Much to our delight and relief, our son Miles and his wife Lera have recovered from Covid and have done two negative lateral flow tests, so can come for Christmas. They are on their way.

I ended up making the Christmas cake on my own. Miles has helped with it since he was tiny, and when he was away studying I would make it with him in the background on Skype or latterly on Messenger. It seemed a bit strange not having him here helping, eating the fruit as he was chopping it, scraping the bowl and nicking the marzipan as I was trying to roll it and put it in the cake.

I’ve done the same Delia Smith Creole Christmas cake since I first saw it on the telly in the late 80’s. It’s done in two stages: the fruit prepared and gently heated with 3 tablespoons each of rum, brandy, port and cherry brandy (some years I’ve substituted different booze); it also has a small amount of Angostura Bitters, which gives it its distinctive flavour. This is then cooled and kept in a jar for a week (or two, or three, once six) but the time doesn’t seem to change it much.

I woke on Wednesday morning thinking it would make a change to make a wreath-shaped cake instead of the usual square, so used two pans without bottoms that my mum had in graduated sizes. Would it work to use the biggest one on the base of the square (again my mum’s), and grease the smallest one both sides really well, fill the big ring and then push the small one in the centre?

Only one way to find out. Yes, it does. I gave the small one a good wiggle almost as soon as it came out of the oven, it all seemed loose; a quick lift on to another cooling rack, and magically two cakes!

There was one slight problem: I couldn’t think how to make one piece of marzipan do the inside of the ring as well as the outside. Colin reckoned I needed to do a separate strip for the inside, so that’s what I did. It looks slightly messy, but I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it, and it works.

I cut some holly leaves from the marzipan and rolled some holly berries, then used a cook’s blow-torch to scorch the leaves a little to make them stand out more.

It’s a sewing friend’s birthday today, so yesterday’s usual stitching round the kitchen table and pot luck lunch became afternoon tea for her birthday, everyone contributing part of it.

I laid a beautiful charity-shop-find tablecloth with drawn threadwork and filet crochet round the edge, a little Christmas cloth that had been my mum’s, and my great grandma’s tea service. The plate that looks like ice is an old microwave turntable. The cake was cut yesterday for the birthday tea, but as I went to cover it, I realised I could curve it round a little more, and almost make it look whole again!

The little cake from the middle has had marzipan stars on the top, again toasted. No doubt Miles and Lera will take half of what is left back home with them (both cakes, depending how long they stay).