22. My Year in Food

A roundup of some of the best bits

Hello,

This time of year is always the busiest for bakeries as everyone (including myself) is indulging a little bit more and making sure they bag the best goodies for their Christmas tables. This means I haven’t had quite the same energy as usual to sit down and write, which hasn’t been helped by catching a Christmas cold. Despite this, my brain has surprisingly been a revolving door of delicious ideas and whilst I know I should be resting, I really can’t help but bake. From a chocolate and chestnut yule log, to mince pies, to Christmas biscuit boxes. I’ve really gone in. But since this year I’ll be working right up until the big day itself, I’ve decided it’s probably for the best to try and reserve some gas in the tank. This means I won’t be sharing quite as extensive a recipe. Instead I’m going to be sharing with you 12 of my favourite dishes / bakes of the year and directing you towards my mincemeat and mince pie recipe which you can access over on Ómós Digest (because it’s not too late to make them!).

Hopefully as you read this, you’ll have hung up your work coats and have started to fall into some festive relaxation. I hope this inspires you to look back at your year with gratitude for some of the simpler things in life. Which brings me to say, thank you to each and every one of you for signing up to receive my work. Knowing you’re out there baking my recipes fills me with a lot of joy. Thank you!

Here’s to exciting things to come in 2025!

Much love and Merry Christmas,

Cissy…xo

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Mince Pie Recipe

A few months ago I asked my friend Cúán (a very talented chef and writer based in Ireland) if I could contribute an article to his weekly newsletter (Ómós Digest) all about mince pies. Cúán happily agreed and so I set about writing a recipe that would suit his cheffy and foodie readers alike. For this, I decided using a rough puff (or cheat’s puff) recipe would be best as I believe learning how to make this is one of the greatest skills you can learn in the pastry kitchen. Not only because it gives you an introduction to the technique of lamination but because it produces a delicate and tender crumb that can be used for both sweet and savoury dishes. If you’d like to try making my mincemeat and mince pie pockets, you can get the recipe here. It’s definitely not too late!!

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A roundup of my year in food

I think it’s easy to get sucked into the vortex of “needing” things at this time of year. I often find I begin convincing myself that I need a lot of things that I haven’t needed for the last 12 months but for some reason need right now. Maybe you feel the same way too?

Instead of heading into the New Year with this feeling that I’m lacking something, I want to go into 2025 knowing that the year that’s passed has been full; full of the people I love, of lessons learnt, of pride and gratitude for the things I've accomplished (big and small) and most importantly, full to the brim with the most delicious food (so much so that I have to undo the top button of my jeans).

January

At the beginning of the year I joined the incredible team at Hamblin Bread, an amazing bakery tucked away in a neighbourhood corner of Oxford, renowned for using 100% stoneground, directly traded grain from the local area.

Before moving to Oxford (a City I’d only ever visited once) I lived in Dublin for 5 years, which meant moving back to the UK took, let’s say, a little bit of getting used to. But as with any challenge, eating something sweet normally takes the edge off and these chocolate and hazelnut shortbread did just that! Luckily for you, you can taste how good these posh Maryland cookies are yourself as I shared the recipe for them in my article 14. New Places, Faces and Lots of Cookies.

February

Family meals (a.k.a. lunch) are sacred in our industry. They are a time for you to put your feet up for a quick moment, scoff some food and have a laugh with your colleagues. For some reason this particular ritual feels slightly more special compared to others. Perhaps it’s because that 30 minute respite amongst 10-12 hours of concentration and movement feels like the greatest gift of all. Luckily for me, the places I have worked have always provided abundant staff lunches, much like this slab pizza basking in the winter sunshine.

March

I thought these Hot Cross Buns might be the end of me! On several occasions (on the busiest days of the week) I would come into work to find these little buns had bubbled and broken into unsellable, over-proofed blobs. Thankfully with some patience and accuracy we figured out why this kept happening (a combination of the flour getting too warm, not enough mixing and the fruit over-fermenting). Instead we baked beautiful buns that ballooned with tea-soaked fruit and spices. Bursting them open whilst they were still warm and slathering them with salty butter was our Easter treat.

