"Grasmere Gingerbread Shop, located in a small white stucco cottage next door that was originally built as a schoolhouse in 1630, is full of dark Victorian paneling, doilies, gingham, and the ubiquitous daffodils. The shop assistants wear striped high-necked dresses and ruffled pinafores and mobcaps. It’s twee as hell, and it’s impossible it was this cute in 1854 when Sarah Nelson, an ambitious domestic worker with a killer recipe, lived here and began selling gingerbread to tourists. Made from Nelson’s original recipe — handwritten on parchment and stored securely in a bank vault — the gingerbread isn’t thick, cakey, and treacle-flavored like the versions found across the Lake District, where it’s often served with custard. Nor is it dry construction material for Christmas gingerbread houses. Instead, it’s as thick as a cookie, but denser and chewier. It tastes of butter and sugar, a trace of lemon, and above all, ginger, both in ground and crystalized form." - Aimee Levitt
