In which pictures of cake are sadly absent

As the title suggests, no pretty pictures of cake this week. I apologise. I've had a couple of bakings to post about but no accompanying pictures for a variety of reasons (greed, disaster, and not-yet-finished).

Greed: The ginger cake that I made sadly disappeared before I got any pictures. This was partly because it had to be left for a couple of days to "mature" before eating (how hard is that?!), and I somehow forgot that it had not been photographed. The recipe came from the Camper Van Cookbook and was pronounced extremely good; perhaps because there was far more sugar and treacle in the recipe than anything else!

Disaster: I really wish I'd taken some pictures of Saturday's disaster which had me in tears and doubting my baking abilities. I decided to make the toffee apple cake that Cornflower blogged to accompany the reading of Elizabeth Taylor's A game of hide and seek as it sounded lovely. I decided to make a round version, rather than a loaf version, but made a bad decision in choice of tin and put it in one that was far too small. The cake overflowed, somewhat akin to a volcano, but fortunately onto a baking tray in the bottom of the oven rather than onto the oven itself. Cake mixture adhered all round the side of the tin and the cake had to be cut out. The resultant mess was apparently exceptionally tasty, and K even ate the overflowings with his coffee, but it was a mess and I was too embarassed to photograph it (but I do wish I'd got a picture of it in the oven to send to Cake Wrecks).

Not-yet-finished: Our Christmas cake is currently wrapped in foil; it's a vegan recipe from Fiona Cairn's book Bake and Decorate which I have de-glutenised, substituting a mix of ground almonds, rice flour and buckwheat flour for the wheat. It needs to be left to mature, and then to decorate, at which point I'll share some pictures. I'm not sure we're big enough fans of Christmas cake to manage to eat a WHOLE one but I did want to practice sugarpasting, and we're planning to make some model penguins to go on top.

This week marks the start of seasonal baking as we have a friend coming round for tea and cake on Saturday, acting as santa between me and a friend who is too poorly to travel - if I can't see her, it's the next best thing to see her husband, and as a thank you I shall ply him with the first batch of shortbread of the season, assuming I can find my Christmas cutters. The following week is my annual Advent Tea Party so I shall be making some goodies for that, and K is wondering about making a gingerbread house again. Watch this space!