I’ve been looking forward, now that I can find things in my new kitchen, to getting back to the fun part of cooking. For me, cooking fulfils two needs that I have. Firstly, the obvious need of feeding the family.

Secondly, the fun aspect of cooking something just for the heck of it and because you think everyone will like it.

Many different dishes fall into this category of “fun”. There’s the good old Shepherd’s Pie – which everyone loves and is almost treated as medicine in this house. I swear there’s not a minor illness that can’t be cured or at least improved, by Shepherd’s Pie.

Then there’s the expensive “once in a blue moon” type dishes, like Salmon & Leek filo parcels. Oh gosh, but they’re good.

Then there comes the experimental dishes such as the one that hubby investigated at the weekend. One of our new neighbours had given us a whole heap of cookbooks, one of which was all about cooking with spice. I can see we’ll be indulging in a lot of the recipes featured in this volume in the weeks to come! Anyway, he was intrigued by the recipe for “Cinnamon Balls” – cue much chuckling behind hands and comedy winking – and as we were shopping the day after, decided to give it a go.

They are incredibly simple, involving primarily ground almonds, egg whites, caster sugar and, not surprisingly, rather a lot of cinnamon. They also have the added bonus of your being able to indulge in a two-egg yolk, one egg, omelette or scrambled eggs for lunch the day after.

Having formed them into little balls, you give them a bit of a squish and bake them. Once cooled, dust them with icing sugar and hey presto!

Deliciousness – especially with a cup of coffee, or ice cream.

Then, there’s the indulgent side of fun cooking. The one which makes you, on a Thursday evening, hatch plans to do some baking at the weekend. You tell yourself it’ll be alright, because you’ve got people coming over who can help you eat the results, so you won’t have to eat it all alone. ~ cue angelic look ~

This is the indulgent side that has you whipping up an enormous Victoria Sponge cake. *grin* Naughty, but nice, but ….. oh, so naughty. *chuckle*

I haven’t baked a TRUE Victoria Sponge since I was a little lass. This was an incredibly simple recipe where you threw the entire collection of ingredients (except the cream, icing sugar and jam, of course!) into a bowl, whisk like crazy, then turn into sandwich tins and bake for 25 mins.

Couldn’t be easier.

They came out of the oven hugely dome-shaped and about twice the size I was expecting. However, once cooled, they had calmed down and were a bit less of a comedy cake.

Even so, I’ve had to give three big slices to our neighbour, owing to the aforesaid friends not coming over after all. Well, we couldn’t eat it ALL on our own, could we. Could we?