Proper kitchen equipment takes the risk out of festive baking

Spatulas to the ready, everyone. It’s time to stop prevaricating if you want well-matured cakes and Christmas goodies ready for the big event.

If you’re a novice at plum pudding and cake-making, and you’ve been spurred into action by the glut of television baking programmes, before you complete your shopping list, have a crawl into the back of your kitchen cupboards to locate mixing bowls, pudding basins, cooling racks, and electric gizmos which will speed up the mixing, beating and whipping processes.

Pay particular attention to your baking tins and make sure they are the right size for your recipe. Many an enthusiastic beginner, after measuring and mixing with diligence, has flopped into tears of exhaustion on finding all they had was an 8” square tin for a recipe that needed a 7” round.