Buying cakes

I bake a lot.  Recently I have scaled new heights with my chocolate marquise and my frangipane tart. Every time I pull a cake out of the oven, I feel a bit like women who emerge from a frippery boutique with a Versace shopping bag over one crooked elbow. It's not a thing I have been inclined to do all my life - I really only caught on to baking around 10 or 11 years ago, and spent at least the first 2 or 3 years producing the same cheesecake over and over, taken from a Sainsburys recipe card, to which I stuck rigidly, terrified of producing a total confectionery ruin. A Nigella Lawson cookery book, bought by a friend and meant to convey irony, changed all that. I went from broadening my repertoire of cheesecakes, across to sponges, tarts, biscuits, stack meringues...and have never looked back. But even as my skill has increased, my range of ingredients has become more ambitious - spelt flour cookies anyone? - my proliferation of baking produce ever more abundant, still given teh choice, if I wanted to give myself a serious treat, I would not hesitate to take myself off to the nearest artisan patisserie, and splash out. Today is my birthday, and I have done some brilliant things - I climbed to the top of Primrose Hill, watched the sun rise over the London Eye, raised my eyes heavenward to offer thanks for the amazing things that had happened in the previous year, and sucked in the pre-polluted air of the morning as if literally preparing myself for the year to come. I wandered back down and tucked into a posh Italian brunch. I hopped across the road to a spa and emerged, one back/neck massage later, 2 feet above the ground, so unwound I could barely see straight. I wandered up through Camden stables, picking up improbable t shirts, psychedlic bags, scented earrings (yes, I know), and frisbees with holes in the middle. I had a huge and rather lovely latte at the Jewish Museum with my parents - the Jewish Museum is a pretty fab place to visit for its exhibitions, but if you do go, you need to give 20 mins over to their latte. Lattes are not things that Jews are best known for, which makes the excellence of these all the more worth a go. I walked back through Camden all the way to Hampstead, infiltrating posh communities with my high street boots. And reached my final destination before returning home to bury myself in back to back Jane Austen movies. A patisserie. Try to imagine just how indulgent it is for someone who does all her own baking, to enter a patisserie and stare at the range of confection. What to go for? An obvious red line would be, nothing that I can already make myself. But that is a mistake. The best patisserie will be using ingredients I can't source or could if I wanted but draw the line at forking out a tenner for a half bar of  couverture chocolate just for a brownie. So I look long, hard and greedily at the range, and here is what I buy. A tarte au citron. A tartelette au chocolat. A frangipane aux amandes (which is a funny name, because aren't ALL frangipanes made with almond?) A millefeuille. And a dark chocolate and pecan brownie. Nothing outlandish, nothing, in fact, that I have not already tried. But all looking absolutely perfectly balanced. No drips of icing, as you would find around my millefeuille. Shavings of lemon rind on the tarte au citron, which I can rarely be bothered to do, or I go for ruining the finesse by shaving white chocolate over the top instead; a brownie that is so dark and gooey looking I am guessing one bite and I won't be able to look at chocolate again for a month. I will try all of these with my kids when they come home from school, over a pot of tea and another of hot chocolate, and we will put our feet up on chairs and let chocolate dribble down our chins and laugh lots and lots. And I will make mental notes about lemon rind and artisanal couverture, and reset the bar for my baking, for another year. This is not buying cakes, as you might pull off a box out of the bakery section in your local supermarket. This is an indulgence, a learning experience, a family moment, and sheer investigative joy, all rolled into one.