Baking and Making...

We had a slow and lazy start to the day - I had planned to do things around the house getting ready for the Christmas weekend.  I wanted to go out and sort out Lakis and Argy's water bill whilst our village community office was still open.  This can be something of a lottery but I was lucky today that Marianna's truck was outside and that generally means that she is inside.

Our Village Father Christmas must have come from a right-on woke shop as we appear to have the only gender fluid Father Christmas I have ever seen.  Our one sports some pretty heavy 60s style eye-liner!

Marianna was in and I was fully armed with all the information to ensure that the Kyriakides water bill was correct.  Argy had paid up when they left in September but this was before the meters were officially read so I just had to convince Marianna that all that was outstanding was the difference between the amount already paid and the official bill from a few days later.  For once this was achieved with the minimum of difficulty and now I know that they are fully paid up to date and even better I got their email address changed so that they should receive a proper bill by email sometime in January when the next one is due - if that actually happens I will consider that to be a great result!!!

I returned home - John was busy cutting up logs for the woodburner.  So far, three weeks into December we have only had about 3 fires.  The weather has been considerably warmer this year than last year.

For most of the day I was on baking.  We wanted to try out a recipe John had seen on tintyweb for apple tartlets.  The only trouble was that although he had saved the recipe on his I-Pad we couldn't find it anywhere so I had to troll through tinty to see if I could find it or at least find something similar.  Eventually I came a cross what was called an 'invisible' apple cake and thought that was about the closest thing I was going to find so plumped for that.  We wanted to offer something different for the pud on Christmas Day but I always like to try the recipe out first.

So here is the first batch of the finished article, the second batch were better because I didn't cook them for quite so long so the apple wasn't quite so caramelised on top.  These are very light and actually quite lemony and they are called invisible because you cook them so that the slices of apple underneath disappear into the cake mixture.

We have thought about having a little Knit and Natter morning (or Bitch and Stitch if you prefer) next year - Nicky and Gail are crafty and if Jan is here she is too.  I thought I could kick it off next Month with a class on making Christmas Cards.  We are all going to ask any visitors to bring packs of blank cards for us to decorate.  I have drawn a complete blank trying to find a supplier here on the island.  The other thing that I could do with is some of the double ended watercolour pens that I have seen on the tintyweb.  I think they would make decorating much easier.

Anyway a nice quiet evening for us - we had the 'shepherds' pie I made from the leftover sausage and onion gravy with some bacon, apple, carrot and leek added accompanied by a glass of wine and then a nice early night - bliss.