A weekend of baking madness...

Since I've returned from China I've been baking crazy. As I've mentioned in my earlier posts, we had a pretty shitty oven in our apartment, that was essentially a grill, and I couldn't make much more than cookies or flatbread. My attempt at a victoria sponge cake ended up like this, two frisbees sandwiched together by jam and buttercream:

I also remember having to go to at least 5 or 6 shops to try and get all the ingredients, trying to find butter and icing sugar was like, well, I'm rubbish at analogies, but it was bloody difficult!

My favourite ingredient of the moment is pastry. Choux, sweet, shortcrust, puff...you name it I've been making it. I try to always have some in the freezer, so I tend to make it in batches. That way I can whip up a pie or a tart at short notice for dinner or dessert- okay, I know I sound like a right domestic wifey woman, but who doesn't want to eat treacle tart and apple pie all the time?!

Another foray into baking- delish treacle tart

So one weekend, one of my rare weekends off from work, I went a bit nuts. It was meant to be a trial run for the Christmas gifts I was making for people (I went complete domestic goddess this Christmas and made presents, mainly because we couldn't afford to buy any), but kinda spiralled out of control. Ironically, and this is always the way, the practice gifts I made worked much better the real gifts that I actually gave to people. Why is that?! Whenever I make something for the first time, it always seems to come out surprisingly well, but the next time I do it, it never turns out as good as the first time. Grr! Anyway, I'm babbling. Here's what I made. By the end of the weekend it was safe to say that Dave was full to bursting and I had a lot of work to do on the Wii fit.

As well as shortcrust pastry, a mandarin cheesecake and some cheese straws, I made...

Pesto - for Saturday's pesto pasta

Puff pastry-

Chicken and green bean pie - using some of the homemade pastry!

Caramelised red onion chutney-

Ring doughnuts and sea salted caramel shortbread -

...and a gingerbread house

And the finished product for Christmas...which, although twice the size and complete with candy canes (which were a bugger to make!) and gingerbread people, still didn't turn out as well as the first one...