Oh hello Christmas.....

I've known for some time (approximately 23 days) that its' December and my extensive education and calendar collection lead me to the knowledge that December ends in Christmas, and an endless list of baking possibilities. Having put off baking anything resembling a mince pie or refined carbohydrate for as long as possible, I succumbed today to the draw of the (totally overloaded) baking cupboard and went a bit over the top..... We've had building work going on in our cottage for about 1 million years (...18 months) and this past week we've finally got into our new living room - to celebrate this, and Christmas, we had the builders in for a glass of champagne this afternoon and 'a mince pie'. 'A mince pie' escalated when I was left on my own to around 56 mince pies, a huge pile of gingerbread biscuits, fudge and cupcakes.

A rather unfestive looking table, but there you go!

Rather pleased with my pretty little mince pies: last years were heart shaped because my star cutter went on a tour of the home counties, so I'm making up for it this year!  These are almond shortcrust pastry, incase you were wondering...

I made gingerbread cupcakes with milk chocolate icing after seeing some on Sweetapolita's blog (my favourite) here http://ow.ly/893fk and thought I'd have a play when mum mentioned the Christmas drinks; her icing is fluffier looking than mine, its been a LONG time since I last iced a cupcake so I may have done a hash job

The rum and raisin fudge was a bit hit and miss - last years attempt at fudge ended in me learning that you do actually have to get the sugar as hot as the recipe says you do, so this year I really tried to get it hot, but somewhere after that I sort of failed again and my rum and raisin never really set solid. But, it does taste very rummy so I'm probably drunk now thanks to being a massive lightweight with a sweet tooth.

Naturally I made far more mince pies than anyone could ever eat and stuck at the end of the table were some with orange shortcrust pastry and full tops so they look like little pies!

Recipes to follow when I need to do procrastinate in a more serious manner.