Hello,

Welcome to the final RWI Some More of the year! Thank you so much for your support over the last 12 months. When I decided to turn part of my newsletter into a paid subscription (in February), I was a little apprehensive that no-one would sign up, but you did and for that I am truly thankful.

By subscribing to receive paid content, you’ve helped me cover the costs of ingredients so I can properly recipe test. In the future, I hope your support will also allow me to pay myself for the work that goes into the newsletter, as well as those talented contributors who bring valued thoughts and creativity to these pages.

It’s not easy to compete with other Substacks, where this work is a full-time job, so if you’ve found me (a needle in a very large haystack) thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for 2026!

Lots of Love,

Cissy…xo

The Evolution of this Dessert

This time last year I really wanted to develop a Bûche de Noël recipe for my newsletter. I did make an attempt at it; I baked a chocolate sponge and laboriously stirred a chestnut jam (following my Vanilla Jam recipe), which I then folded through a luscious whipped cream, and sandwiched between the rolled sponge. When I ate it, the sponge was tough and the balance of flavours was, in my opinion, nothing to write home about. So I parked the idea. Now, a whole year later, the idea still plunges into my mind. How can I make this work in a way I know how? Firstly, I’ve decided to scrap the whole Swiss roll setup. Instead, I’m honing in on the flavour that I wanted to spotlight in the first place. Chestnuts.

Chestnuts, unlike most other nuts, are low in fat and high in starch. When roasted, the starches turn to sugar, naturally bringing out the nut’s sweet flavour as well as its creamy, soft texture. They’re a perfect Autumn nut that pairs well with other earthy ingredients found this time of year, like game and cabbage.

They have particularly strong Christmas connotations, not just because of the famous Christmas song, but because they were once a traditional Victorian street food that became synonymous with the warmth and generosity of the season. Pleasant burnt caramel wafts from chestnuts roasting on an open fire can still be found this time of year if you take a stroll along the banks of the Thames or visit European Christmas markets.

Not only eaten alone, chestnuts are also part of classic Christmas dishes like stuffing, roasted brussels sprouts with lardons, of course in Bûche de Noël and the now less fashionable Nesserolde Pudding (a frozen sweet chestnut custard with candied peel and rum folded through, set in a copper jelly mould).

Most famously though, chestnuts are used in the classic French dessert Mont Blanc. The name translates as ‘white mountain’ and the dish is designed to look like the snow-capped mountains in the alps, with its meringue base that’s topped with whipped cream and piled high with strands of sweet chestnut puree.

At Quince Bakery this year, I helped develop a version of a Louise Cake for our counter selection. Traditionally this New Zealand cake consists of a thin sponge, a layer of raspberry jam, and a layer of coconut meringue. For us at the bakery, these layers have become a versatile blueprint for using seasonal ingredients and a handy way to use leftover egg whites. Versions at the bakery have included flavours such as clementine leaf sugar and citrus curd, Gariguette strawberry and garden rhubarb, blackcurrant leaf sugar and blackcurrant compote, peach melba, and fig leaf sugar.