Brandy Snaps

There's a smell that comes off the pan when butter and golden syrup melt together with ground ginger, and it's the smell of dark afternoons when the light goes at four and someone has put the lamps on early. Brandy snaps belong to that hour. They belong to Christmas, to the cold weeks either side of it, to the kind of evening when you want a pudding that feels like an occasion without anyone having to work for hours.

They have a reputation for being difficult, and they aren't. They look impossible, all that delicate lace and the tubes that seem like they belong in a patisserie window, but the actual making of them is four ingredients in a pan and a teaspoon dropped onto a tray. The only skill is timing: knowing when to lift the warm biscuits off the parchment and when to leave them be. Thirty seconds out of the oven, they're floppy and willing. A minute later, they've set rigid. You'll get the feel of it on the second one. The first one is a sacrifice to the cause.

They come from Yorkshire, by way of country fairs and travelling shows, and you used to buy them rolled and unfilled from a paper bag and crunch them on the walk home. Filling them with cream is a more recent indulgence, and a worthwhile one. A quiet pour of brandy into the cream pulls the whole thing together.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first year I made them properly. "Brandy snaps. December. Snow on the windowsill. Worth it." That's still the note. We're only making dinner, but some puddings deserve to be remembered.