This is 1973 news! From my book Cream Horns and Vol au Vents 2025
Oh, Delia Smith of the Evening Standard. Thank you. Your article on ‘How to Cheat at Christmas’ has saved me. Dawn asks if I could bake some mince pies for the Christmas carol service. The school cook is busy and Mr Shield says I can step in. He’s heard my boys enjoy baking jam tarts, so making mince pies will be easy.
‘How many?’ I ask.
She scuttles off to the office and comes back with an astonishing answer.
‘Three hundred – there’s parents with kids, staff and the orchestra.’
Bloody hell. Does she think I run a bakery? The maths is easy. Each jam tart tin holds 12 tarts so that’s 25 trays of pies – let’s say 30 for the ones that get stuck, broken, dropped or eaten. A marathon challenge for anyone.
What contribution do other teachers make to this carol service? The music department is probably playing the piano and has rehearsed the songs, but is the Physics department putting up the Christmas lights? Will Office Studies type and print out the programme? Will Woodwork repair and lay out the chairs?
Our Delia, in her article called ‘How to Cheat’, has the answer to taking the work out of Christmas. BUY THEM. Buy 300 mince pies. Yes. Ask the baker to batch-bake or go to the supermarket and fill a large trolley. BUY THEM! And Delia’s extra cheat? Warm them up, then sieve icing sugar over for that homemade touch.
Dawn looks astonished. She probably thinks I’ve been on an assertiveness course, and about time too.
That Delia has given me another time-saving, explosive idea. For my Christmas ritual of baking and icing a Christmas cake, let my students BUY their Christmas cakes. And BUY the marzipan. Push the boat out and BUY ready to roll icing – or use Delia’s Shortcut Icing recipe. Then we can just do the lala stuff, pipe and peak on some icing, stick on Christmas ribbons and plastic reindeer.
There’s going to be complaints, like when we made Angel Delight tarts for my Convenience Food lesson, but this time I’m ready. Not everything has to be made from scratch. We’ve got exams to prepare for.
As I drive home to Hampstead, the song from that Nimble Bread Advert comes into my head. That low calorie slimming bread where the woman floats away in a hot air balloon after losing lots of weight.
‘She flies like a bird in the sky… she flies like a bird and she knows why…’So thank you, Delia Smith. I’m going to float and fly. And thank you for the stress you’ve saved me in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I’ll ask for your book How to Cheat at Cooking for my Christmas present, and I bet that Delia suggests we buy ready-made pastry too.
itaughtthemtocook.com 