We won't mention the words 'New Year's Detox'

Nothing can be as good at banishing the after-Christmas-blues as a baking session with your best-friend. My first new recipe of this week was fudge. F (best-friend in question) received a copy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall River Cottage Everyday, and it was this fudge recipe that caught our eyes. We started out with the salted pecan variety. My only previous attempt at cooking with sugar like this was when, aged about 11, I made and burnt toffee (few smells one creates in the kitchen are as revolting in burnt sugar) before I understood the importance of a sugar thermometer. So this time, I had a thermometer in hand, and F and I watched our bubbling pan like sugar-starved hawks. Despite whipping it off the hob the second it hit the required temperature, we overheated it.  It seems sugar and butter keep on cooking after they are removed from the hob, as they trap heat rather well. It turned to something that looked like sand when F beat the chopped pecans in. Once it had got below scalding temperature, we tried some, declared it nice and squashed it into our prepared tray to cool  - - pressing extra hard with a metal spoon in the hope it would hold together and chop into squares. Had I been cooking on my own, that would probably have been an end to it as I am lazy and quite able to satisfy myself with a nice tasting accident. F, however, is made of stronger stuff and suggested we try again with the basic vanilla recipe. This time we were quicker to take it off the hob, and beat it by hand (the stages after the fudge has been removed from the heat don't take anything like as long as Hugh's longest estimates). It worked well and has sustained us all week -- although we did manage to turn out the pecan accident and this, I think, tasted even nicer!

I am now going to turn hypocrite and relate that despite promising never to cook with James Martin amounts of fat, I did just that this week when I made his asparagus soup. I've always thought that boiling something as expensive and delicious as asparagus to the point that it will blend is a mistake. However, we were low on supplies this week, but happened to have most of the ingredients for this. The soup is poured around an island of potatoes, watercress and fried asparagus tips. I added bacon to this, as it was the day before my lovely other half  (S's) birthday, and he believes bacon improves most things (I think on this occasion it did). I've probably been doing Mr Martin a disservice, his proportions of cream and butter are so delicious! (We won't mention the calories.)

For my final new recipe this week, I made S a birthday cake. I always try to make birthday cakes for him and my very favourite friends. Having always enjoyed a good line in birthday cakes, from the first one I can remember (I was three, it was chocolate and covered in more Smarties than I could count), to truly beautiful ones I had made for me by a dear family friend when I was in primary school- - my favourite being a treasure island with multi-coloured sponge - -to the M&S ones that F has been sourcing for me in recent years; I like to ensure that I hand on some of this sugary love to other people. S likes lemon flavoured cakes, so aiming to top the drizzle cake I made last year, I picked this monster. Let me say this, slowly and emphatically, this cake does not take a mere 55 minutes to make. It took me a little under three hours to construct. Don't get me wrong, as soon as I saw it was the type of sponge that requires egg whites in peaks and a mousse filling I expected it to take ages, and as it was a birthday cake, I didn't mind. As you would expect from a recipe from an organisation as auspicious as Good Housekeeping, it worked brilliantly, despite the sponge being the temperamental without fat type and a filling made with gelatin - - an ingredient I have hitherto avoided ever using. The sponge was light, the filling fluffy, S loved it and it shows I'm rather fond of him.