Baking Day

(photo from Waitrose.com)

Tuesday this week I went up to London for the Persephone lecture and to have lunch with my son, who I haven't seen for ages- he spends weekends doing this, and if you watch the video of the cyclo-cross event, the last comment is absolutely true, I'm told. The Persephone lecture was by Bee Wilson, and was on the subject Mrs Rundell to Mrs Beeton. Mrs Rundell's book of Domestic Cookery was first published in 1806, by John Murray, and continued to be published until 1841, although the author had died in 1828. Her method of writing recipes was much chattier but less clear than Mrs Beeton's. Mrs Rundell was married to a surgeon , lived in Bath, and had five children who all survived to adulthood. She started writing her book a few years after the death of her husband, as a help to her married daughters in the management of their own domestic arrangements. Bee Wilson's lecture was both enlightening and entertaining, especially her description of following Mrs Rundell's method of making coffee, which made an undrinkable concoction!
However some of the recipes are completely followable.

Saturday was church Christmas Fair day, so Friday was baking day, as I'm on the cake stall again. Having made a fruit cake (earlier in the week), coffee and walnut sponge, Victoria sponge, chocolate cupcakes, gingerbread and some macaroons, I've almost gone off cake for a bit. We did sell everything and I also won a nice bottle of Bordeaux on the bottle Tombola.