Better late than never.

This project has seen my prowess as a bread maker improve at least 20 fold, and on every attempt, so far this year, I have turned out edible and, even dare I say it, nice bread. A few weeks ago I was inspired further after paying a visit to the nice man who runs the Artisan Bakery in Headingley (go there if you are ever round these parts, no-one in Leeds makes finer bread!). Sam and I lunched on a very nice (entire) loaf of his tomato bread and I was keen to have a go at some strongly flavoured bread of my own, when I happened upon this recipe for some ultra-olivey 'olive and sesame bread'. 'Ah ha', I thought, I too can be an artisan baker.

I should say at this point that I created olive and poppy seed bread, as those were the only seeds I had in my kitchen cupboard. I was suspicious of this recipe as the kneading was so light, only 10 seconds at a time, and I was worried that I was about to produce something with the density of a brick, which I duly did. I could have built myself a very nice barbecue if I'd had a few of them. Now, I won't be quite so hasty as to blame the recipe, I wasn't quite well when I made it; it is very dense though, if you prefer a softer loaf, it probably isn't worth the waiting time. However, Sam and I ate the entire thing in a day, and it was much improved with toasting. The nice baker in Headingley can sleep easy, though...

I can now report back that the sticky toffee muffins with salted caramel buttercream won out in the vote a couple of weeks ago. This was a recipe from last month's Olive Magazine, and was billed as an update to traditional sticky toffee pudding, think a dense sponge cupcake made with dates and topped with slightly salty caramel icing. The topping has dulce de leche in it, so you can't go wrong! I'm often suspicious of cupcakes and have found a number of them to be dry sponges topped with sickly icing, made for aesthetics not taste. Carrie Bradshaw has a lot to answer for.

However, making your own does mean that you can eat them fresh and keep the icing in proportion. These were very good, and the flavour of the sponge strongly resembled sticky toffee pudding. The salt in the icing stops the whole thing from being over sweet, as well as being trendy.

So this brings me to 40 recipes, and I am about where I should be to complete by the end of the year! I have some mackerel fillets for this week, and I have no idea what to do with them, let me know if you do.