Have you missed me? I am “back in the saddle” as they say and while still recovering from my surgery on New Year’s Eve, I wanted to get back to some kind of normality so decided I would spend a little time in the kitchen and Mary Berry‘s bible has 2 recipes– her fairy cakes and then on the next page, iced fairy cakes so rather than do this twice, I combined it, made the fairy cakes and iced them!

I made 2 batches of fairy cakes, one plain as per Mary Berry’s recipe and one to which I added cocoa so they were chocolate fairy cakes and the icing had cocoa in it to make it chocolatey too. A simple recipe and probably really easy to do but making them was the longest I had stood in the kitchen for a while.

The results were good, I was pleased with the cakes and as they are very moorish , I gave my hubby’s mum and dad some to save our waistlines.

I didn’t put many details on about my recent ill health and surgery, but I had an amount of time where I thought I might have a serious illness and was “off my game” for a while. Luckily, I had a lovely GP who sent me to the hospital and I found myself on a Fast Track to surgery rollercoaster. I had never had surgery before and was a little anxious to say the least. I have come out of it the other side, recovering well and the results show that my fears can be laid to rest. To give you a flavour of what I went through, you can read further here:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Hysteroscopy/Pages/Introduction.aspx

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Laparoscopy/Pages/Introduction.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oophorectomy

On a lighter note, I hope you have managed to watch The Great Comic Relief Bake Off http://www.rednoseday.com/whats-going-on/whats-on-tv/bake-off, it certainly helped my recovery and gave me the motivation to get back to my baking challenge. I will also be making a donation to this very worthwhile cause and ask that if you can , you do so too.

Finally, and yes this is one of my longer blogs, I would like to thank my hubby, my mum and my other mum and dad for all the love, help and support over the last month or two, without you guys, it would have been so much tougher. Much love to you all. x