One of the things I love about food is the way that different foods mark out the year, its changing seasons and its various festivals. I particularly love cooking at Christmas and Easter, partly because many of the things i make on these occasions are once a year treats: the rarity of mince pies, Christmas cake and simnel cake makes both the making and eating of them all the more exciting. Continue reading “Hot Cross Buns”
Tag: Charles Dickens
Don’t blame the cook!
Everyone who cooks knows that cooking is an unpredictable business. A faithful recipe we have cooked time and time again to perfection doesn’t come out as we expected it to. You take your eye off the clock for one minute and a burning smell begins to emanate from the oven. You take a beautifully-risen cake out of the oven, and when your back is turned it sinks. Continue reading “Don’t blame the cook!”
David Copperfield’s Batter Pudding
In my last post, about eating other people’s food, I wrote about the episode in David Copperfield where the young David ‘loses’ his meal to the hungry waiter in the Yarmouth inn. As well as drinking David’s ale and eating his chops, he also dives eagerly into his ‘batter pudding’: Continue reading “David Copperfield’s Batter Pudding”
Christmas Cake
Christmas is a favourite time of year in literature, with its appearance serving many different narrative functions. Continue reading “Christmas Cake”