Christmas is almost here. Ingrid, Adrian and I decorated the tree today; Nysse watched with great interest.

Then I made mince pies.

In the past I’ve mostly stayed out of this project – Eric was always the master baker, and my mother sometimes came here for a Christmas baking session, so there wasn’t room or need for me to get involved. They always made it seem very tricky: the filling bubbled out of the pie, the edges didn’t stay closed. Either I was lucky, or I somehow absorbed their learnings by osmosis – my first attempt came out great. Not picture perfect – there was a little bit of leakage – but much better than I expected, based on watching them work.