Sundae au caramel

Lors de notre dernier passage à à Bourne for Desserts, je me suis payé la traite avec un dessert bien décadent: un sundae au caramel avec sucre à la crème (que les Anglais appellent cream fudge). ce n'est pas leur meilleur sundae, mais je voulais en essayer un nouveau, voilà qui est fait. C'est le temps de manger des desserts avec la crème glacée, alors autant en faire bonne mesure. Et je le partage ici parce que food porn.

The empty stocks of cream fudge

The picture on the right is one of cream fudge being made in my parent's house. This is a trivial post, but it is to me an important issue. So last Saturday I went to the local sweet shop. It may have been my last trip, as it will be closing soon. I bought some cream fudge, as I usually do and other stuff. The fudge is all gone. it took me two days, if that. I should have stocked more. One day, I may have to actually make cream fudge myself. I tried once in my life, I ended up with caramel. I am a bad cook.

I thought I would finish this trivial post with a funny anecdote, a great unknown line that is sort of about sugar. It was said by a pupil in one of the schools I used to work with and I have wanted to immortalise it on Vraie Fiction for quite a while. It was a difficult time, but some of the children were adorable. When some were winging about doing a tedious task, I used to say: "Come on, you are not made of sugar! You are not gonna melt with the effort." I was in a history class in year 6 (I think) once and said this to one of the girls. Another girl then said laughing: "Yeah, you are not very sweet!" I tried to tell her off, but I was laughing too much. I managed to ask her to be nice to her fellow pupils, but I was still laughing. I remember that line every time I have somethign high in sugar.

A visit to the local sweet shop

As my readership knows, the local sweet shop, which I adore, is going to close in September, so imminently. I love sweet shops in general and this sweet shop in particular, because of the quality of their products (they make one of the best fudge I ever ate) and because the staff is so warm and friendly, as a sweet shops staff should be. Its closing is very bad news for the town, I genuinely think it lose some of its warmt and friendliness. So I went to the local sweet shop this afternoon. I bought the usual cream fudge, also liquorice, some lucky dips and chocolate. It will not be enough to keep them in business, but I will have enjoy their sweets before they close down.

Farewell to the local sweets shop?

This picture is taken from that photos file my dad sent me, and which I mentioned on this blog recently. This is a picture of cream fudge, I think it is the recipe which has Caramilk bars in the middle. I love cream fudge, this one is among my favourite because it is so indulgent. I have here a sweets shop that supplies me in cream fudge when I feel like eating some. The sweets shop also has lots of other things, liquorice and cream soda and, well, pretty much everything one can dream of in terms of candies, chocolate bars and pretty much everything that you used to indulge yourself with as a child.

But sadly, and this is the topic of this post, it will be closing in September. The loca sweets shop. The community sweets shop. For the dumbest reason: the rent is too high. Which is the reason why most businesses close here. And many have recently. I say it is a dumb reason, because the shop is very successful: they always have customers in, many families with kids eagers to try everything and parents unable to refuse them at least one treat, often themselves wanting to rediscover classics from their old chilchood: toffees, Hershey's bars, marshmallows,  Nerds, etc. This is why I find the possible closing of the sweets shop downright tragic: it was not only selling pieces of happiness, it was also soothing nostalgia and preserving memories. Seriously. This is really sad news.

May Fayre

There was a fayre today in the local park. We usually go there for a bit. I enjoy fayres quite a lot (although they can get boring). My favourite is Nuit Blanche sur Tableau Noir on the Plateau Mont-Royal, which I haven't been to in years. At the local May Fayre I am fairly predictable: I have lunch there, usually burgers, I have a pint of real ale (or more), I buy keyrings and other stuff from the Cats Protection Society (I did again this year, two keyrings as they don't last long and one bookmark), I try to encourage local businesses and I avoid like the plague Christian stands (I prefer to save cats than souls).

So that is pretty much what I did this year. I also bought some cream fudge, not from the stand of our local sweet shop but from another one, owned by a sweet old man who travels around towns to sell his products. He does not even have a shop. He also had the weirdest fudge mix, with rhubarb in it. It was still delicious and so unique I had to buy some. I love rhubarb, but that is for another post. It was a strange May fayre as it did not look like May at all: the weather was cloudy and quite cool for a month of May. In a way it was fitting that I had burgers, dark beer (an IPA that was not very pale) and fudge. Still, I miss Nuit Blanche sur un Tableau Noir a lot. There was something Bohemian about it that I could never find in other fayres.

Little things that make a happy Saturday

Life is rarely perfect, but you can have an almost perfect day, or at least a nice day for the most trivial reasons. Here are a few that are making this Saturday pleasant:

-It is warm (for February anyway) and sunny.
-A pumpkin/carrot coloured cat rub itself against me. I wish I could have adopted it (I guess I could, as it had no collar). There are lots of feral cats around here, taking one home would be the generous thing to do.
-There are new flavours of cream fudge at the local sweet shop. And it tastes even more like the sucre à la crème that I have back home.
-The shop owners of said sweet shop are starting to know me and are now so friendly and serviceable that being there is always so pleasant, no matter what I buy. Oh, and they make me taste things now, which is also quite pleasant.
-The cold is slowly but surely going.

Crime de la crime

"...the first sin I have to confess to you is gluttony."

Amadeus, Peter Shaffer

I have been wanting to use this quote. I might have done already, thinking about it. The title of this post, however, is from Ian Fleming's Goldfinger. I thought it would work for what I am blogging about this evening, as it is a creamy item. As you might have suspected reading this blog, I have a sweet tooth. I also have a homesick love for cream fudge, which is a traditional Québec sweet known there as sucre à la crème (see, cream/crème/crime, the title makes so much sense already, especially since eating something so rich is almost criminal). It's a great little dessert, nice, rich, filling, sugary and it is perfect comfort food. During the Christmas holidays, we used to make a cream fudge variety with Caramilk inbetween two layers of the fudge. It's a perfect fix for sugar addicts like myself and absolutely decadent. In another life, which means more than a decade ago, I tried to make cream fudge, but failed miserably. It turned into caramel, so my family used it to make a sugar pie. Not all was lost. So I have a bit of a love story with this piece of creamy sugar. When I feel homesick, which is the case very often these days, I get in the mood to eat something from home. I got lucky recently, as a sweet shop opened where we live and it sells a very good variety of cream fudges. Not as good as what I can sometimes find in Québec and it is a bit pricey for what it is, but I love it nevertheless and I often need it, so there it is. On a more selfish note, one of the good thing about cream fudge is that my wife does not like it much, so it is one of those desserts I don't have to share. I have the ambition to make cream fudge here one day, but given my bad experience the first time I tried and my bad luck with other desserts, I am afraid it might end up badly.