CINNAMON CHESTNUT SWIRL BREAD

If this specific semi-conscious portion of my brain that has been misbehaving since my return from outer space could be accessed by means of a Welcome10 (or if I hadn't said no to fun and hacking tutorials), I would no doubt log in and schedule one of those universally dreaded Outlook-style reminder windows to pop up in my head, accompanied by a force-twelve ear-splitting alarm bell and re-occurring until further notice, to read in monster font size: YOU ARE IN CANADA NO MORE; as behaviours such as spending evenings in basements attempting to scan aerial shots of Vancouver in life size, travelling North of the river (!) to acquire pumpkin spice latte and sweet potatoes and pumpkin miso soup, purchasing maple water and pumpkin beer, trying to replicate recipes of every single food item I consumed during my nine-day Canada trip, pouring half a liter of maple syrup into my maple tea that I will exclusively drink out of my Vancouver mug, unconsciously adopting the American spelling, being upset about the availability of Jamaican cream soda only (it’s not the same. Not the same), and starting the overwhelming majority of my conversation exchanges with overexcited when-I-was-in-Canada’s cannot be deemed appropriate or well judged.

One day, I’m sure, I will finally come to terms with the actuality that all is left of my trip is an inhuman amount of tea, a still very spotty face, and photos with one light leak too many; and in fact, you’ll be relieved to know that I have already been working on re-directing these escapist tendencies of mine to 1. fictional worlds, going on solitary day trips to admire Victorian stone sculptures of extinct animals as it would make a very adventurous chapter in an imaginary book that would have the coolest cover and would be titled ‘Amongst The Dinosaurs of Crystal Palace’; and for the sake of sanity and social acceptance 2. other places on this very planet, booking stupidly expensive flights to Italy and going on a Chinese mooncake ingredient hunt, being mistaken for a Swede (and taking it as a compliment and appreciating the importance of capitalisation), working on the perfect vegan Yorskhire parkin for Bonfire Night, and last but not least seeking baking inspiration in Australian food magazines (which I was given in Canada but don’t tell anyone). And it is the latter, ladies and gentlemen, that brings me here today with a recipe for the best sticky fluffy swirly cinnamony tea-time bread with the creamiest chestnut and walnut filling (and only a negligible amount of maple syrup, leave me alone) you can possibly find this side of the pond or the other.

I’ll let you know how I get on with my pursuit of a cure for Canada-lessness (or hacking lessons, and mental health), but for right now rest assured that I’ll be all content with my delicious swirly bread, because who wouldn’t be, eh?

WHITE BEAN PECAN PUMPKIN BLONDIES

Some people can add to other people’s life like that, and bring gifts of photos of tiny kittens and rules of thirds and cool cameras (and, fix broken ones), or secret phone numbers and nuts for dinner and Egyptian bracelets and painful fashion advice, or puns and phone calls and carefully selected vegan ham-flavoured crisps, or the biggest smiles and fobs and doughnuts, or loud laughs, badly edited pictures of honey badgers, fancy iPhones and second-hand flirting, German experimental music playlists, Belle and Sebastian, instant email responses, birthday cards, tailored guidance on London boroughs (as night follows day wPeckhamwsavesw), haircuts worth four hundred bus rides, take-care's, espressos, inexplicable exceptions to the rule of never being touched, books that were meant for someone else, unrealistic tales of North-American wildlife, bags-for-life, thermals, sleeping pills, good-night’s; or (but you’ve got to be lucky like I am), even all of the above.

Now whether all these riches are deserved or not, or if I’d rather give things away than lose them, or again if I myself only am the bearer of utter annihilation (fine, of stuffed killer whales also; but only if you’re David Wilson), however consciously hidden behind a mask of cuteness, quirkiness and puppy eyes, it’s an entire different story; because today, on Matt’s birthday, cake is the only thing that I choose to bring along.

Adding fudgy pecan pumpkin blondies to someone’s life really can’t be a bad thing; plus when you and your cake tin are almost squeezed to death on your crammed bus to work, there’s just no room for all the bullshit.
Aaaand many more.

ROOT BEER CREAM PIE

When it feels like everything’s a ceiling and you wish you could spend every single day of the next at least eleven years of your life hanging out in the sun in a café on Fraser Street eating vegan cheesecake and sipping cream soda (although caffè & panettone with James is also fine):

ROOT BEER MARSHMALLOW FLUFF PIE.

