Mr Kipling, of the exceedingly good cakes fame, not the other one.
I don't often eat cake, but in the mood during a hike, I spied a box of almond slices in a convenience store as we stopped for drinks. Admittedly, Mr Kipling brings some mixed memories, not because he was a bad sort (please don't tell me, so much of my childhood has already been sown with salt), but because I always ended up with the pink French Fancy, which was universally acknowledged as the worst.
Anyway, off we wandered with our sugary prize back into the wilds of, erm, Bromley, seeking a suitable spot for our impromptu patisserie picnic (which turned out to be a soggy bench hosting a revealing glimpse of that palace of debauchery, Chevening).
Firstly, let me take issue with size. Size is sometimes important. This was an entire box of cake slices, right? It was ~50% packaging – a fact I verified with data science by unpacking all the slices and making a little bar chart of cake versus box. The pack is made up of individual packs of two bars, each of which needs a little plastic nest for them to live in, then film wrapping, and associated space around everything. A combination meal deal of both portion size disappointment and environmental destruction. Just unpacking them made me feel like the CEO of Exxon kicking a sea otter.
There's still cake though. Not so much of it, but enough that we can maybe fuel the remaining 10km back to the car. It's cake, Jim, but not as we know it. The sponge tasted like I'd imagine wallpaper paste to taste, a literally anaemic layer of jam, and slices of almond that may well have been the toenails off a corpse.
I did check the sell-by date, as I figured that maybe they'd been baked in the era of King Alfred, but they improbably only encouraged me to consume them before August. After which, I guess all bets were off.
