I just love baking around this time of year. I mean, there are really lovely recipes to make any season better, but you can get seriously chocolate-covered and multi-layered around the holidays. Lots of chopping and brightly-coloured sprinkles, the folding of phyllo pastry into hundreds of tiny packages and butter. Oh, the butter.

What is it about the wintry times of year that make us want to consume vast amounts of heavy, starchy comfort food? Yes, I'm sure we're still hard-wired to want to bulk up with layers of pudge to get us through the next famine, a la our cavemen ancestors. If only the magazines and infomercials would take that into consideration, life would be much easier to take.

But, at least I will have the distinct pleasure of showing up at my Mom's on Sunday with a tray of assorted goodies, all the better to impress my cousins. Because heaven knows, I don't have much else positive to report this year. And I'm not looking forward to pasting on the cheerful smile when my oldest cousin tells me about the new marketing business he's started up and the latest legal exploits of his smart, beautiful lawyer wife. I'm so pleased for them, don't get me wrong; I don't want anyone to think I'm bitter and twisted about the happiness of others, I'm so not. It's just tiring to have to then come up with creative and chirpy ways of phrasing how much is not happening in my life right now. And oh yes, to not sound like a complete and utter dolt at the same time. I know things will turn around at some point, but I have to wonder how many holiday seasons will pass before I get to be sincerely chirpy about my circumstances.

Meanwhile I'll have to be content to sit back, be happy for my extended family and nibble on Haystacks, Snowflake cookies and Cranberry Carmelitas.

Posted at 10:38 p.m.