The Walking Dead gingerbread hospital

It's been five years since my first and only attempt to make a gingerbread house. I had enough gingerbread that time to make two small houses - one for my close friend who I nearly always meet for a drink on Christmas Eve, and one for my sister.

This year a different friend had to cancel her 40th birthday party because her little boy was ill in hospital. She said she felt like Daryl from The Walking Dead when he was trapped in the Sanctuary and forced to listen to Easy Street over and over - because another family in the same ward kept playing Three Little Kittens to soothe their poorly girl.

Once her boy was feeling better and her girl was off school for the holidays (and I was on holiday from one of my jobs, working at a school), we planned to meet up for a belated birthday/early Christmas lunch. I had an idea of making a gingerbread hospital (like the one Rick wakes up in during the first episode) on the outside that is the Sanctuary on the inside.

As ever, my ideas are usually better in theory than in practice, but hey - it kind of worked and my friend seemed to get what it was. Although the figure inside which was meant to be her as Daryl needed some definition for the arms and folded legs - she thought it was a handbag. Whoops.

You might be able to spot the record player, the character Jesus (who would have had brown hair if I had brown icing), Lucille, and a random star that looks more like a spider's web.

What was impressive to me is that I managed to carry it on two crowded trains to her flat without it collapsing. Royal icing is an amazing invention! (No, I don't make my own, as my Great British Bake Off book recommended. Gingerbread buildings take long enough to make without whisking egg whites as well.)

And if you like torturing yourself, here's a 30-minute loop of Easy Street.

Review of the year: Winter 2016

Only a few weeks to go before the days start getting longer again. I can't wait - apart from Christmas, I'm not a fan of dark mornings and evenings.

Winter flowers included 28 candelabras for an event at Middle Temple Hall celebrating Shakespeare (which chimed in nicely with the #floristfilms hashtag: 28 Candelabras Later). It's where the first recorded performance of Twelfth Night took place in 1602, so it was a real privilege to do the flowers for this event. The flowers were not so much flowers, as trailing ivy, which hopefully created an ethereal, Midsummer Night's Dream feel to the hall.

There were scented arrangements of pine, spruce (aka blue pine), eucalyptus, stocks, and lavender, along with pussy willow, alstromeria, silver brunia, silver kochia, and white hypericum for Neal's Yard Remedies in Sevenoaks.

The scent of the foliage, herbs, and flowers nicely complimented the Christmassy smells of cinnamon, clove and mandarin that filled the shop. Pussy willow has an irresistible, tactile quality, and it lasts for weeks and weeks, which is wonderful for a shop display.

Oh, and there was white, glittery skimmia. The glitter was barely noticeable in the arrangements, but it was all over my workspace and buckets and took weeks to finally clear!

There were satsumas for Father Christmas.

And on Boxing Day, after eating leftover Quorn roast (I used Nigella's ginger-glazed ham recipe), I used my leftover flowers to try to create some modern ikebana arrangements. Ikebana is not the most obvious style for Christmas flowers, but one of my lovely Canadian cousins sent me Keiko's Ikebana book to challenge my Western-wild floristry style, and I thought I'd give it a go. I failed my natural line arrangement practical at college, along with the rest of my class - this Japanese style of floristry did not come naturally to any of us (we scraped passes on our resits though!). A lovely tutor from my diploma course, Neil Bain, encouraged me to share my efforts on Twitter - and his generous response to my photos was reassuring.

The bowl arrangement is not-quite moribana (which means "piled on") and the vase arrangement is not-quite nageire (which means "thrown in"). It looks deceptively simple in the book, but it is such a challenge if it's not your natural style. But hey - it's good to be challenged sometimes.

Now there's just over a month until Easter, I can think about clearing out my Easter leftovers with some spring ikebana.

I'll finish with some gratuitous Christmas baking photos...even though it's completely the wrong weather and time of year for eggnog cupcakes and mince pies! It was the first time I'd made eggnog from scratch, and like many homemade things, it was time-consuming but worth the effort. You also get to drink the leftover eggnog, which is a nice bonus.

A Good Friday tradition: The Widow's Son

Nine years ago, I heard about a pub in the East End that kept a wonderful tradition every Good Friday. A hot cross bun would be added to a collection of hot cross buns that had grown each year. This tradition started after a woman, whose son had left home to be a sailor, baked a hot cross bun in preparation for his return. He never returned home, but she never lost hope, and continued to bake a bun for him each year.

So my friends and their six-month-old baby went to The Widow's Son in Bromley-by-Bow, and sat in the beer garden on a Good Friday as beautiful and sunny as today's. When it was time for a sailor to add a new bun to the net of old buns (most of which, heartbreakingly, had been destroyed in a fire), we went over but found it hard to get decent photos, being so far back. So here's one, which I took before we left. And the sign outside the pub.

There's a lovely post here, with some much better photos - the blogger spoke to some of the people who have been involved in the tradition.

