My plan to bake 52 things in 2013, a spur of the minute almost a new year’s resolution, has made it to 40 items by October. Having completely failed to keep up the monthly reports past May I’m actually quite pleased to find it’s not miles and miles behind. But it is behind.

• Pumpkin & Walnut Cake

I found Ocado stocked American canned pumpkin puree and decided to do something with it. This was a nice cake but not really worth the imported ingredients.

• Coconut Cherry Biscuits

You can’t go wrong with coconut and glacé cherries can you? I think you would have to try hard to do so. These were nice.

• Mushroom Pasties

Getting the hang of making pasties has been one of the best things about this ‘try and bake more’ experiment. I still can’t whack them out with the ease of a tray of mince pies, but I will keep practising.

• Asparagus Quiche

Shop bought quiche has had its day. I have got pretty speedy about this one.

• Apple Pie

I swear I took a photo before eating it. But I must have gone wrong somewhere because there was no photo to be found. Made in individual pots with a pastry top and accompanied by home made vanilla ice cream. Very good.

So that puts me at 45/52 at the end of November and I am relieved to see the finish line in sight. Not because I want to stop baking - the whole idea was to try and turn it from a seasonal Christmassy activity into more of a year round one - but because I was worried that by forgetting to count up I had left myself with too far to go. I’m pretty certain I can manage 7 baking endeavours in December. We will see.