There’s no better start to Christmas than with a champagne tower built with unreasonable precision. We constructed ours at our Marylebone Village Bakery last night, where we gathered with friends to taste our new Christmas menu and have a first look at our homeware and pantry collection.
There were stacks of panettone ready for dipping in a white chocolate fountain. Seasonal favourites like mini turkey rolls and mince pies. Our new Sticky Toffee Madeleines, drenched in butterscotch, and our Christmas Bun’s new savoury sibling, rich with Gruyère and pesto.
But the food didn’t arrive alone. This Christmas, things look a bit different in our bakeries, where we’ve gathered objects that pour, cut, carry, hang and light up. Gifts chosen to earn their place at the table, in the kitchen or alongside something freshly baked.
At the centre was a velvet-covered long table that had our new collection of homeware and pantry items. Beautifully laid out, intentionally grouped together. We chose things that would feel at home alongside the food we make.
Like our GAIL’s Teapot, a mainstay of our bakeries which you can now take home with you (legally). When it came to designing it, Surrey Ceramics spent over six months working with a master model maker to make sure it holds enough for two cups, pours easily and won’t over-brew after the first cup is served. Surrey Ceramics get it.
So do the potters at John Julian, who make ceramics in small batches in Wiltshire. Robust enough to last for years, they’re created impeccably by hand. For Christmas we took a selection of their plates and added illustrations from our Christmas’ Artist in Residence, Lucy Deaner.
Beyond tableware, we had Welsh blankets, woven with thick lambswool by Melin Tregwynt. Aprons, oven mitts and tea towels, that look as good hanging in your kitchen as they do dusted with flour. And Kitchen Kits for Mini Bakers, with wooden baking tools ready for real or imaginary play.
Among them, other useful things. A crumb brush, olive picks and a glass butter dish. The sort of things you might not know you need until you find yourself using them every day.
All evening, guests drifted between conversations, stopping to devour chunks of panettone. Chocolate, pistachio, classic and the much-loved mandarin and white chocolate. All washed down with a glass of Cacao Blanc, a cocktail created especially for the evening, bringing together white chocolate and toffee milk punch with East London Liquor Company vodka infused with XOCO’s undeodorised cacao butter.
Our resident artist, Lucy Deaner, spent the evening drawing pieces from our homeware collection onto Christmas cards. Her illustrations, which will feature across all our bakeries, also found their way onto three new tote bags, in orange, burgundy and dark green.
And finally, a moment for our new Chocolate collection. Think dark chocolate-covered honeycomb. Candied ginger dipped in dark chocolate. Caramelised hazelnuts, Brazil nuts and almonds. The sort of things you might intend to eat one of, then find yourself finishing the lot. We wouldn't judge.
It was an evening of everything we love. Good food, useful objects, old friends and new things to share.
Our Christmas Gift Shop is now in our bakeries, with the full collection of giftable food and homeware online at GAILs.com. Some will be given. Some eaten. All will be used.
Welcome to Christmas at GAIL’s.