MATRIMONIAL CAKE - CANADIAN DATE SQUARES

My return to Bad City left me with some serious time-and-space-perception issues, a heavy suitcase to carry without someone's help and this feeling of my brain being all wrapped up in cotton, like the one you find inside Canadian pill bottles (and it might in fact be there for the same exact reason that is, Google and common sense enlighten me, preventing breakage).
In the twilight of my return (the afterglow of sunset, or the first dim light of the morning, I wouldn't know. I am having breakfast for lunch, dinner and actual breakfast until I work out which is which), what I came back to find is that, be it in Bad City or by the breath-taking cliffs of the Pacific coast or along the sunniest Victoria bay or looking out the hotel window with the best Lost-in-Translation view of Vancouver, the heaviest thing you can possibly carry around in your suitcase is your mind.
What I also found, is that friendly drooly hairy cuddly mastiffs and marzipan tea and gallons and gallons of vanilla extract (like bringing back a litre of maple syrup doesn't also make me cry with joy) and Mickey Mouse plasters and Oreo crumbs and pumpkin-shaped candles and lovely lovely people who feed you oatmeal (and hug you), and hanging out by Police Museums and mortuaries and tiny art galleries on your birthday and drinking Shirley Temples at grown-up bars and vegan cupcakes and vegan cinnamon rolls (one too many) and vegan chocolate marshmallow pies and vegan Sailor Jerry Coke floats at Twin Peaks themed pubs and vegan everything and cream soda and root beer and Chinese gardens and red bean bubble tea and sushi at nutcase Japanese restaurants and being suspicious towards brown shoes and hated on by the raw vegans and searched by airport security for transporting life-size Mexican skulls in your hand bag; all this, and in fact more, makes it painless enough to carry all that weight down the escalators and on the tube for ages and finally all the way up two flights of stairs back home.
If at that point you also realise that your heart (and your brand new uber-cool hand-crafted birthday bag) doesn't feel all that heavy after all, head out again - you can be the bearer of gifts and snus and hang out at the Persian cafe and have your dates (I see a pattern there).
Now, we are soon to find out whether there will be any photographic evidence of all the aforementioned beauty I've seen (an excessive amount of tears has been shed already, not to worry) and it looks like there's not going to be any wedding taking place any time soon, soz for the ironic and/or misleading recipe theme. But you will still be all ready to make your own version of Matrimonial Cake, because it's mind-liftingly and heart-liftingly and suitcase-liftingly delicious like very few other things on this planet.
To celebrate Canada, and my success in carrying my heavy suitcase all the way there and back.

FIG GINGER NUT CHEESECAKE

It’s good practice to write handover notes when you leave for a more or less significant period of time, even when flying eight hours behind and then back feels like you’ll only be gone for the night, and when the state of you in the limbo of the pre-departure is not too dissimilar to when you pour a cheesecake mixture into the tin before going to bed and think, duck knows if this will ever set.

To those who are left to spend the night time all by themselves in my absence (and to stare at the fridge like lunatics), I wish to pass on the following words of wisdom.
:

- If the thing doesn’t set, you can always have fig soup. Or just accept it’s a disaster (there’s beauty in every stumble), and start a baking blog about cheesecake disasters. It might take off, James says.

- Write stuff. If you’re too shy, invisible-write stuff.

- Masquerades are a necessary evil, but that doesn’t justify dressing up for the best part of twenty-five years just because it so happened that you forgot to take your costume off (you got there eventually).

- Royal Mail may also be a necessary evil, but even when they get confused and send your Italian dad’s parcel off to India (I’m known for not holding grudges), it doesn’t mean you are authorised to disrupt the continuum of space and time on the entire office floor shrieking like a banshee at customer service employees.

- Escape as and when deemed needed, but make sure you reserve every bit of your anxiety for what you’re escaping to.

- Foxes are underrated. Walk with them.

- Sit in cafes with the most serious expression in your repertoire and type on your laptop with the solemnity of manner you’d have when applying for a programme manager job. No one needs to know you are secretly creating cute animations out of hand-drawn badgers, photos of Birmingham and vintage trumpets.

- Five-storey buildings with a sinking-ship feel are not suitable for the emotionally unstable. Stick to orphanages, cafes in art galleries, edit suites and coffee shops that sell custard tarts whenever possible.

- Winter is cold. Summer can also be cold. Sometimes there is no summer. Wear jumpers; allow yourself to be hugged. This will keep you warm.

- Eat fried plantain, appreciate double entendres, and try not to demolish Persian cafes with your outstanding gracefulness, as this may result in getting banned from Peckham and sent back the other side of the river in eternal exile.

- Work is a sentence.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. Most times you wish they didn’t. But they can make for nice stories. Have your notebook ready.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. And right into place after that. Be astounded, smile.

:

It would be nice if this was finally my journey to the end of the night; and if that’s the case for you, and someone’s enlightened notes help you make it through to the morning (even if it’s the darkest, rainiest Monday morning and your eyes are all puffy), you may also wake up to find that the cheesecake you made has set during the night.

That officially gives you the right to this wonderful thing known as, cake for breakfast; and it’s a sign that not all is lost.

I may be back in time for a slice, but bye for now.

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF

JAMES & ME

act II

'symphonies'

GOLDEN OREO BANANA PUDDING

There should be a master Process Document in place, which states that Oreo desserts like this are a skeleton key to escape mazes of rainy days, sad songs in loop, Dave-lessness, Dom-lessness, and old habits (the bad ones).

It’s been covered at length already that Oreos are the food of gods; they constitute a perfectly acceptable dinner party gift (if accompanied by banana bread beer) and there’s absolutely no evidence to date that they will not make you part-divine. As for the golden side of it, I woke up one morning knowing that opulence is not for me (I’m a dolphin after all); but you’ve got to be grateful for the yearly availability of special edition biscuits, even when this means dealing more or less maturely with this worrying tendency of theirs to go all sold-out in half a second (like I even give a duck now, because did you know, Morrisons: CANADA). And when a five-storey office space makes it so difficult to be a freegan and feast to your heart’s content on beetroot crisps, lemon sweets and over-ripe fruit, the addition of bananas is simply a legal requirement.

It’s soon to be disclosed whether I shall be the chosen that gets to write a Document so crucial for the whole of humanity (or perhaps just me. If so, may I please add: a slot in the diary of a busy working professional and part-time choir singer. Vegan banana cake. Art galleries. Animation tutorials. Vegan banana cake in art galleries after animation tutorials. Blue eyes, and the fine art of making peace with them), and in the meantime, I’m reminded that sunny days and disco music and shiny happy people don’t necessarily make for good stories, and most definitely don’t turn Oreos into gold.