Off the wagon...

Following a 2.5Ib gain at Slimming World on Tuesday, which I totally deserved after my birthday week. Yes, that’s right Birthday week. Somehow I have never been able to understand that birthDAY should be just that, a day. So in true form, I ate my way through the week...and after 3 fry ups, dinner out 3 times, a Chinese, an Indian and the usual sneaky chocolate bar here and there, I got the gain I was waiting for. I know you’re all thinking I deserved more, so I’ll let you into a little secret. On weigh day I only eat a bag of popcorn, which obviously has nothing to do with calories but is all about the weight. I also go nil by mouth from 2pm to make sure my bladder is well and truly empty by 5.30pm! If it works it works but who knows...I mean I’ve been so desperate in the past I’ve removed all of my underwear and even my wedding ring in the hope of losing half a pound. Don’t worry clothes were still on! Anyway, I’ll get back to the point. Following the gain I settled down on Tuesday evening, with a bar of chocolate and tuned in to my favourite show! THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF!!! Paul Hollywood, the silver fox. He kicks off this year with a biscuit week, which he points out is unusual for GBBO as they normally start with cakes. Channel 4 sure know how to mix it up?!? As I mentioned in my previous blog, I’m a complete blagger when it comes to baking. Actually, I’m a complete blagger in life. So, given that I have never made any biscuits I start hoping my talent of blagging will come in handy. My first technical challenge - A wagon wheel. Haven’t had one for a very long time. To me, they’re that typical chocolate bar that your mum would buy from Kwiksave when you were a child and stick in your lunch box every day for a year. Well, that or a Club! Obviously, I’m cheating at the technical slightly. I’m not actually going to do the baking until the day after. I mean I’m already in bed watching GBBO, so I’m not getting back up. This does mean that I’m not doing it blind like the contestants. After doing a bit of googling / cheating Wednesday, I stopped and bought all of the ingredients required on my way home from work. You would not believe how many times I debated buying Jam and marshmallows throughout the day. However, I stayed strong and decided I should do exactly what they had to do. I came home to a screaming, overtired and stressed 20 month old. Stressed yes. Only about the fact he had to sit in his high chair but apparently this can be very traumatic. So after a few cuddles and trips to the naughty chair he went to bed and I began my first challenge. Biscuits in, jam on, marshmallow.... It was all going smoothly and then I started getting stressed. No, it wasn’t because my husband was trying to put me in the highchair. It wasn’t because I can’t bake. It wasn’t because I was running out of time. It was because I was using two different recipes for marshmallow and I couldn’t scale down. Maths. Never my strong point. I starting pacing around the kitchen and shouting at my poor husband, who often gets the brunt of my new hobby. But he was too busy messing around with a camera, a story for another time. Once I realised I used 200ml of water instead of 42ml because that’s an easy mistake? I needed to start again but I only had two leaves of gelatine left. Here we go again with the bloody maths! Anyway I finally got it. Can you believe I made my own jam and marshmallow. Jam was far too thick and had to be scraped from the pan (which is still soaking now but may have reached the end of it’s life). Marshmallow, surprising good!!! Yay! 22 minutes left on the clock. Chocolate melting. Start coating them, thinking I’ve got this in the bag. 4 minutes left. Ran out of bloody chocolate. My alarm goes off. Unfortunately, Sandi and Noel did not stroll in my kitchen and call time. I cannot actually believe it but I’ve covered all but one... Far too runny and completely unfinished but I’m pretty chuffed with myself. My biscuits taste amazing, which means another gain at fat club next week! Looking much better this morning but I’m staying strong and giving them to my much much skinnier best friend. She also comes to fat club with me. Secretly, I’m only going to carry on baking so I can let her sample them. Skinny cow. Now for another busy weekend of baking cakes. My first order of cupcakes came in yesterday. Baby shower. I have thought about putting notes inside them, almost like a fortune cookie. They would read - “You will always have snot on your clothes now”, “When you’re in the shower and you hear your child screaming, they’re not. You’re just mental”, “It’s likely you will get covered in a mustard coloured poo very soon” and “Highchairs can cause stress” On that note, I will leave you until next week and thank you for being bothered to read this much longer blog!