Yet another cms blog

24: Iceland!!

Well. That's 24. Technically, that's the last of an advent calendar. I hope I will be able to throw in an entry for the big day, but time will tell. Actually at time of writing, lovely weblog.lol, the neat and genteel blogging service that inspired this whole shenanigans is down for technical reasons. So I'm genuinely writing an entry nobody is reading, here on my iPad. If for some reason, you have managed to read this, my thanks for playing along. It's been fun. I'm glad I went along with my mysterious co-worker's suggestion.

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24 days straight, and I haven't missed an entry yet. I'm even counting today, because it's written even if I don't publish it on the day. We have had supermarket pies, artisanal pies, traditional pies, quite a few pies that aren't really pies, one or two vegan pies, and a couple of truly tenuous entries.

And here, on true Christmas Eve, we've gone to Iceland! That's right, not my usual choice of supermarket either. Although, many decades ago I spent a year living in a blighted suburban metroland where the only food store reachable by foot was a small branch of Iceland, and I lived off a combination of their curious vegetarian frozen options, and Domino's pizza. Interesting times, long gone.

Back to the now. These are the "luxury" line. All butter, as we've come to expect. Interesting badge on the box, telling us these are taste approved by the good housekeeping institute 2022. I'm not entirely sure what this entails, but it's promising.

Snowflake styled lid, powdered sugar, nothing too surprising here. It's a generous deep fill, and everything looks in order. The taste is terrific though. This is an incredibly well engineered pie. The pastry manages to hit all of the buttery smooth, wonderfully crumbly and also firm crust. The icing sugar dust hits fast and dissolves. And there is a true depth to the flavour of the filling, it's a really broad profile. Usually my taste in mince pies leans towards the acidic fruitiness and the peel zest. Here though, it's all landing inside the nutty range, and the spiced elements are readily discernible around the dark fruit gel. Iceland, you're dark horse. The GHI knows what they're talking about. This is probably the best "mainstream" pie I've had all season. To my mind this knocks M&S off the top spot, this is the champion, if you're looking for a boxed up normal pie.

Wishing very happy Christmas to any of my fourteen or so readers who celebrate that kind of thing! Next year, I've been threatening to review Fender Telecasters.