#11: Excellent seasonal sweets to snack on while you watch Christmas movies (I've done the research)

Plus: all the books I want to read this summer, the discombobulation of experiencing Black Friday in 2024 and Raidah Shah Idil's first book journey

Hello again friends, and welcome to another edition of Copy and Cake, a newsletter on elevated, creative living which is supposed to feel like sitting down with a cup of coffee with a good friend, and not skipping the sweets (we’re literally not skipping the sweets today). I say supposed to because I’ve clearly failed in keeping a regular (and reliable) posting schedule, and I am not even sure what I am doing here anymore. But I am also going to stop pretending like figuring it out is a massive priority as I watch the decimation and invasion of my precious and long-suffering motherland, and as I straddle the fear I hold for my loved ones, and the grief in my community. Of course this grief and acknowledgement extends to all Palestinian people who have seen and experienced the most abhorrent of horrors in these 59-plus weeks of a genocide in Gaza.

BUT. Tis the season to be jolly, etc etc, and I am not going to lie, I am DESPERATE to feel some joy. I have refrained from putting my tree up (I usually wait for the first Sunday of Advent, which is December 1st this year) but I did hang some garlands and fairy lights around the house, and started collecting my favourite treats as soon as they started appearing.

I genuinely feel that seasonal sweets are the secular highlight of the season. They’re the perfect accompaniment to whatever you happen to be doing come November/December, whether you’re a host, a guest or an overstimulated parent sitting on the couch in your candy cane pyjamas watching a terrible Christmas romance (my favourite seasonal activity, apart from celebrating the baby Jesus who is all things good and who was probably very cute).

But it’s so easy to go wrong with them, to be seduced by pretty packaging or a brand name or something made in France, and I do not want this for you at all. I feel very passionately about making the right choices, having written an article on the perfect panettone and having been disappointed by department store Amaretti that looked cute but tasted meh, and that’s why I decided to bring you this list. It is by no means comprehensive but please trust that it is built on years of trial and error by me, with my discerning palate and zest for all things festive. It is also, to my knowledge, BDS safe; c/o of this website here and a few TikTok searches, which are also, I must add, not comprehensive.

So without further ado:

• Williams Sonoma Peppermint Bark: My absolute favourite seasonal product, whether it’s the traditional kind or the salted variety. I adore it and never want to share it, but I do because how could I not, and I usually wait till after the big day to eat it.

• Koko Black Ho-Ho-Hot Cocoa: I used to wait for October for a certain coffee chain’s pumpkin-spiced beverages, which were then followed by Christmas-themed beverages, but having boycotted that chain last year, I had to learn to make my own festive hot cocoa (complete with cream I whip by hand and a crushed candy cane sprinkle). I have spent the last year trying a plethora of chocolate powders, flakes, melts and so on, and Koko Black’s has been the best. This is a seasonal twist on their traditional dark, with spices like nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves throughout.

• Koko Black Christmas Brittle: Cashews, pistachios, cranberry and caramel covered in chocolate. Excellent with your favourite chips (Kettle Herb and Spice).

• Fortnum and Mason Gingerlossus: You know how sometimes you buy a sleeve of biscuits and think you’re going to have one with your tea but end up eating about four before you’re satiated? Well, you can’t do this with these biscuits, because they’re so large and eating one sometimes feels like eating an entire dessert. They’re made from stem ginger and are coated in a thick dark chocolate, so they feel really robust and definitely the kind of thing to savour with a cup of black breakfast tea. But they’re on the pricey side, so you might want to wait till there’s some sort of deal (I got a free picnic basket when I bought mine; and I will use it).

• Coles Peach and Apricot Mince pies: I do not like mince pies. I have given the even best ones a chance. And yet, the flavour of these is excellent, especially when they’ve been warmed up in the oven.

• Walker’s Gingerbread Shortbread: I was crushed when researching the boycott brands and came across a Walkers, until I realised it Walkers the chip company owned by Pepsi and not Walker’s the Scottish Shortbread company, because their shortbread biscuits are fantastic and these variations are delightful. They’re also a lot more budget-friendly for kids who are not going to appreciate a $9 boutique gingerbread shape.

• Walker’s Cranberry and Clementine Shortbread: Let me be clear: I cannot taste the clementine which is a bummer because it was one of the major reasons I got these, and I can’t even see it on the ingredients list which makes me feel duped, but the cranberry is there in chunks and they do feel a bit more festive than the traditional variety (but sweeter, so it really depends what you have a hankering for). That said, the traditional butter shortbread is just as good.

