Madron 2026

Last Wednesday (23rd September) it was Madron, also known Mabon/the Autumn Equinox. (Although for some it was Tuesday the 22nd, depending on your time zone.) My main celebration for this sabbat is baking. I most often make some kind of ginger cake (before that I made gingerbread, like I do for Lammas but occasionally do something different. Last year I baked a buttermilk spice cake.

This Madron, I decided to go back to ginger! I baked a gingerbread sheet cake. The recipe is from Cloudy Kitchen: https://cloudykitchen.com/blog/gingerbread-sheet-cake-with-maple-cream-cheese-frosting/

It's a one bowl recipe (made all in one bowl) and has a maple cream cheese frosting. I used treacle instead of molasses and mixed spice instead of allspice because both of those are more readily available in the UK. 

The cake was quite nice, although as I've mentioned before, these types of cakes can be a bit heavy (probably due to the treacle). I made a gingerbread traybake for Madron 2024 and I think that was a bit lighter because it also had golden syrup in it.

Here's a picture:  

 

I sometimes bake bread for Madron (most often a mix). This year I did buy a bread mix but didn't get round to making it as well as the cake. I'll save it to bake another time.

In the evening I went to the park for sunset. I also went to Burger King and got a latte, Coke and a double bacon cheeseburger. It was quite a nice sunset. Here are a couple of photos:

 

I also filmed a video (YouTube short): https://youtube.com/shorts/6dlaB6W60Vo?si=VRp1NskzofiYIahO 

The last time I did one was for Oestara/the Spring Equinox, so it's been 6 months!

 

So now it's "officially" autumn. It's been a hot summer, with several record breaking heatwaves here in the UK. There were Europe wide heatwaves in general and some countries were much hotter. At the moment, temperatures are more typical for September, about 19C (66F) during the day and 16C (60F) at night. It's been cooler and rainy, with some sunny days. Another heatwave is forecast for this week and that will be it, I think!

I've been noticing the days getting shorter again, with sunset now around 6.45pm in my area. By the time we get to early October, it will be around 6.30 (as I mentioned in last year's Madron post). The clocks will go back on 25th October, making it an hour earlier.

The next sabbat will be Samhain (also on 31st October), which is one of my favourites! I will do a post about my celebrations.

Hope you had a good Madron and Happy Autumn! (Or hope you had a good Oestara/Ostara and Happy Spring!) :)