That's it. Sweet mother of holy hell, I'm done! I've spent hundreds of pounds, worked tirelessly for countless hours, finished work and baked myself to exhaustion but finally I have finished. With 23 and a half hours still left on the clock! In the last two days I have not only worked for fifteen hours at a windmill, attended (and solved!) a murder mystery evening - which involved rather a lot more alcohol than was wise - , i've welcomed my brother home and went out for a meal with my family but somehow I've also managed to squeeze in enough time to bake seven different things for my challenge. And these weren't any old seven baked goods, they were the final seven and by god am I glad I pulled it off.
Was there a part of me which thought I couldn't do it? Oh definitely, I have never been particularly good at sticking to my plans, I've had attempts at doing many different long term ideas or projects and most - if not all - have fallen through in some way. This was my way of proving to myself that I really can do something which takes time, effort and forward planning ( we will ignore the fact that I had to bake non stop for the last five hours to meet my deadline!). And I certainly can do those things!
Has there been any point in doing it? I suppose not, it was mostly for my self gratification. I wanted to bake, and I wanted to write about something new. But the blog side of things was really my way of making sure I finished it; if there was no proof of me doing it all then I would definitely have not finished! I guess if I wanted people to take any sort of message away from my challenge then I have a couple of points to make.
DO NOT EVER TRY THIS. That's the main one! Ok, it shan't been that difficult, but I have become rather sidetracked by it. I've been a very irritating person to live with and spend a lot of time with in the last few months because my prolific baking. I apologise for that, especially to my lovely girlfriend, Weezy, who has put up with the stress of post-baking-disaster-Me and for my time spent on the challenge. All I can hope is that the baked goods have helped assuage the pain!
But, on a more positive note, there is nothing quite like proving people that you can do something they thought was ridiculous, or impossible or a pipe dream. I'm not going to be preachy about it - then proceeds to be preachy...- but as far as I'm concerned, if I can bake 100 recipes with very little initial know-how then I'm fairly sure anyone can do anything they put their mind to! Don't let people boss you about, accept their help of course, but stick to your guns. No body knows yourself like you!
And with that, adieu!
Many thanks to you for reading, for my family and friends for eating a lot of cake, my boss at work for buying them off me to sell and of course my wonderful Weezy who was both the catalyst for the challenge and the biggest help of all!
The Final Results:
