I am going to hold my hands up now and admit that I am not a fan of baking. Great British Bake Off: yes. Actually getting my knuckles dusty with needing some dough, carefully piping out icing, or gazing into the Kitchen Aid while whipping up a batch of perfectly smooth macaron shells: no. It really doesn't fit in with my skill set. You have to do things very precisely, very accurately and, once the die has been cast - or the dough proved - there is no going back. No negotiation and, if you have tipped in a little extra flour, or forgotten the bicarb, you are doomed to live with the resultant soggy bottom, flat as a pancake Victoria sponge, or dry as hell brownies. There is nothing to be done but face the shame that you aren't the patissier that you thought you were. In short, if I'm not going to win star baker (which I'm very much not), I don't want to play. 

That said, I did come across a recipe idea that pleased me which is baking related. Turns out you can dye sugar to give a sparkly, disco glitter effect. Perfect for topping cakes or biscuits and oh so simple. On the very rare occasions that I am called up to bake something, I am always staggered by how much the accessories, the sprinkles, sparkles and silver balls, cost. They are also almost always in barbie pink. 

It also has the advantage of being incredibly simple. Put a couple of drops of food colouring into some caster sugar, stir through, then bake in a low oven - somewhere around 160 degrees celsius - for around ten minutes. Done. You could go on to grind the sugar down to a finer dust, or leave as is. 

As I have such an aversion to baking, I didn't whip up a wonky, sunken Victoria sponge. Rather I plumped for popcorn. Rainbow glitter popcorn. I covered my popcorn in a mix of the four colours alongside a pinch of salt. Et voila, no soggy bottom, no questions over my crumb structure or raising agents, and instead a guaranteed mood improver that took mere minutes to put together. Winner.