Today I’ve been icing my home-made Christmas cake. It’s taken months to reach this point. I made the cake in October and fed it with malt whisky through holes made in the cake with uncooked sticks of spaghetti. I wrapped the cake in tinfoil and stored it away.

Each weekend thereafter, as is traditional, I unwrapped it and fed it with another tablespoon of whisky. Gradually I managed to finish the bottle of malt whisky I’ve been using for this purpose over the last decade. (No, we’re not big whisky drinkers.) This gave me an excuse to open a bottle of superior quality (a gift of several years ago) and continue the ‘feeding’ process until this week when it was time to marzipan the cake and let it dry out before proceeding to the icing stage.

It’s now done and awaits some icing artisans to make an appropriate scene for the top of the cake, using the left-over icing. Each year we choose a theme relevant to the year just ending. (In 2022, when Argentina won the World Cup, we did a football-themed cake starring Lionel Messi in a stripey no. 10 shirt made of icing).  If the theme is too difficult to render in icing, we revert to making birds and animals in festive mood.

I await the arrival of my daughter and her partner, both of whom are good at making figurines out of icing, often with an amusing twist. I sit beside them at the kitchen table and try to join in, but as Guildenstern says to Hamlet in another context, ‘I have not the skill’.

Rolling out the icing today, I used a wooden rolling pin made by the houseware firm Joseph Joseph. The name ‘Joseph’ was stamped into the wood. As I rolled, I became aware that the name ‘Joseph’ was appearing in ghostly reverse form, embossed on the sheet of icing (see photo). At first I was annoyed and thought I’d have to smooth it away, but then it occurred to me that it was quite appropriate to have the name ‘Joseph’ on a Christmas cake.

Wishing everyone a peaceful Christmas when it comes!