As for me, I just love the continuing bond of the mother and her son, which is still being honoured now, long after both have died. I think it's beautiful testament to the strength of love, and the need to express sadness and hope and all of the other feelings that come up weeks, months, years, decades after a bereavement.

Looking at the photos now reminds me of a couple of things I saw in Liverpool last October: an exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool on women and poppies, which included a talk about white poppies. These were originally worn by women whose sons had died in the war. However, they were criticised for wearing white poppies instead of red, even though they were expressing their own, very personal loss.

It also made me think of Tracey Emin's neon artwork which hangs in the gothic cathedral on Liverpool's Hope Street. I first saw it there when I visited Liverpool in 2010, and I was relieved to see it was still there last year. It could be read in so many different ways, and I think that's one of the loveliest things about art: that very personal, emotional connection we might have with some pieces.

I can sing a rainbow

There is a TV programme tonight all about people giving up sugar. I gave up sugar (and a bunch of other things) once for a year and all I can say is: never again. Now I aim for five fruit and veg a day and fit in nice things like cake around them, no food-shaming and less body-shaming, and that seems to make me much happier than I was during the sugar-free year.

So if you are not a fan of sugar, you might want to stop reading now.

Everyone else: here is my first attempt at rainbow cake. I have wanted to make it ever since I tried the gorgeous one from Cloud 9 in Brighton a few years ago.

I made this for my friend at the weekend. The natural colours (purple and blue) came out more muted than the artificial ones, and I am too impatient to do a proper crumb coating of buttercream, wait for it to dry, and then ice properly - but apart from that, I think it worked. It was a basic 2oz of butter, sugar and self-raising flour to 1 egg, and I used 4 eggs. I added vanilla and orange blossom to the cake and the buttercream.

I'm also sharing photos of a polychromatic bouquet I made as a wedding gift for a couple last year, which I haven't got around to sharing here. It was late summer, and there was a mixture of British and imported flowers as well as stuff I'd grown. It smelled amazing.

I can sing a rainbow, too.

Hot cross buns and Easter egg trails

Happy Easter! I hope you are enjoying a long weekend and a bit of a rest today.

This week started off quite well. I had an unexpectedly free day (when I thought I would be finishing my research proposal, which I had somehow sent in a day early), so I decided to bake. I was in a baking mood after making Debs Dust Bunny's crumb cake muffins a few weeks before - I was halfway through an essay and wanted a break and a snack. I made these in 45 minutes!

So this week, I baked some fancy-pants Earl Grey and orange hot cross buns to take to my friend's in the evening. They looked nice and they smelt amazing while they were baking...but they tasted a bit meh. Maybe I needed to steep the tea for longer and use more orange zest. Also, I am really rubbish at any kind of proper bread dough - I don't have the patience to knead thoroughly for five minutes, let alone ten.

As it happens, my friend had also planned to have hot cross buns, and had bought some from the supermarket and from Konditor and Cook. I was bunned out by the time I left! I picked a primrose from his garden when I left - it had such a delicate scent.

My friend gave me some lemon chiffon cake in lieu of an egg, which was much appreciated later in the week. Coincidentally, I noticed a Twitter friend had just been to a Konditor and Cook piping class. Becs (who I met at the Depressed Cake Shop in Bromley) came away from her class with a Curly Wurly cake and two trays of brownies!

For years, I have wanted to take my autistic sister on an Easter egg hunt. She has never been on one, and there is not much that she is enthusiastic about, but chocolate is one thing. She was in a good mood on Good Friday, so we went to the Red House in Bexleyheath, which was doing the National Trust egg trail. The house is gorgeous - it was created by and for William Morris, in collaboration with his architect friend, Philip Webb. Fortunately, the grounds aren't too big - I think my sister would have been impatient otherwise! We went around with our piece of paper and I asked her to stamp the paper every time we came across a stamper along the way. She got a bit fed up of doing it towards the end, so I finished it for her. After a tea break in the cafe, we went back to the start of the trail and I asked her to give in her completed trail. The lovely ladies there (I don't know if they were staff or volunteers, but they were so friendly and a real credit to Red House) went to get her prize and one of them said, "Have we got a blue one?" because my sister was wearing a blue jacket. My sister doesn't often look pleasantly shocked, but she was upon receiving her egg! She obviously thought that the trail was just me trying to get her to do something educational/nature-based.

The next day, we went to Hall Place to do their trail. Theirs was much more spread out - I saw a few little kids crying because they'd gone around once and hadn't found all of the letters (which spelled out a phrase)! My sister also got fed up halfway through, and so I had to run around in the drizzle and finish it off for her so she could get her prize.

I took a few moments to appreciate the spring beauty in the gardens - lots of pretty heather, magnolia, and the start of apple blossom.

 There were also strong-scented hyacinths and narcissi, and cowslips in the open and nestled amongst the hyacinths.

And here are some Easter leftovers: too short stems of forsythia, scented 'Double Smiles' narcissi and 'Atlantic' muscari, all from the garden or greenhouse.

I love how the forsythia and narcissi are the same vibrant yellow! Perfect partners for Easter.