icing sugar over them when they're cool, it covers a multitude of sins!

These are the little ones that didn't pass QA!

I can promise you now that despite having baked over 200 already, we'll have to make more at some point..

HALLOWEEN WEEKEND

If you follow me on Instagram, (if not then you should be) you’ll know that I bake something almost every weekend, Halloween weekend was no exception of course but with GBBO having inspired me to challenge myself a little more, I decided to try and make something i’ve never made before! 

Chocolate webs!

I’d seen a load of things using piped chocolate on Pinterest lately and as i’m currently really enjoying learning how to pipe, I thought i’d give it a go. I used a tube of white chocolate buttons (You know the ones that come out for Christmas) and melted them in the microwave for just under a minute. Having never done this before I was a little worried that the chocolate was just going to run straight out of the nozzle but it was thicker that I first thought and I swear it went on forever!! I managed to make so many little webs and spiders from just one tube of chocolate!

FOREST HOLIDAYS | ARGYLL, SCOTLAND

This is our second trip to a Forest Holidays retreat and it was just as good as the first. I was anxious that, having been to the Deerpark retreat in Cornwall last October and having an absolutely brilliant time, that this wouldn’t be as good - I’ve revisited places before and been disappointed when they weren’t the same! But, thankfully, despite the 7 hour drive and 6am alarm on a Monday morning we had another fabulous holiday and will definitely continue returning to the Forest Holiday retreats. 

We left really early on Monday morning so as not to waste an entire day on the road, it meant we had a bit of an evening to unpack and settle in (obviously test out the hot tub) and relax before starting our holiday properly on the Tuesday.