'Twas the night before the night before Christmas...

...And all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Except that there seemed to be a lot of activity going on in the kitchen...

It feels as though I haven’t been more than 10 feet from the cooker in the past couple of days. I’ve been overcome by the need to bake.

You see the thing is I quite enjoy the making bit (kitchen disasters and mess aside) and the feeling that you’ve produced something but then I’m never that fussed about eating any of the produce.

I’m a savoury girl and my heart lies in a packet of crisps. Cakes and buns and muffins I can take or leave.

However, the rest of my work colleagues are most definitely in the ‘take’ category and I was ordered to produce sweet things for the little Christmas Eve party we’re going to have tomorrow at lunchtime. I had a recipe for Christmas morning muffins that I got from who knows where. On the internet somewhere is all I can tell you. I thought these would be lovely and festive with cinnamon and nutmeg and cranberries and orange zest all thrown in there.

“They sound nice,” said my colleagues. “but also you should make those Marshmallow ones again.”

“But they’re not really festive” I said

“MAKE THEM” came the reply.

So the electric whisk and my crummy scales have never been busier. I have obeyed my orders and made more marshmallow cupcakes. Only 6 though, they are quite frankly the most fiddly buggers I’ve ever made and I don’t enjoy gluing my fingers together with melted marshmallow – they can fight over them between themselves. But I also made the Christmas morning muffins because I wanted to make those.

Then I had to make some more Mincemeat cake. I made this at the beginning of the year with an old jar of leftover mincemeat when I’d just started getting in to baking. It didn’t quite come out like Maria’s seemed to but it was very tasty. I made some at the weekend and it was an unexpected hit with the boyfriend and work people snaffling most of it, leaving me with only 1 slice to savour. This cake is so good with a cup of tea and I’m looking forward to indulging tomorrow afternoon when I finally get to leave work and come home for Christmas.

Then my rooting around in the cupboards unearthed my Christmas tree cookie cutter. How had I forgotten about him?! Clearly I had to use him so out came the books again as I searched for a quick cookie recipe. The Hummingbird Bakery book obliged me and I set about covering the kitchen in a thin film of flour. And then came the fun bit – the decorating!!

And now it’s time for this little baking fairy to put away her muffin trays and her baking trays and her mixing bowls. She can clean the kitchen properly tomorrow afternoon, right now she can’t bear to face the devastation that she has wreaked in there. Or maybe, just maybe, the baking fairy’s boyfriend will clean it all up during the day seeing as he’s not in work. She just has to close her eyes and wish as hard as can be...

Rachel's Snickerdoodles

I got the Rachel Allen, Bake, book a while ago. I had a voucher and had seen Maria do a few recipes out of it and they looked right up my street. Of course I got it and then it's sat in my kitchen for god knows how long.

(If I had my way I'd bake something different every night and spend the day eating the fruits of my labours.)

So I pulled it out the other day and had a look at all the pages I so studiously bookmarked the day I got it. The Snickerdoodles won out ecause they looked relatively simple and, well, they're called Snickerdoodles.

And they rule.

They rule the biscuit world.

They are light and fluffy and taste a little bit like Christmas because of the cinnamon and nutmeg.

I seriously might spend all day eating these...

Ingredients

(Rachel reckons this makes 26 but I only got 13 - not sure where I went wrong!)

125g butter, softened

110g caster sugar (plus 1dsp extra for rolling)

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

250g plain flour

Half tsp freshly grated nutmeg (I used ground because I'm lazy)

Three quarters tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 dsp ground cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180c

2. Cream butter in large bowl. Add 110g caster sugar and beat until mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla extract until combined.

3. Sift in flour, nutmeg, baking powder and salt and mix together to form a dough.

4. Mix dsp of sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

5. Using hands, roll dough into walnut-sized balls then roll in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and place on baking tray (This could be where I went wrong - maybe I thought walnuts were twice the size they actually are!!)

6. Leave about 3cm between each ball (no need to grease or line the tray) and then flatten down with the palm of your hand.

7. Bake in oven for about 15 mins, or until they feel firm around the edges.

8. STUFF THEM IN YOUR FACE!!

Loving these and will be taking them to my Mum's today because my brother is over with his wife and baby and I'm hoping we can all enjoy them with cups of tea. That is if there's any left before I go over there...

Nigella's Chocolate Mint Cookies

The other day I realised I hadn't baked in ages and AGES. Trouble is I have stacked on the weight since moving in with my boyfriend, weight that has been stacked on top of weight that shouldn't have been there anyway.

Baking + diets = MISTAKE

But I wanted to bake (the little child within me is stamping her foot at the moment) so bake I did. I sat for longer than was necessary because I needed to find something that I could make with what I had in the kitchen because I didn't want to go out and buy more ingredients (cue stomping child again)

And I found these Chocolate Mint Cookies in Nigella Express,

Ingredients (this makes 26 but I thought of my flab and halved everything and only came out with about 10 although mine were probably bigger than Nigella intended!)

100g soft butter

150g light brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

150g flour (annoyingly she doesn't bloody tell you what kind of flour she wants you to use - damn you Nigella!! I closed my eyes and picked whatever came to hand - self-raising come on down!)

35g cocoa powder

Half tsp baking powder

200g dark chocolate chips

For the glaze

75g icing sugar

1 tbsp cocoa, sieved

2 tbsp boiling water

teeny tiny drops of peppermint extract (taste it til it feels right)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180c

2. Cream butter and brown sugar and then beat in vanilla extract and the egg

3. Mix flour, cocoas and baking powder in a bowl and gradually beat in to creamed mixture (I feel I should add at this point that the mixture goes all weird and sticks to your beaters causing them not to turn round anymore. Cue real-life stomping girl in the kitchen until boyfriend comes in and explains that cookie dough is supposed to look like that)

4. Fold in the chocolate chips

5. Put little balls of cookie dough mixture on a baking sheet, leaving space between each one

6. Bake in oven for 12 minutes - put them on a cooling rack and put newspaper or tin foil underneath to catch the glaze you're about to pour over them (and get all over your work surfaces if you don't put something down)

7. Put glaze ingredients into saucepan and heat until combined

8. DRIZZLE!!!! (using a teaspoon)

They were pretty marvellous actually and better than I thought they were going to be (I was still sulking about the dough mixture).

I then took them in to work and made all my colleagues eat them so that I don't munch them all - I think they might be wondering if I have some kind of over-eater by-proxy syndrome and am trying to fatten them all up to be like me. As if....