• Tony’s Chocolonely Milk Chocolate Gingerbread Block: One of two seasonal varieties (the other is a peppermint candy cane flavour), with chunks of actual gingerbread throughout. Excellent with popcorn.

• Cherry Candy Canes from The Reject Shop: I know the peppermint candy canes are the candies du jour, but trust me these are excellent and I am already cursing myself for only buying one packet. I keep them in a little bowl on the hall table, next to a reindeer holding my Christmas stocking.

• The Curious Cabinet Cherry Shrub: If you’re not keen on alcohol but still want a festive drink, the shrubs from this Aussie small biz are delish. I mix this with a bit of tonic and garnishes like rosemary, thyme, and dried lime or blood orange, and it tastes really luxe.

• Coles Chocolate Pudding that you can warm in the microwave: I love this pudding with a bit of cream or ice-cream after Christmas lunch/dinner. It somehow feels lighter and less overpowering than a pav after a roast, and even though it’s not on the fancier end of the festive dessert spectrum, I feel like both the big major supermarkets do good, basic ones that everyone should like.

• Bakers Delight Lemon Tarts: Not Christmassy per se but they always make an appearance this time of year and every year I buy a pack of six which is just enough to keep on hand to have here and there over the period. They’re not as addictive as say, peppermint bark, but they do what they’re supposed to and they look cute doing it.

• Fancier gingerbread: If you want a gingerbread house or a Christmas cookie with a bit more pizzaz, I absolutely adore the ones made by The Cupcake Princess. The cookies look and taste good, and make great teacher gifts if you want to shop small. The gingerbread at Flour and Stone is also excellent.

Black Friday 2024 has been discombobulating. You too?

I recently deleted the Instagram app from my phone to keep myself from logging into it unconsciously. It was making me more depressed and I’ve found it’s more effort to log in on Chrome so my use of it ends up being more intentional, but it’s meant that I have kind of lost all sense of time. I always thought Black Friday was supposed to be the day after Thanksgiving — the last Friday in November — but it’s been constantly and consistently promoted to me for the last three weeks, which is especially problematic in a cost-of-living crisis. I have personally tried to stay away from unnecessary shopping entirely, knowing nothing I buy would cheer me up or solve my top-priority issues, though I did replace a pair of espadrilles after my favourite pair tore and bought an alcohol-free gin. I recently read somewhere that if you don’t buy a thing you technically saved 100% and that, combined with this reel and the new Netflix doco The Shopping Conspiracy, has me thinking hard about whether we’re ready to move away from the incessant consumerism that has been amplified by social media year on year. I am sure I am not hallucinating when I say that Black Friday used to be one weekend a year and not an entire month, but maybe there is hope that underconsumption has become a sort of trend even though it should really be our always.

An ambitious list of books I want to read over Dec/Jan

I miss the days when I lived at home as a uni student and had nothing to do when uni wrapped up. Smart phones did not exist and I hated being outside in the sun, which meant I sat on the couch all day reading long books like Anna Karenina and loving life. Now I am tethered to my home and the needs of the little people in it, but I don’t have to be tethered to my phone, so I am going to try to keep off it so I can make headway on my reading, which, on account of the excess news consumption of 2024, was abysmal this year. Here’s what I am hoping to get through:

• Translations by Jumaana Abdu: So many people have raved about Abdu’s writing and I love the idea of a woman fleeing the city for the bush (I love all books that begin with a woman uprooting her existence and intend on unpacking this someday soon).

• Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser: New book out this month. I love the cover, and I love the idea of it blurring fact and fiction as the protagonist writes her thesis on Virgina Woolf.

• The Secret History by Donna Tartt: An American classic I have had on my shelves for years. I unwittingly wound up with two copies but have not even read one.

• The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard: This one just needs a finish. I took it with me to Perth Writers Weekend in February and read it on the long flight, but hardly read when I was there. I love domestic fiction and I love period dramas and this is set with a well-to-do family just before WWII so it has my name all over it. It’s the first in a series of five and I stupidly bought all of them.

• Lebanon Days by Theodore Ell: Ell, the spouse of an Australian diplomat posted to Lebanon from 2018 to 2021, wrote an essay on Lebanon that won the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize and that Helen Garner called “astonishing”. I am really interested in what this white outsider (and I do not mean this rudely) has to say about a place that takes up so much place in my heart and head. The last book I read by a white Australian who lived in Beirut was Catherine Taylor’s Once Upon a Time in Beirut, and this was eons ago. The country has changed and so have I. We will see.

