"Even if you're poor, you can still have cake"

This is what my friend Helen said to me when she gave me my leaving present from work, and I think it's a lovely thing to say. The present was The Great British Book of Baking, which has cake recipes and many others, so what she said was literally true, but it's more than that.

Cake.
Not a very good cake, nor a very good picture of it, but it is a cake that I made.

We may be choosing to live on much less money than we used to, but that doesn't mean we have to go without the good things in life. We shall sit by the fire, we shall go for walks in spectacular countryside, and when we have cake, it will be home made, still-warm-from-the-oven cake!