Stuck Of Book: Great British Baking!

Some people were there when Dylan first went electric. Some knew about Harry Potter before he hit the mainstream. I, dear reader, was with The Great British Bake Off from series one, episode one.

Indeed, the whole first series watched without much comment - I loved it, and even toyed with entering the second series. But then it suddenly became much better known, attracting higher ratings and being a heated topic of conversation in the Bodleian tea room. I was even inspired to hold my own cake party. I'm much enjoying series three (and watched the third episode with Mum this evening, on iPlayer) but the standard and difficulty have far exceeded anything I would be able to manage. In case you haven't watched it, the combination of Mel and Sue's witty, irreverent-but-kind commentary, Mary Berry's grandmotherly sweetness, Paul Hollywood's gruff criticism, and a dozen nervous, jolly bakers is utterly irresistible. I don't know if the whole series' episodes are available on iPlayer still, but if you can see the cakes in episode 1, they were amazing. They had to bake cakes with patterns or pictures on the inside... exceptional. Are you watching it?

And now for something completely different. My very dear friend Lorna came to visit earlier in August and (despite she being a recently married uber-professional journalist, and me being... well, old) we made gingerbread and decorated it! I only have two cutters, so they were gingerbread cats and gingerbread teapots. And we didn't stint on the squeezy icing...