A little sunshine!

What a difference a day can make - Saturday we had flurries of snow again, which actually disappeared quite quickly, but the wind is so bitterly cold at the moment.  Sunday however was quite sunny, so Beanie dog and I went for a lovely walk in the sunshine, just our usual walk which is about 3 miles.  I wrapped up well as the wind is so cold, but once I got walking I was soon warm. It was nice to be out in the fresh air, but I was also looking forward to getting back home into the warm again as I had been baking....

....  I had made biscuits and a date, apple and walnut cake.  I had made the cake before (a recipe I often use from Delia), but trying to make it a little lower in fat content I added apple puree in place of the butter.  I pinched this idea from 'an almost no fat banana bread' that I found here - which is also yummy - so it was a bit of an experiment, but it turned out very well and the cake was lovely and moist and full of flavour.

The biscuits were a new recipe to me - Apricot and Almond cookies, they turned out lovely and soft and chewy.  This recipe came from Cake Days by the Hummingbird bakery. C and I found this book in a remainders book shop when she was home last week for a few days, it was incredibly cheap so we just had to get it!  We sat and looked through all the recipes and decided we would probably make most of them at some point, but I wanted to give these cookies a try.

I will certainly be making them again! So a little sunshine, a good walk and cake - what a great Sunday afternoon :-)