Good morning! Happy Monday! I hope you had a lovely weekend. Mine was largely focused on time with family and getting ready for Christmas. TEN days to go as of TODAY and the countdown is on. Woohoo! Here is our tree in the kitchen at home in London. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. I love the sparkle of a Christmas tree through a window at night.
I’ve started the annual epic Christmas Cake bake-athon, albeit slightly scaled down this year from my usual thirty odd cakes. This year I’m aiming for twelve. As I sit and type this right now, I have cakes baking in the oven, so the whole house smells like sugar and spice and Christmas - which is pretty much as good as it gets. I’ve had to break the cake-baking process up into timed chunks this year, in order to squeeze it all in because between the book launch and my pop-up shop I’ve been busier than usual. But actually (so far, at least) it seems to be panning out quite well; and I wonder if, moving forward, the multi-stage Christmas cake baking might be the way to go. Friday = steeped dried fruits in copious quantities of brandy, then greased and lined the baking tins (the cake tin bit always takes infinitely longer than you think it’s going to, so great to get a head start on it); Sunday = creamed the butter, sugar and treacle together and weighed out all the dry ingredients so then now poised and ready to go (again, everything takes longer than you think); very early this morning (Monday) = mixed the eggs, flour and brandy-laden fruits to make the cake batter, then got cakes in the oven and baking asap, because they do take pretty much forever (a low temp and slowly bake is one of the secrets to a moist and good fruitcake); tonight and tomorrow morning (that’s the plan anyway) = decorate cakes.
Incidentally, if anyone in the UK is looking for a good source for glacé fruits (oddly tricky to find) to decorate their Christmas cake, I bought mine this year from this place online and they sent my order out super, super quickly which I’m very grateful for, because I’ve desperately disorganised about the whole thing and really did place the order on a wing and prayer. Also, for the lazy (hello!) and/or super time-poor cook, I’ve recently discovered these pre-cut greaseproof paper circles so you don’t have to trace out the circles and cut them out. Not that it’s the end of the world if you do have to cut them out yourself of course, but if you’re making quite a few cakes (and for Christmas cakes you need two circles for each cake because you pop one on the top of the cake as it bakes, as well as at the bottom of the tin), then it’s just one less thing to do. I’m a big fan of having one less thing to do in life and cooking generally and anyway, but I really LOVE it at this time of year.
So, this weekend was cake-baking prep, some present buying (although not quite all the presents bought yet, but still: some progress made), a visit to see Father Christmas at Anya’s Grotto (always magical) and a cheese toastie at the Anya Café next door (also magical - it’s a seriously good cheese toastie, and not just for Christmas). I was in our Christmas Pop Up Shop on Elizabeth St for a lot of the weekend, meeting lovely customers (always the best bit) and helping out with the gift wrapping (also quite fun); and I did a lovely Christmas book event at Cafe Murano with wonderful Mark Diacono, which was pure joy. Mark is such a kind and warm person (as well of course as a brilliant writer - his newsletter is one of my favourites) and really sets the tone for a very special evening: we had a chat about my new book and Christmas generally, then the restaurant served a scrumptious dinner made with recipes from the book. The event was part of the Cafe Murano Book Club series which happen on the last Sunday evening of every month (this one was a little out of sync because: Christmas), each month with a different author. This is the list of what they’ve got coming up - honestly, I can’t recommend enough; and was, incidentally, thinking that tickets to one of the events next year would make for a very nice Christmas present for anyone who likes books, good food and/or good conversation. So, basically, a good present for pretty much anyone. Also a great present fr people who love cooking and the good things in life is Mark’s joyful new book, Abundance.
This week, I have the last two LIVES as part of my Substack virtual book tour coming up! This afternoon at 4pm GMT I’ll be chatting with fashion designer, Jessie Randall, about what to wear for Christmas and about some of her favourite festive traditions; and then on Wednesday morning at 9am GMT I’ll be hosting a LIVE with my dear friend and wonderful cookery writer, Mimi Thorisson. We’ll be talking about what to cook for Christmas, drawing from French, Italian, British, Icelandic and Chinese traditions. I hope you can join us! To join, the easiest thing to do is to download the Substack app (if you don’t have it already). Once you’ve got that, enable the notifications, and the app will notify you when we’re ready to go. Tap on the little alert that pops up on your phone, and you’re in. The LIVE will be open to all lovely subscribers, whether you have a paid subscription or not, so please do join and say hi if you can. I’ll be sending out a video recording via email too, for you to watch later if you can’t make it. That’s the plan, anyway. Last Friday, there was a technical glitch and I couldn’t get my app to work, so lovely Elle ended up creating the link instead for our LIVE. If you were waiting for the link from me and didn’t manage to join live, I’m really sorry - I’m not great with tech at the best of times and my stars really weren’t aligned. Anyway, fingers crossed for no technical issues today and am I’m also sharing here a recording of my chat with Elle in case you missed it.
Lastly, here are a couple of things I’ve worked on recently I thought you might enjoy. I loved working on a Christmas-y house tour with Homeworthy which you can watch here: I demo lots of very simple festive craft ideas for decorating your home, as well as ideas for decorating the table. I really enjoyed chatting with Matt Gibberd on the Homing podcast. Homing, as the name suggests, is a podcast about interiors and before recording I thought we were going to chat chintz and paint colours, but instead we ended up talking about life, childhood, grief, belonging, challenge, celebration and the meaning of home in a deeper sense of the word. Plus a little chintz and paint colours for good measure too. You can listen to the podcast here, if you have a moment. I also loved chatting with Sam Goldsmith on the Good Food podcast (which you can listen to here): we both shared Christmas cooking war wounds (always fun) and Sam’s story involving Christmas cake and (spoiler alert) mice is a good/slightly harrowing one.
Dashing now to the shop for a workshop and where I’ll be most of today - come say hi if you’re in London and in the area! We’re open until next Sunday so do pop by if you can: 48 Elizabeth St, London SW1W 9PA. We have one spot left for my workshop with lovely florist, Hannah of Minnow and Wolf Flowers tomorrow morning - if you’re free and would like to join, you can book here. Hope to see you there!
