The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop

"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

"A cross between a biscuit and a cake, pale and crumbly in appearance but chewy on the inside, the gingerbread is made to the same recipe which Grasmere cook Sarah Nelson used in 1854 when she first opened her shop to locals and visitors. Only sold here and online, it’s one of those foods — along with Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding (www.cartmelvillageshop.co.uk), traditional Cumberland sausage, Herdwick lamb, and damsons from the Lyth and Winster valleys — that have become almost as familiar as the names of Windermere, Derwentwater, Helvellyn, and Scafell Pike." - Christian Dymond