Cake

But I won’t be eating any for a while. Which is why I was disappointed when my Genoese sponge was more biscuit than cake.

Every year I give up cake, biscuits, and chocolate for Lent. I know I’ve mentioned this elsewhere. I usually manage to keep to it, even though I fail in my attempt to avoid compensating by eating more crisps. And each year I tell myself that I’ll have a chocolate egg and some cake at Easter and then keep up good habits for the rest of the year, limiting these things to special occasions. Ha! I think the last time I managed that was around 2004 when I extended my “fast” right through until July when we went to holiday to France.

I’ve tried to set myself other time limited goals, such as months with a “u” in them but have but have always failed.

This year has been a bad one for over indulging in food. Meal times were often the focus of the day during lockdown, and MrS took to making ice cream.* Even so I kept to my Lent “fast”. I even tried to limit cakes etc to weekends, then once a day but by late October I should be eating a biscuit after my lunch, cake after supper and a “Pokey Hat”**while we watched TV. Things were getting really out of hand. And then I remembered hearing something on the radio about Advent fasts. That sounded ideal.

I did a bit of research and found it should run from around the 15th November, and strictly speaking could mean avoiding meat, dairy and wine. But as I’m doing it on health rather than religious grounds I’m setting my own rules. Also, I can avoid cakes etc without impinging on MrS’s diet. It’s not fair for him to give things up and it doesn’t make sense for us to eat different main meals. I also decided to start today rather than at the weekend.

So my baking posts for the rest of my challenge will be bread or pastry. Unless I feel really altruistic and bake MrS a cake. I’ll try and encourage him to keep up his Pokey Hat habit, he loves ice cream and is very slim.

So none of these for me until Christmas