April

This April I visited Edinburgh for the first time. In hand was a long list of all the places I wanted to eat at and although I didn’t make it to all of them, I did make the customary pilgrimage to Lannan Bakery, which of course did not disappoint. As well as a few places that weren’t on my list…

One night with my friends, I was scouring the map for local spots and came across a place called Pablo Eggsgobao and decided then and there that with a name like that I had to go. The next morning, with maybe a slightly hungover head, we each devoured a bao bun stuffed with a hash brown, omelette, meat patty, cheese and heaps of sriracha in the cold Edinburgh sunshine. It was perfect.

May

Tuesdays were prep days at the bakery. This meant setting yourself up for the week ahead and taking in all the deliveries, including the abundant dairy order from Neals Yard Dairy. Unpacking this was like unwrapping presents on Christmas Day. Big hunks of cheese had to be fit like Tetris cubes into the fridge. Not only do I love eating Hafod, a Welsh cheddar that’s rich and earthy, but I also love looking at the intricate patterns of mould that develop on the rind. This truckle looks like an oil painting to me. And in case you missed the Wallace and Gromit-esque news story, I suggest you read about how £300,000 worth of cheddar was stolen a few months ago.

June

June was mint choc chip ice cream sandwiches, raspberry and custard brioche buns, cuddles with my sisters, Glastonbury and these double chocolate peace cookies. Bestowed upon us by Dorie Greenspan these sablé cookies are the perfect ratio of salty, sweet and buttery. You can make them yourself by following Dorie’s recipe here. This year I’ve even added them to my Christmas cookie box.

July

At Hamblin the counter offering gives focus to bread, yeasted Swedish style buns and sweet bites like financiers and cookies rather than viennoiserie. For some reason I decided making croissants whilst working there would be my mission. I think this was to fulfil a year long itch that needed to be scratched, having not handled croissant dough for that long. After some bad attempts, I finally made a pain au chocolat.

July was also light dinners outside in the sunshine. Each summer I return to this Alison Roman recipe of crispy vinegar chicken sitting over the best of the season’s tomatoes. The juices soak perfectly into a hunk of crusty bread.

August

August was spent on trains between Oxford, London and Brighton as I sailed between the unknowns of a new chapter. One way to keep my brain from festering in the deep, is by making desserts. This was a plum galette made using the same rough puff pastry found in my mince pie recipe on Ómós Digest.

September

Spending time at my family home, which is nestled in the South Downs, is like a little haven, especially in the late Summer. During these months the light bounces off the chalk hills in a transcendent way that makes every leaf and every blossom seem perfect in that very moment. Many puddings were made and shared over the dinner table that month, just like this greengage clafoutis. Although these variety of plums aren’t in season you could still make this recipe by substituting them with a seasonal fruit, such as the first of the winter rhubarb.

October

Everything seemed to come together in October; a new house, a new job, new citizenship, sidelined by one of the best meals I’ve eaten and experienced in a while at Barra in Berlin.

Barra (left), The Devonshire (right)

November

Working at Quince Bakery continues to be a page turner for creativity and learning but most of all for fits of giggles. For one shared meal we celebrated Oisin’s birthday (one of my colleagues). Anna made this epic lasagne birthday cake for it. Oozy cheese and lentil ragu stacked on top of sheets of pasta. I’m still thinking about it now and how the last slices fell out of the fridge and onto the freshly mopped floor. We laughed and cried at the painful mess.

December

Mince pies, running around, pine needles on the floor, baking all day and in my dreams too. One day in the middle of December was my ‘perfect me day’. A swim, a crossed out short to-do list, a coffee and a cookie out, a matinee cinema screening, followed by a cosy candle lit chicken pie for one and a few pages of Between Two Waters.