24 Pastry Delicacies

“I’m going out into the snow now,” said my husband, putting a well bundled head round the door of our bedroom, where I was lying in bed with a cold, equally well bundled.

“Bring back something that will amuse me,” I told him.

An hour later, he placed a black and gold box on my blanket-shrouded lap. “12 Delicacies – Premium pastry specialities.”

I was entirely charmed by this offering: 24 biscuit morsels, packaged as if they were chocolates.

“They were half price,” he said, stroking my feverish brow.

Thrifty and gallant. What a lucky girl I am.

The map inside had colour photographs of the biscuits and outlandish descriptions that read as if they had been composed by someone with more enthusiasm than knowledge of English. “Smoothly melting chocolate almond blossom” had “a lusty taste of cocoa”, while the “Cashew wholemeal pastry” had “the maximum taste of roast cashew nuts and a gentle vanilla flavour”.

At the bottom of the map was a row of seven ingredient pictures, with a brief description – it’s reassuring to know that “Dietary fibre-rich wholemeal flour” was included in the line up, and that the cranberry component would be supplying antioxidants and vitamin C – just the thing for a wife with a cold.

Clare Grant

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