As usual I over-complicated the Christmas cake this year - its painted fondant with marzipan leaves and piped decoration, and is meant to be the scene in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge sees chained spirits float past his window. I put "The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went" round the edge - a bit grim maybe but robins are dull.
This year's gingerbread house has a double pitched roof which mired me in a geometry for way too long, I could hear every Maths teacher I've ever had sighing as I tried to do Pythagoras, failed, then realised I didn't even need it. The pattern is emphatically not Union Jacks (not a nationalist project this), I was going for Tudor half-timbered actually. Sadly it suffered many collapses but eventually I smothered its innards with enough icing to keep it together long enough to be transported Up North for New Years.
