The Belgian Buns of Cornwall.

Asda, Falmouth, Cornwall.

9th October 2009.

ASDA in Falmouth is a curious place. When the new access road to Falmouth was built, the new ASDA store was constructed next to it, and so it appeared, magical and complete, when the road was opened. It is a modern concrete building with smooth vertical walls and a white roof. It reminds me of a giant Belgian Bun, squatting by the side of the road (it is possible that I have a one track mind).
This bun is rather like the building, there is a sense that the same designer, or the same aesthetic is at work. It is modern and commercial, and successful but not really appealing. In a collection of buns (technically referred to as a feast) or a collection of buildings (a town) this would be the sort of thing that acts as spacer to keep the significant elements from obscuring eachother.
And so I approach this bun with limited enthusiasm. I shared the bun with a friend, and in a perfect world I would have preferred to have something more unique to share with him. This poor offering was bunfully deficient.

There is an ancient bunmakers rhyme to inspire generations of bakers and fill them with a burning passsion for their craft:

Dough it and currant it
Curd it and coil it
Bake it with friends 'till it rises.
Bite it and chew it
Tear and devour it
Relish it's juicy surprises!

This one, unfortunately, falls short of that passionate hope. As you can see from this picture in profile, the bun has been moulded into a perfect circular shape so that it wedges exactly into the carrying tray. It is like a giant bath plug or a squashy wheel from some screeching childs toy.
Generations and generations of skilled craftsmen have been betrayed by this sad circular confection of disappointment, wrapped in its plastic coffin. This has no passion, its production was not fuelled by a bakers lust for yeasty perfection. This is a bundroid. It is a facsimile of a bun, squirted from a monsterous nozzle of deception into a mould of pure opportunism.
These are the buns of the devil!

This quartered bun follows the geometrically offensive shape of the parent. As you can see it is without lemon curd and is rather dry as a consequence. It has a rather modern texture like one of the latest recycled materials available for insulating attic spaces. There were 26 currants rolled into the coils and ten broken fragments. The bun was soft but surprisingly heavy and slightly yeasty.

The icing was good, I have to give the poor bun credit where it is due. It was soft without being runny or offensively sticky. The Cherry was a good rich colour and perched perfectly on the top like a delicious ruby on a satin carpet of icing all concealing the depths of disappointment beneath.

Durability testing.
It was difficult to know what would represent a fair test for the buns durability. I decided to leave the bun on a stump and see what the universe made of it. It isn't a very specific test, but I though that it might answer a philosophical rather than a practical question.

This shows the bun on its stump, surveying the world with curiosity. I was interested in finding out if the world was looking back at the bun with equal interest.

Early visitors were a magpie, which I think saw the snowy bun as some sort of love rival, and this wasp which I am sure looked at it as nothing more than a sugar source!

Overnight, the question was answered. For all its failings, this was a bun that the universe wanted to sample. It disappeared without trace!
A few days later I watched my local fox poking around the stump with more than usual interest, and I suspect that he was the vehicle for the universe' investigation of the bun. There was a spooky bun shaped mark left on the stump to record the bun's passing (or it might just be the heartwood of the stump showing)!

Conclusions.
For no good reason, I wanted this to be a good bun, but I was let down. It looked like a bun, it was shaped like a bun, it was decorated like a bun and the universe was happy to accept it as a bun, but for me it was a tragedy.