November has been a month of two halves . I baked at the beginning and the end but the middle two weeks I couldn’t bake at all and had to limit my time in the kitchen. To someone who loves cooking and baking, this was hard. We were having a new kitchen floor laid and also having a bit of a revamp at the same time. I am over the moon with the new decor and I’ve already enjoyed baking a few things since I got my kitchen back properly.

The S’more Traybake was a good idea in principle. Originally planned for Bonfire Night but I was away for that weekend so it came after! A recipe from one of my Hummingbird Bakery Cookbooks, it was a brownie based bake. Then topped with digestive biscuit crumbs (the British equivalent of Graham crackers) followed by marshmallows. The marshmallows were difficult to cut obviously but what I hadn’t counted on was how hard it was to cut the whole traybake up. I think it had over baked as the brownie had also gone far too cakey for my liking.

I’d love to show you my new personalised cake presentation board. I got it from Rise N Design after coming across them on Twitter and I messaged them about making me a personalised board for photographing my bakes. I’m absolutely over the moon with it as the gingerbread man is so cute. I love it.

The first bake to come out of my revamped kitchen was a Dundee Cake! I was so excited to bake again. I had really missed it. My kitchen smelled wonderful as it was baking. The cake tasted delicious, too.

I love Aero Mint bars so any bake I can put them in, you name it! I put them in these brownies.

I work in a local school as a TA and there was a bake sale going on after school in aid of the Blue Cross. I contributed two dozen plain iced cupcakes to the event, which raised over £100 to the charity.

I had some White Chocolate Twixes in the cupboard so I put them into blondies. They turned out really well.

My absolute favourite biscuit of all time: Empire Biscuits. I can’t get enough of these. Any excuse to make them. My excuse? A pack of Jelly Tots in the cupboard which I would have eaten, had I not stuck them on top of these biscuits!

As we head into December, I’m really looking forward to some Christmas baking. Last year was a struggle. I had so many plans, then at the end of November, I was floored with Covid. Keeping everything crossed I have more chance this year.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx