MINCE MUFFINS

If I were to decide to become a part-time psychic when I grow up, I know one day I would look into a snow globe and see this time of the season, and a very pretty house in a part of town that, I’m sure, was well pretty fifty years ago; and there would be a white fluffy carpet and wooden things and bottles as candle holders (there’s got to be candles), and the inhabitants wouldn’t worry too much about leaving the heating on for a while, nor about anything that happens in the outside world for that matter; and they would be sipping hot drinks from big mugs and eating muffins, or mince pies, or both (it’s Christmas).

I don’t know all that much about warm cosy living rooms in Victorian houses or carpets or nice décor, but if I were them, I really wouldn’t complain about such a great selection of Christmas treats; and until I take the leap and become Head of Extrasensory Perception or that season comes and so the snow, I’ll stick to mince muffins and I know I’ll be gold.

TOTTENHAM CAKE

No cake on commission has in the history of this world, or another, ever been as accurately timely and fit for purpose as Tottenham Cake.

It’s only an insignificant detail that I am located a whole eleven and a half miles away from Tottenham and, even though it would be a wonderfully creative thing to do, I don’t plan on re-branding this as Peckham Cake or Warwick Gardens Cake and selling it for one penny per square at Rye Lane Market (I do it for the glory); or that I may or may not have had to find a vegan way around an upsetting amount of eggs called for in the original recipe and more or less liberally replaced obscure ingredients such as mulberry juice with inferior modern-day placeholders that go under the name of Ribena (sorry Friends); because as I found myself floating right in the middle of another teacup of stormy weather (I’m only small you see) and managed not to turn into a cute, or trendy, version of a muse of Millais’s in the very unpleasant process of splashing from one shore through to the other, it’s only with the most-childish-ever-childish children’s cake that I can pay adequate tribute to all those not-so-grown-up things that have been swimming quietly beside me easing the pain.

So one square of my Tottenham Cake goes to having cake for dinner and sometimes lunch and sometimes both; one goes to dinosaur parks; one to stuffed toys (and having a higher opinion of them than humans); one to drawing badgers; one to running around the office like a squirrel on acid; one to Christmas; one to buying useless things because there’s a bear on the packaging and it’s wearing a sailor outfit; one to choosing birthday cards three months in advance; one to crying; one to touching everything; one to baby teeth, flowery dresses, drooly dogs, hair bows, lollies; and one to my dear, dear Orphanage, that since that one sunny Saturday afternoon has been my refuge and burrow and baking laboratory and realm and source of a thousand stories, and a Little Match Girl who’s run away from home really couldn’t live anywhere else.

And if there’s a baker’s-dozen-th piece of my Tottenham Cake, I’d like to have it; because, over Troubador’s and black cabs and members clubs and conference calls and Boys Who also Never Grew Up, I’ll be happy to pick a square of sugary sponge cake covered in pink icing.