Jam Roly Poly to the end.

Well, this is it, the final recipe. There is a part of me that can't quite believe it's all over. A friend described it like a wedding, you spend so long planning it, carrying out jobs, getting married and then poof it's all finished and you don't quite know what to do with yourself. There is also a part of me which is completely relieved it's all done. My body has rejected all sweets since I made this on Thursday. As a pud it's pretty simple, although I used lard instead of suet which made a really soft dough, and the jam wasn't very good. Lorraine suggests serving it with shop bought custard, but I didn't quite get to one, so home made it is, and it was a thick as it looks, need to practise that one.

I am planning at some point to go through the book and find some stats, I'd be really interested myself too, the basics like flour, butter, sugar and eggs. Overall I'm really proud of myself. Mark didn't really understand why I wanted to do this or why I felt I had to do it within a certain timeframe. But I'm the type of person who needs a deadline, and then I will do anything I can to beat it to get things done early. Mark is the opposite of that, a deadline to him means he has until that point to work, where as I'm one of those annoying people that would rather do it today than leave it until tomorrow.

So, the actual recipes, my favourites. I was asked today my top three so I'll go with those. At the top of the list has to be the chocolate cookies. I have spent so long trying to find that perfect cookie recipe which is chewy and gooey, mmmmmm. My second is the sausage rolls, mainly because they are so easy and they taste really nice, as well as getting Zoe interested in cooking. The third is a difficult one, there are so many to choose from but probably the white chocolate cheesecake, but also the chocolate melting puds. Basically anything which involved chocolate.

Mark's biggest highlight of this was the Asian Ham, he loved this so much he actually made it himself again a week later. He also loved the macaroni cheese and the fruit cake or tea loaf. Looking through my notebook there are just so many fantastic things; breadsticks, mojito cake, ricotta cake, churros. There are so many that I can;t wait to make again.

This is just one page of the plan, it's taken quite a beating over the last couple of months. My copy of Lorraines book is in a terrible state with pages sticking together. I like to keep my cookbooks pretty tidy, but I like to think it's been well loved. So that's it, all done. I'd like to think that a few people have been inspired to try a few things and I would urge any chocolate fan to try the cookies. I think I'll be taking a bit of time off the baking, both I and Mark are hitting a strict diet when we get back from France. I'm definitely going to enjoy someone elses baking for the next week and where better to go to do it?