Stocking up for winter and a little baking...

I'm still catching up with the blog from things I did last year - I guess this is the perils of having little cupcakes of my own and working... So, this was me making the most of the bountiful fruits of autumn and laying a little in store for gifting and enjoying over the festive season.
We had some lovely apples from next door and some tomatoes from our garden...

We also made the most of what was in natural abundance and collected blackberries, sloes and elderberries - most of which were added to gin to make a range of liqueurs to give as gifts for Christmas, although I did make some into some very lovely elderberry and clove jelly to go with cooked meats.  The lemons weren't local or season, but I LOVE preserved lemons and often make them to keep in to add to things!

The bread was our usual running as we endeavour to make all of the bread that we eat, and the cakes were part of the basis of the birthday cake for my daughter which is coming up in another post!

It's my birthday and I'll make cake if I want to... make cake if I want to...

The only problem I had was what to make...  I mentioned in an earlier blog post somewhere (and this is where if I was organised I would do some kind of linking back wizardry - but I haven't) about my wonderful new cake book that I bought when buying bits and pieces for the 40th Wedding Anniversary Cake - well, for my birthday I decided I would make lots of the cakes from this, plus some of my Nigella favourites AND invite lots of friends round to eat them.  I have included the long shot of the table which shows the cakes and some of my favourite pieces of glassware - I'm now going to cover each of the cakes separately!