Yikes, this could be a problem.

My scales may not be accurate!!! shock horror, this development could throw the baking into jeopardy. I am not sure if it is just today because the batteries are flashing up as "Lo", but I know they are dodgy as on measuring out 100g of apricots to go into my experimental "Runners Oaty Nut Bars" (rocket fuel for James's running), I managed to add in nearly the entire of a 250g bag of said apricots. Somethings not quite right. In true Dawn style, I decided that this would not adversely affect the process and proceeded full steam ahead. The bars are now out of the oven and cooling and only time will tell later as to whether they have come out unaffected by the inaccuracies in measurements and stay stuck together when you pick them up.



I have also decided as this blog seems to be temporarily turning into a baking blog while things are all quite on the "cancer world" front (backed up my GPs test results that came back today saying that my liver, kidney, bone markers, anemia, blood glucose and thyroid tests are all normal. The upshot of these results being that we can conclude that I am just feeble and lazy and have no underlying reason to be a bit tired!). Anyway this afternoon I am going to do the very exciting task of getting the recipes for the cakes I have done so far up on the blog.

hmmmmm... a long days work

Well, this weekend I managed to sweet talk the local lady who runs the craft stall/flea market to let me have a mini practice stall to see if things would sell. Great, I thought. However, when I turned up they were full up of stalls and managed to find me a small bench in a quite side room/corridor and I even had to go get my own table (went home and got our mini occasional coffee table) - not a great start. It didn't much pick up either. As I had laid out my wears on a bench in a corridor-esque room, I felt like a beggar sitting there asking for money as people went by. 10-3pm I sat there. £26.50 I made.

Great you say, and yes £26.50 is fab-a-roony for my charity. But for all day long, I think i may be tempted to stick the money straight in the pot myself. Especially if I had been paying the £10 fee for this privilege!

Ho Hum. On the real thing I will have a stall with pride of place in the busy main room so it should be a lot better. But I will then have to be paying for the table.... £10! I am going to have to weigh this up I think - I have the WI coffee morning the week after this stall and that might be a better place to concentrate my wears. What did go down well was the Seed Cards my friend from work has donated for me. They are great. They have little packets of seeds as part of the card and the picture on the front is what they grow into ... "cards to grow". The little old dears loved them!

Oh well, for the time being I will carry on.

On a Happier note - we have made it past the 50% mark in our fundraising total. You don't know how much I appreciate all the donations that are coming in and the sponsorship for James. Even more so as I don't think I could bake my way to the total all by myself. Thanks. (and don't worry, I won't stop making cakes just cos you sponsored... that will continue till the WI day.)

Cappuccino cupcakes

These are supposed to look like little chocolate dusted cappuccinos. Tasted quite nice, but probably not my favorite of the recent cakes though (the carrot cakes.. or maybe the chocolate espressos are... but then again I can eat my way through a lot of the gingerbread - I may need to make them all over again to make that final decision).

Another year, another MOT passed.

Yesterday was my annual check-up appointment at the Breast clinic. This went smoothly enough. James and I went in together and after the usual hours wait for these things, we were in to see a very nice lady doc.

She first told me that my mammogram showed no obvious changes from last year, which is good. She told me my kidney and liver function tests were normal, which is good.

She gave me a jolly good examination... prod, prod, prod, no slippery little lump was going to evade her probing, which was good.

She asked how I was feeling........ now I did try and avoid giving a list as long as my arm of my woes, but then the point of these check-up is just that, to check whether anything's up. So after telling her about a few of my continued tiredness issues (which could just be my natural feebleness now!) and some achy-ness I had been getting in the bottom of my back, and the little lump in my neck that was still there.... I stopped. Neither of us was particularly worried by any of these symptoms (not even symptoms really) but she did put me on a 3 month check-up, just to see how I am feeling again then.

But generally, I think I have passed the MOT with flying colours. What's more it is now my day off and I am going to do some more baking. I think I am doing well on the whole baking challenge. I have to confess to not taking out my "expenses" from this total that I keep totting up. Not that I am planning to either.... but I suppose I should work out what I am making for the charity over and above what I could have just thrown into the collection tin myself. But, I don't think that is the point and I can't bring myself to work it out either! I enjoy the baking and I have wanted to try out all these recipes but couldn't face eating all the cakes myself, so what better opportunity. So today I am going to have a go at the cappuccino cupcakes. This weekend we have friends to visit and so Baileys muffins are on the cards for a bit of baking "just for ourselves".

Please don't snow!

I have a baking craving hitting me, and not wanting this crave to also hit my waistline, I really would like to be able to get into work tomorrow so I can experiment with the Cappuccino cupcakes and Espresso cupcakes this afternoon and have people around to eat them for me.

I will report on how they go later on!

And here they are... well the Espresso cupcakes at least. As the snow started to fall Sunday evening I wimped out on making a second batch of cappuccino ones to go with them (I can make those later in the week now).



I think they went down well again and had all gone by mid morning.

phew, luckily I didn't bake!

Well, it's a good job I decided to have a week off my baking challenge. Otherwise I would have been chomping my way through 20-40 (depending on how carried away I got) cupcakes because I haven't been able to get into work today due to snow.

So, I have been working from home and I have enjoyed having some time to really get stuck into some thinking for work. Although, I have found half an hour to bake myself a small helping of some chocolate based cake refreshment. I had to - otherwise I might have gone and punched the boy next door. Teenage boy, loud thumping music and trying to concentrate do not go together well. I am much calmer again now and settling down with tea and cake to work some more.

It is also lucky that this cake was "just for me" as being an eager beaver and not being able to wait to get into that chocolate cakey goodness I tried to turn it out of the cake tin too early and left half of it behind. It's not even fit for a picture.

Gingerbread with Lemon Icing

Thursday saw me taking Gingerbread with Lemon Icing in along with my collection tin. I split these between both Level 8 (where I am now) and Level 6 (where I used to be). They went down well and got me another £25 in donations! Hoorah. I put some little pink ribbons on them again (the featured cake in the picture is one of the last ones I had left to grab a quick snap of, the pink ribbon ones all got snapped up).

I think opinion is split over the favorite between Carrot Cake and Gingerbread.

I might have a quiet week on the baking front this week. And return with a vengence the following one. It's really hard not to get over excited and try out every recipe on my work collegues - perhaps the scientist in me should plot out the average weight of participants in the cake challenge before and after I have exhausted cake possibilities.

One thing is certain "Nigella: How to be a domestic goddess" is getting it's fair share of use. I love that book!