Countdown to Halloween: Mr Kipling Witches Hat Fancies

Just a quick one today

Mr Kipling has got the Halloween spirit! Mr Kipling dates back to 1967 where it was created to sell bakery-standard goods but in Supermarkets. It’s never actually achieved that; I can’t imagine anyone has ever bought a box of Mr Kipling’s cakes and thought ‘this could be freshly baked this morning!’. No despite being told all our lives that they’re ‘posh’, Kipling’s tastes exactly like what they are – supermarket food, its sugar infested, chemically altered shit food – and none more so than their French Fancies. One should not take the preceding sentence as a complaint, sometimes all I want to eat is sugar infested, chemically altered shit food, it has a comforting quality all of its own. This year (I don’t know if they’re new this year) Kipling has rebranded it’s most iconic line, French Fancies, for Halloween, dubbing them Witches Hat Fancies (presumably because they’re black?) and they are awesome.

Also Ooky’s here again! Everyone say hi to Ooky!

Fuck you, Ooky!

First up the packaging is awesome, black and green seems very much to be this Halloween season’s colour scheme of choice but Manor Bakeries have eschewed the neon green for darker shade, instantly making things creepier and, if you’ll pardon the expression, ‘old school’, in keeping with Kipling’s ‘grandparents and little country villages’ image this box could have been released any decade since the cakes began, that’s all the work of the dark green and the choice to not have exceptionally modern style silhouettes.  I’m very appreciative of this; I’ll take timeless over focus-tested Amazing World of Gumball style any day. I’m also very appreciative of the logo redesign, which shows you how sad I really am, the standard Mr Kipling’s logo shape has been transformed into a weathered sign and even their infamous tag-line has been altered, no longer exceedingly good, these exceedingly creepy – wonderful.

Well actually they’re not, what they are is BLACK iced fancies with GREEN insides, no attempt has been made to die the ‘cream’ but with a black and white outside I don’t really see the need, making it red or orange would have been too much. They look awesome, these are cakes designed for people like me who never really stopped being the Goth kid at school, these are the cakes that Tim Burton would make, and probably does. Except… in person… they’re more grey than black, it was a little disappointing – I wanted JET BLACK cakes, like the Halloween Whopper but these aren’t that. You might not be able to tell so well because credit where credit’s due, under most lighting, especially when photographed, they do look more black and grey, dark charcoal I guess, but I’ve held one very close to my face and they’re grey. They’re still awesome, but now they’re slightly more Industrial Metal then Danny Elfman.

But what do they taste like? Are they exceedingly good? The box boldly claims that these are supposed to orange flavoured cake (why not mint?), they could be and maybe I could tell they weren’t French Fancies and if French Fancies, no matter what colour, didn’t all turn into one mixed pile of sweet the second it enters your mouth. All iced fancies taste the same – the yellow ones, the white ones, the pink ones, the chocolate ones,  the witches hat ones, they taste like sweet (icing), sweeter (fake cream) and not quite so sweet (cake), there is no unique flavours, no subtle hints, just sweet, sweeter and not quite so sweet. I like it, but they might as well say they’re dogshit flavoured for all it matters and it’s kind of sad they don’t have their own unique taste, maybe if you ate them in sections, I know some people like to eat the ‘cream’ first and then the cake, but that’s a bit gross really isn’t it? You’re the same people who lick out Crème Eggs aren’t you? One good thing though, has anyone noticed the icing on French Fancies becoming a little more brittle recently? Maybe they’re just always really stale in my Tescos but their icing don’t seem to be as soft and smooth as it once was, not so here, I have this theory that black food colouring has something in it that causes things to stay softer, as such eating one of these feels exactly the same as eating one when you were a kid, probably nicking it off the table during some adult ‘gathering’ filled with cigarette smoke and jokes you were too young to understand.   

I totally just got the witches hat thing! If you figure that most people think of a witch as looking like the Wicked Witch of the West from that bloody MGM Wizard of Oz movie, then a witch’s hat would be black, with green underneath! Ha! That Mr Kipling is so clever. #