On the off chance....,

....that anyone is still reading Blogs at this ridiculous hour on Christmas Eve when, by rights, you should be grumpily peeling sprouts and wrapping the last of the gifts you bought your other half 6 months ago but forgot about and just found at the back of the wardrobe.  Now all that's left is a patchwork of High Street Musical and Bob the Builder wrapping paper so tough tits, Shah.

As ever, I am struggling with Christmas.  When the distant past only ever produced massive emphasis on the religious aspects and little of material cheer (childhood) and the more recent past the shitty presents that the Shah thought hilarious, can you blame me? 

Anyway, I am trying my hardest.  Far too disorganised to buy a Yule Log when they were available in the shops, daughter and I resorted to making one earlier this evening.  We had a choice of Mary Berry or Lorraine Pascal.  We went with Lorraine - I'm a big fan.  Unfortunately, I am not a big baker and our first effort turned out like a rubber biscuit with a texture that meant it took hours to masticate (steady...) a mouthful.  When it came out of the oven, it looked like this:-

A bit on the biscuity side...

"Never mind," i said to disappointed daughter.  "It'll be fine when we roll it."

Ahem...

So in the bin with Lorraine's effort (and I followed the bleedin' instructions to the letter) and we started again with good old Mary's recipe.  This version is looking more promising:-

This is it cooling.

Then it got iced.

And the final result...

By this time, I had lost the will to live with it all, so the credit should go to daughter's artistic efforts with a fork, roughing up the icing and sprinkling the "snow".

Happy Christmas to everyone who has taken the time to stop by and read my humble bloggette.  Thank you all - see you in 2013!

CQ x