Hi everyone! I feel as if it’s a lifetime since I last updated my blog. My last post was just around Easter, I think. As soon as we got into the second week of the Easter holidays, I began to feel unwell. I have been using HRT for nearly two years and due to the national shortage, my usual HRT was unavailable to me. I felt lousy and at rockbottom. Nothing interested me and I felt like hiding away. I couldn’t stop crying. I had no motivation to do any jobs or any interest in baking or my crochet and cross stitch. I knew something was badly wrong when the one things which help me to get through difficult times, weren’t helping me.

Thankfully, though I managed to get some more HRT and after a couple of weeks with my anxiety levels through the roof, I managed to feel a lot more like myself. I still feel tired on some days and as I write at the beginning of June, I can feel the anxiety levels building back up again.

I did bake brownies and blondies for my son’s birthday at the beginning of May. Then we went away on holiday for two weeks.

Mr S celebrated his 60th birthday last year and I was about to turn 50 so we went to New York on the Queen Mary 2. We spent 3 days in New York, then flew back to the UK. It was indeed the trip of a lifetime and we found the ship so relaxing and just what we needed. It was the first time we had been abroad since the pandemic although we have had a couple of holidays to the Isle of Arran and a long weekend away in the Scottish Highlands. We both needed the break so much. I’ll be writing a couple of separate posts about baking related items I’ve bought, but they’ll be coming soon, I promise.

I haven’t had a proper birthday cake as such as I haven’t had a full blown 50th birthday party. Instead, I am having lots of smaller celebrations with different groups of friends.

I made some NYC Themed “Big Apple” Cupcakes to share with my work colleagues. These were vanilla based sponges but the icing was made with Toffee Apple icing sugar from Sugar and Crumbs. I bought some toppers from Ebay.

After going back to work, I thought I needed to get back into the swing of things with my blogging and also with my #100bakeschallenge. I hadn’t done much with it over the past few weeks, but I want to complete it by the end of the year. I chose to make some Triple Chocolate Cookies which were adapted from Jane’s Patisserie’s NYC style Chocolate Chip Cookies with added cocoa powder instead.

Another addition to the #100bakeschallenge was some Blueberry Muffins. I’ll be writing up the recipe with a separate blog post for that, so watch this space.

Also, I attempted Garibaldi Biscuits for the first time! I’ve never been overly keen on them and have only eaten them if that’s all that’s on offer. It was another #100bakeschallenge and I chose this to use up some currants I had left.

As I type, its the morning after the weekend of the Jubilee Celebrations. I baked a few things to donate to my local village hall Coffee Morning and also to have at the village picnic. We were so full, we had loads of leftovers.

Also, there is another change afoot with SmartCookieSam. I’ll explain further in another post.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx