It’s a chilling christmas

I’m spending christmas by myself again and that’s very fine by me. And as it’s strangely worked out, I think in the past few years I’ve never actually ended up on shift on Christmas Day. This year that’s only because of an anomaly in the rota whereby my manager changed my shifts for next week, and in so doing has given me just 2 days to work this week, and either end of my shift pattern was A/L. So I really am working 2 days for the price of 4. So this week has been nice, but I’m not going to enjoy next week – 2 days on, 1 day off, another 2 days on. At least I have a normal 3 day break until then.

On my way home from work I got a few bits in Sainsbury’s to eat while the shops are all shut, but after that I stopped in at my favourite independent cake shop and went on a Christmas cake bonanza!! They actually had Christmas cakes in there too – and oh my god, the most exquisitely decorated joyful ones you could possibly imagine. Yes they were quite pricy but the sheer effort they’d put in would easily make that worth it. And sitting here thinking about it, I regret not buying one of those now – because Christmas cakes must be about the most long lasting cake that you can buy. They beat ANY supermarket cake by miles – even ones costing several quid more – because they’re all individual and hand crafted – not boxed up en masse in a factory.

Just because I care and because I never got around to doing my Christmas trees photos again, I’m going to show you each of the cakes I bought!

Exhibit A:

Roll stuffed with fake cream and jam (jam also fake). Not all fake creams are equal. The fake cream this shop does is out of this world amazing – it’s not like any other cake shop fake cream that I know of. And I know you’ll think I’m exaggerating but the roll is almost as soft as the cream itself. It’s mindblowingly good. Of course – this does obviously depend on you eating it very fast after buying it and not leaving it sitting around to not be quite as soft.

Exhibit B:

Cherry bakewell. Or Cherry bakewell tart? Either way, these are always perfect. Just the right amount of sweetness, perhaps not quite as much jam inside as I’d like, but small enough for that not to matter.

Exhibit C:

Mince pie with brandy butter cream. Holy fuck these things are quite something. You want to keep all the butter cream for the last couple of mouthfuls, just to finish off the experience with that stuff.

Exhibit D:

Lemon Danish. Holy fuck this one that I chose was a beast. There is nothing uniform about their lemon Danish – pretty much each one is unique. There were only about 3 left and I’m not surprised. They’re fucking beautiful. Rich, moist, made with proper Danish pastry and not some half-arsed normal roll just swirled to make it look like Danish. Also that’s not just lemon icing slapped on there’s some kind of light marmalade glaze on there too. Truly magnificent.

Exhibit E:

Rum truffles. Small in stature but I think this might actually be my favourite of their Christmas cakes – and the holly decoration on top this year is edible! Before they used to stick a plastic one in – which can’t be all that economical considering that’s an investment that they’re never going to get back on top of the ingredients.

So that was my haul. I’m glad I went in. It was only 10:40am and they’d already been nearly 50% cleared out of cakes. That shop is fucking amazing.

Anyway thank you to my small and loyal band of Followers on here – I hope you’re having a merry time. I was going to say MERRY CHRISTMAS but it’s important to know that Jesus was born in August, so it’s not quite the be-all and end-all they make it out to be. It’s merely a Pagan festival that was hijacked. So christians needn’t get on their high horse about people not saying “merry christmas” anymore.

Peace and goodbye. Until my next post!