Remember, remember the 5th of November

Today was, almost from start to finish, an exercise in culinary adventurousness. I recently wrote a piece on Bonfire Night recipes for the website I provide the content for - you can see this particular masterpiece here - and Best Mate and I felt strongly that they ought to be tested out. All of them. One massive shopping trip later, and after the heartbreaking realisation that we were never going to manage the lot, we got going. And the results were:

Baked potatoes - these are impossible to muck up, you just jab them with a knife and stick them in the oven. They got a bit cold waiting for Anton to arrive, but it wasn't his fault (see: Toffee Apples). But all in all, they were baked and they were potatoes and that was the general idea.

Bonfire Toffee - without a cooking thermometer, this stuff is hard to judge. You're meant to let it reach 140C, but how the buggery bollocks are you meant to know? It boils up alarmingly, like milk does, but with the added fear factor of looking like tar that would melt your skin off on contact. Needless to say, we messed this one up swimmingly, and it's sat in my fridge looking like a very small, very neat peat bog.

Catherine Wheel Biscuits - these were a great success and went down well with the boys (I sent some over with Best Mate when she went to visit after the cookathon). I managed to whip them out of the oven just in time for them to keep that cookie squishiness. And then ate four.

Chicken stew - I did plan to make simple vegetable stew, but I thought I'd have a go at numerous birds with my stone and make a big, freezable batch of my all-time favourite dish. It's my nan's recipe and, if you're game for a long chopping haul, will make enough for about 7 meals, all for less than a fiver. Brilliant. Can't go wrong with this one and I even got plastic cups for Bonfire Night authenticity.

Parkin - none of us knew what this stuff was before we made it. We managed to navigate the problem of not having a clue what the end product was meant to look like by just doing what we were told in the recipe, but who the hell knows if what we made was right? It seems to be a weighty little bastard and we all had to douse it with cream and hack it with axes to eat it...so it might not have been quite right.

Toffee Apples - not our best success. First of all I managed to forget the sticks and Anton was sent on a mad rush to Tesco on his way home (which is why he was late) and then it transpired that sugar boiled in water just doesn't cut it as a coating material. I think I was missing something.

Still, as cook-ups go, it wasn't too bad and we all came away with full, warm tummies. Of course, that was probably because of the parkin - like a brick, that stuff.