Two birds with one stone!

One of my favourite ways to de-stress and relax is to bake. It's something I've done since I was small - my mum taught me, although she was never very enthusiastic herself, and I think she was happy to pass the family baking baton to me! When I still lived at home, many years ago, I baked quite a lot, and everything would get eaten - often by my dad! Since leaving home and living alone, I've done much less baking. Although I still enjoy it, I don't really want to sit and eat an entire batch of cookies myself!

Luckily, although we don't live together, my boyfriend spends about half the week at my house, and I've discovered that he's quite fond of home baking, and happy to eat whatever I produce, so the baking's back on!

I must've been quite stressed this afternoon, because I had the baking bug quite badly! I made quite a variety of things - cranberry and oatmeal cookies, lemon buns, and almond & cherry muffins which were made with fresh cherries!

Although they all look alright, if I'm being honest, I would have to say that they could definitely have been better. I'm still getting used to my new electric oven, which I don't like as much as my old gas one, but I'm learning that it needs to be set quite a bit higher than the recipe asks for, so hopefully my output will improve a little once I'm more familiar with it!



I'm sure as soon as Alasdair's finished yesterday's plum, apple & blackberry crumble he'll get started on the muffins buns & cookies! Perhaps I should try yoga or meditation to de-stress for a few days until he's caught up a bit!