There are certain foods I am not a huge fan of eating, yet I still appreciate them as an art form because of the skill involved in their creation. Macarons are an example of this (a shocking admission, isn’t it?), as are souffles.

At one place I worked, we made our souffles a la minute. An order would come in, and we would start whipping the egg whites by hand, adding the sugar slowly, then finally incorporating the resulting meringue into a fruit flavoured base. Quantities were ‘eye-balled’, rather than measured, so it was very crucial to make sure you tasted everything before sliding the little perfectly shiny copper pot filled with souffle mix into the hot oven. No matter how many I may have made, I still got great pleasure from seeing the well risen end product swiftly dispatched by the waiter to the dining room.

The most memorable souffle I have ever eaten, was one served to us at Claude’s several years ago. Six of the most perfectly risen souffles arrived simultaneously at the table. We were instructed to make an indent in our souffles with a spoon, though which a waiter then poured a gloriously boozy custard. I ate -every- single last spoonful of it. It was wonderful and warming, and a tremendous way to end a meal.

A good friend recently asked me for help in finding some suitable non-fruit based souffle recipes that she could use. I tried two, which with a bit of luck, ended up being very successful. Both souffles had great lift, were very stable, and were cooked just the way I prefer souffles to be – set around the outside, with a melting texture in the middle.

No recipe today, as I just wanted to share some pictures. It was my first time baking souffles at home, so I was keen to try my hand at photographing them too. The pictures turned out fairly well, even if the whole process was a combination of being a little frantic and hilarious at the same time. And you know what, I tasted them, and think I may be a fan of “certain” souffles after all!

Is it just me, or does holiday baking seem to revolve around a lot of dried fruit? Currants and mixed peel for Christmas tarts, dried cranberry stuffing for Thanksgiving turkeys and for Easter, raisin-studded hot cross buns… Mind you, it’s not like I’m complaining. Some of my best friends are raisins.

Every year I make it a point to bake my own hot cross buns. Most years, I experiment with new recipes and last year, I made these which I actually still remember quite fondly. This year, I’ve only managed to find time to try one recipe.

But what a recipe it is. Dan Lepard’s recipe for spiced stout buns have a fantastic crumb and great depth of flavour from the use of stout (James Squire Porter, in my case) and black tea for soaking the fruit in, as well as a generous quantity of ground cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. They were so tasty, B and I inhaled two each, straight from the oven.

I don’t mean two tiny bite-sized treats either. These are door-stopper sized buns, sticky with sugar glaze and heavy with juicy raisins. Eat two and you may want to consider skipping dinner. But eating two was the only way I knew how to adequately explain their deliciousness.

Forget Simnel cake, cookies shaped like bunnies and chickens and forget chocolate Easter eggs (you can get those at half price after Easter anyway). Trust me, all you need is a hot cross bun or two, ripped from a still-warm baker’s dozen, and a pot of hot tea. The rest of the holiday will sweetly unfold.

As December looms, I’m thinking of spices, family, Christmas shopping, baking, heatwaves, and baking in heatwaves with ice-cream and chilled watermelon.

Something about this past year, has changed.

Now the year is almost at it’s end, it’s my conclusion that this year has been nothing at all like I had expected. For various reasons, this is both a good and a bad thing, and for similar reasons, it has caused me to wonder more about where I want to be heading. People who know me will recognise this as being highly unusual, as I am typically a very directionless and under-planned kind of person. I operate rather laboriously along the lines of hey, let’s pick a path and then see what happens. If it doesn’t work out, I simply backtrack and choose a different adventure instead.

Fortunately, apathy doesn’t seem to wash past a certain age, and there are at least a few more things I wish to accomplish before the lower back pain eventually takes over. Something has me wanting to aim for new things. It’s true I may never realise them, but I’m excited simply for the fact these ideas are blowing away the dust from the attic in my head.

So pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea, and a mince tart or two (I made so many of these! Big ones, small ones.. they’re all going to good homes soon). I promise I’ll be telling you more in good time.