Kingdom of Knuffel

Ha ha ha ha, that's a fair point....

I don't think I've ever actually ordered a cake, now I think about it. We always just end up making them. Even the family wedding cakes, there was always someone in the family who made them. Huh. I should order a cake, just so I can say I've done it!
yes...
That sounds like a good excuse.

Hm. Maybe one of those dense nut-cakes with a thin layer of rolled marzipan for frosting. I don't know if you can even order those, I'm just trying to think of types of cakes I wouldn't make myself, since if you're going to do something like that you should definitely take advantage to try something you don't normally do, right?
And there's a chestnut cake recipe I've been eyeing for years and never made. Maybe I should order one.
Where do you even order cakes?
There's a pastry-shop next town over, maybe I should call them and see if they do cakes to order.

Your family is impressive. The family next door was like that too, the mother was incredible at cooking, she'd have baking sales all on her own.

I buy cakes a few times a year, never order them in advance though except for Christmas because it's crazy and many pastry shops do special limited cakes. Since we're stuck at home for Christmas again we thought we'd order something fancy.

I'm also not very good at cakes because I'm not very patient. I will make banana cakes but anything that requires a bit more than putting batter in something then bake it needs a lot of motivation that I don't usually have at Christmas.

I'm not sure it's "impressive" so much as "easy to please" and "cheap"...

Certainly nothing we ever did would be up to the visually impressive standards of most Japanese shops. I get intimidated just looking at photos....

So what does a Christmas-themed cake look like? Is it more about the decorations or are there flavors that are traditional for the season?

I still wouldn't bake a wedding cake, the pressure would be incredible.

Actually, the standard Christmas cake is strawberry shortcake, for some reason. But I am honestly sick of whipped cream everywhere.
Thankfully lately people are branching out a bit and famous French pastry shops are getting more and more Japanese branches so even the Japanese owned pastry shops are taking inspiration from them.

We ordered a raspberry chocolate log cake from a newish neighborhood pastry shop that's never disappointed us before. I can't wait.

(The wedding cakes are usually baked in 3s. Then if 2 fail you still have 1, and if all 3 turn out, you have one for the official cake-cutting thing and one for a reception and one for the couple to freeze and take home and eat at their first anniversary)

That log cake sounds amazing! I've never tried one with raspberry before, only ones with poppyseed or fig.

Still, way too much pressure for my weak to stress self. And the decorating requires too much patience for me.

Which makes me remember I've never had a wedding cake.

Poppy seed is an interesting flavor for log cake. I've mainly ever had chocolate or coffee so I'm excited for something a bit newer.

I adore poppyseed. It's an interesting flavor for all sorts of things. I've tried adding it to a bunch of different recipes, some of which it turns out it really doesn't belong in... ha ha ha, oh well.
Decorating does require patience, yeah. I kind of like the craft-parties though, and you can do cooking-craft and have decorating parties for cookies and cakes and cupcakes and whatever else, and then you can parcel out the work and not do it all yourself.
Although not right now with the pandemic on, of course.

I love poppyseed on bread. Also have seen it somewhere on muffins I think. But otherwise it's not a very popular flavor here and I wouldn't even know where to find it. I'm sure I could though.

The neighbor I talked about earlier sometimes did this kind of parties for her daughter's friend and I attended and it was always so much fun.
I kinda miss those. I don't have nearly enough friends here to do that and most of them have left because of the pandemic.

Yeah, my social spheres have really altered lately. More long-distance stuff, much less in person. A lot of waving over the fence at neighbors instead of talking with them... that kind of thing. It's been, what, two years since I had a craft party?

Me too. Somehow I've really rekindled with a few old friends, one of them I met in Kindergarten. The other one I met on the Internet 15 years ago and with whom I only had irregular check ins before.
Somehow we're both French but ended up meeting IRL for the first time in Japan.

I think I've said it before somewhere else but the person I met the most this year apart from my husband is my (wonderful) new dentist.