• Grace by Grace Coddington: I have had this sitting on my shelf for years. It looks pretty and tbh I was not as enamoured by Coddington as everyone else was in The September Issue, but I revisited Vogue via a doco earlier this year and I think it will be a light break in the reading.

• Home Cooking: A writer in the kitchen by Laurie Colwin: I love food. I love good writing. When those two things combine in memoirs of food, where someone divulges their lessons from life’s biggest moments AND tells me what they were eating when they cried/fell in love/had their heart broken/ lost their temper at work, I get extremely into it.

• Rock Flight by Hasib Hourani: A Palestinian poet’s debut collection. Have heard good things.

• Safe Haven by Shankari Chandran: The latest novel from the Miles Franklin-winner, about displacement, refuge, and Australia as we live in it today.

• A Secret Garden in Paris by Sophie Beaumont: I’m always going to pick up a book set in Paris. If there’s a garden in it, one I can visualise while I pine for my own, I am less likely to put it down.
  
  10 books over two months where there’s little paid work should be achievable but given I only read about 12 books this year in total (and only wrote picture books), this is still a challenge.

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Raidah Shah Idil’s First Book Journey

Finishing off this edition of the newsletter with a first book journey from Australian debut middle grade writer Raidah Shah Idil, whose novel, How to Free a Jinn, was one of my 10-year-old’s absolute standouts this year. I recently interviewed a bunch of booksellers and librarians about their favourite 2024 Australian releases for The Guardian’s annual gift guide (coming soon!) and this was the recommendation from the lovely Jane Hollier Brown at MacLean’s Booksellers in Hamilton, NSW. The middle grade market is saturated, so this says A LOT. Anyway, this is a series I want to feature more regularly because it offers a little more transparency on the various inroads to trad publishing. Shah Idil’s is interesting because she used both beta readers AND a professional editor to polish her ms before sending it out, which probably played a role in impressing her publishers because it suggests she’s willing to work and that there’s polish to the work already. Anyway, here she is on her first book deal:

The Manuscript

I wrote the first draft of my novel while I was pregnant. I had so many unfinished novels but was determined to finish this one! I knew that by the time I birthed my son, I would be sleep-deprived, and have a one-and-a-half-year-old and four-year-old. I didn’t have a writing group – I work best alone – but I do have trusted beta readers. While my daughters were at preschool or home with their grandmother, I devoured delicious Malaysian food at my favourite restaurants, rubbed my baby bump and wrote my book. I hired Michele Sagan, a professional editor, right after I finished my book to help me polish it. I also used the resources at www.manuscriptacademy.com.

The Book Deal

It took me 10 months of querying before landing my amazing US literary agent, Allison Hellegers of Stimola Literary. I spent about 3 months working on revising my book with her, and 2021 was the year of many kind rejections from US editors. I realised that my book sounded more like a MG book and not as YA as I thought it was, so I asked my agent what she thought if I revised it down to MG. She agreed, so 2022 was the year of revising it down to MG. 2023 was finally the year I got my book deal! My agent pitched to Australian publishers instead of US ones, and Allen and Unwin snapped up my MG within weeks of receiving it. I was stunned! What surprised me was how long it took my contract to be finalized [Sarah: this surprises every debut author!] so I could finally announce the fantastic news! I’ve learned that it takes years before a fantastic book lands the right home. Keep hope alive, have support networks and take breaks.

The Bit-in-Between:

Everything moved very fast after my email offer from A&U! I had a total of three revision passes that took about one to one-and-a-half months for each pass (developmental edit, line edit, copy edit). I had one call with my editors before I accepted their offer, another call once I got my edit letter, and then I asked for an additional call to clarify something.

Designing the cover was a dream! The draft cover was already so gorgeous, so it was very easy to ask for minor tweaks. The hardest thing for me was getting my edits done with my kids all on school holidays. I had to book a staycation at a hotel to get it done.

Publication:

My book launched on Sep 14 th . [Shah Idil flew from Malaysia to Sydney for it]. My publisher shared an incredible author press kit that described everything. The social media team also helped me generate ideas and a schedule for posting on Instagram. Honestly, I’m so thrilled with how everything worked out. What I would do differently [next time] is relax more and trust that my story would find its home. [I’m now working on] an adult romcom I wrote as a break from my MG!