Cold.

Another grey day, a lot colder but with a good wind blowing. I was able to get some washing done, dried and ironed after a marathon session in the kitchen.

I iced both of the Christmas cakes today. I'm not so happy with the second loaf shaped cake which I had to keep weighing to make sure that the final parcel stays under 2kg. I only put marzipan on the top and kept the icing fairly thin. I'm sure it will still taste good even if it doesn't look like a traditional Christmas cake. If I wanted to post the round cake I'd either have to cut in half or pay a fortune in postage. Small parcel (under 2kg) rate is very reasonable but go even 100 gms over and it goes up by four or five times. I also made a start on the chocolate truffles. The main part is a very simple ganache, what's fiddly and messy is coating the truffles with chocolate. Nuts, cocoa and coconut are a lot easier. I've been saving suitable boxes for a while and have had fun undoing them and turning them inside out. The Post Office has to accept anything that has a name and address stuck on the outside but I think it is better to have a plain parcel so that the address can be seen clearly.

Last night at choir we found out that we have one more week, hooray. We also really need the practice as we spent most of yesterday on Something Inside by Labi Siffre which we will be singing at a wedding. Usually as altos we get to sing the tune but for Something Inside we sing a lot of OOOs and we just couldn't get one section where we have to do a key change and jump in with half a line of words a bit behind the people singing the tune. We'd work on it, think we had it but by the time the tenors and basses had gone through their section we'd forgotten again. Oh well, part of the reason for joining the choir was to stretch my brain and create new pathways. Certainly felt stretched last night.