Baking Subscription - The Final Box

 Long term readers will remember that I used to subscribe to a baking thing where every month I got a recipe, a set of dry ingredients and a list of the fresh ones I needed to supply myself and I then baked the cake/biscuits/muffins whatever with varying degrees of success. I stopped after three years because the recipes were getting a bit repetitive and I had collected a lot of nice ones along the way. Somehow two boxes from the final year stayed on the kitchen worktop unregarded for a very long time. 

Son no 2 was home for a week's holiday last week* and this seemed a perfect opportunity to make the strawberry shortcake celebration cake. especially as strawberries are coming into the supermarkets just now. It was a real joint effort; I made the cake and shortbread, Son No 2 made the strawberry compote and the OH whipped the cream and did the assembly and decoration ( decoration being, as long term readers will also be aware, my weakness when it comes to baking. 

A couple of photos

We all did a great job and the cake was delicious. 

As for the other box, which was soft pretzels and which I really had no motivation to make, as we are not really pretzel people, I raided it for the dry ingredients, labelled them for future use and dumped the box and recipe. So that really is the end of the baking boxes. It was fun while it lasted and I had the sense to stop it when it stopped being fun. And this last cake is definitely one to repeat for special summer occasions. 

* His presence accounts for my being MIA as far as the blog is concerned. Normal service now resumed although, much to the OH's disgust I suspect, there will be a lot of what he calls 'banging on about books' over the next couple of weeks.