A delicious day

Cranberry & cream cheese muffins

As expected, there has been no time since my last post to dip my toe into the world of French patisserie. The annual Sunday get-together to commemorate my brother's anniversary took precedence last weekend. Every year we all make our way to the old family homestead to remember him - we talk, we laugh and we eat. Boy do we eat. As you will know by now, I'm a girl who likes to whip up a cake or two - all I need is the merest hint of a gathering of two or more people and out comes the apron and spatula. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to get slightly carried away, baking and icing with scant regard for the actual number of people attending. The problem (if too much cake could ever be classed as a problem) is that two of my sisters usually don their own aprons and bake something lovely too. And then there's Mam, who likes to have an apple tart for the table. Well, before you know it, the (rather large) wooden table at home is groaning with the weight of baked goods laid out upon it. 

Given the excess of previous years, myself and No.1 Sister agreed to one cake each, but neglected to send a memo to No.2 Sister. I decided on the ever-popular chocolate fudge cake (always a winner at the anniversary), while No.1 Sister was bringing her star bake - a coconut layer cake of gigantic proportion, being an American recipe (you could literally feed an army with this one cake). 'Never knowingly under-cater' is a mantra that my mother lives by and one that I clearly absorbed from a young age. So naturally, I began to doubt the one-cake policy almost as soon as I got off the phone. 

Since I was in need of a bit of comfort baking on the day of the actual anniversary (last Friday), and knowing that No.3 Sister is not a fan of either chocolate or coconut cake, I thought I'd rustle up a batch of fairy cakes. Not satisfied with that (I know, I know), I reckoned I should also bring something with me the following day that we could enjoy with a coffee, as the rest of the cakes were for Sunday. I had some frozen cranberries in the freezer to use up and I remembered a rather fabulous recipe for Cranberry and Cream Cheese Muffins that I had made once before. (If you'd like to try them, here's the link to the recipe - wonderful as is, but more so if you add the zest of half a lemon to the mix - it really makes the flavours sing. I stirred it in with the cranberries, but I'm going to add it to the cream-cheese mixture next time too, which I think will be even better.)

A chocolate and coconut cake medley -
for when you simply can't choose which cake you'd like.

Now to be fair, we did indeed enjoy the muffins, which were just as delicious as I'd remembered. The problem was that we didn't manage to polish them all off - so that meant the remaining seven joined the fairy cakes, chocolate cake, coconut cake and apple tart on the table the next day. Then No.2 Sister arrived, arms quivering under the weight of a batch of mince-meat and apple strudels and two tea-bracks. Ladies and Gentlemen, we had done it again - the annual sugar-coma Sunday was under way. Not that I can lay any of the blame at my sisters' respective doors. No.1 Sister stuck to the plan and brought only one (albeit enormous) cake. No.2 Sister didn't get the memo. No, the problem here is mine - I co-authored the memo but still couldn't quite resist the pull of the apron and spatula. Mea culpa. I bake therefore I am. Resistance is futile it seems.

So the anniversary came and went and it was, as it always is, an occasion of mixed emotions - tinged with sadness that my brother wasn't with us, yet also happy, because we were there together, talking, laughing and (as ever) eating. As my brother-in-law said as he was leaving: 'It was a delicious day'. I think my brother would have agreed.