The sweet taste of whimsy

When I was growing up, I’m pretty sure we had a poltergeist, which I called Ovaltine, for reasons the length of this column does not allow. I think Ovaltine might be back, because today, out of nowhere, appeared on my desk – bang in the middle and screaming for attention – a yellowed cutting from an old magazine for a recipe for Double Chocolate Freezer Cookies. Absolutely no one knows where this came from. It has the hallmarks of my mum’s cutting-out, or maybe even childhood me. I will have to make them, because Ovaltine decrees it, and report back.

Talking of cookies, I am not long back from Amsterdam where there were queues a-plenty for shops that had made it on to Instagram (“No one actually from here,” said a local, “eats chips like that – and we all laugh at the people queuing,” referring to the Insta-trend of chips smothered in melted cheese). The famous Van Stapele shop, which sells only one type of cookie (dark Valhrona chocolate with a heart of white chocolate) €3 for one/€15 for six, had moved since I last visited and lost, dare I say, some of the charm of the old shop. I long admired the ethos of “open til the cookies sell out”, but it now seemed an industrial, rather than an artisan, operation and I wondered if they did, indeed, ever sell out.

I came back to England and to whimsy, in the form of Audrey’s A Prickle of Hedgehogs, £9.95. Delicious little 38% Valhrona milk (sensing a theme) chocolate hedgehogs (frogs also available; or one whole lobster, £16.95). Per gram this works out expensive, but they are handmade, the packaging is adorable, and if you left someone out at Christmas this is a good way to redeem yourself.