I always say that I don’t really have a sweet tooth. When people ask me if I like chocolate, my first answer is no. Then, I clarify that I don’t hate it, I just don’t feel like eating it, usually. Most people are surprised, and some have even told me I’m crazy. Fair enough.

Usually, I don’t eat biscuits, or cake, or ice cream… None of those things. However, I like baking.

I find baking very difficult, and I’m aware I’m not a good baker. I always struggle, mainly because I can’t follow basic instructions. OK, I can, I just choose not to. When I cook, I usually make my own interpretation of a recipe, either because I don’t have the exact ingredients, or because I’m too lazy to measure properly. My go-to technique is if a packet of something weights, for example, 250g and I only need 100g. I know half of the packet will be 125g, so I need a bit less than that. Of course, I sort of eye what half of a packet is.

When cooking main dishes, this is normally not a problem and I can swap ingredients for those I like, or add more or less of this and that, and it still tastes amazing. However, baking is more of an exact science.

It’s been only recently that I bought my first scales and measuring cups, so you can only imagine what I was producing before… I hate having to measure exactly. I don’t like not knowing the difference between the different types of sugar (who cares?) and having to have three different kinds of flour in my cupboard is a pain.

For this reason, I usually have issues when baking, even though I really like it.

I normally bake something and then bring it to work. Some things, like the Banana Bread Bites, I can leave a sample for my brother to taste, others, like the apple crumble below, I can’t, as it would look terrible to bring it to work, a piece missing!

My baking usually comes from the BBC and their Good Food websites, like this apple crumble recipe. I must say not only I like it, but the feedback I received was very good, so I’m quite happy with the result. Six other people ate it, and none got sick (as far as I know), so that’s what I call results!

Here are some photos for you to drool over!

The star of the show, the apples, and I couldn’t get the colour right on the photo…




It was fun to dig in with my hands and mix the butter and flour for the crumble, even if it made it difficult to take photos with the camera at the same time!




No, these are not potato wedges. These are apple pieces, after I mixed them with the sugar, flour and cinnamon.


Before the oven…

And after! It was a good one, and it lasted for… maybe 20 minutes!

I’m happy they seemed to enjoy eating it as much as I enjoyed baking it.

Now, what will I bake next?