Not Pastry, Just.... Ok, Pastry

Ok, I like cinnamon buns. They’re not buns really. They are “danishes.” La de da. I’m not entirely sure what the difference is. Perhaps danishes are fancier; perhaps they cost more. I think, though, that if you’d walk into a bakery and request a cinnamon bun, they may look at you funny.
I know what a croissant is, that’s easy. You can tell by the shape. I don’t mind croissants, especially if someone else bought it; if I buy, though, I prefer a Danish, especially one with icing. I don’t think the icing makes it taste any different, but I think it makes me feel different. I makes me feel like I get icing.

So cinnamon danishes. And pecan buns. I really like pecan buns. But I don’t think that they are danishes at all. They are just buns. And they have pecans and they have artificial cherries. That’s really decadent I think, artificial cherries, and I wouldn’t go eating them out of the jar or anything. But on pecan buns somehow they work.

Now let’s talk about the black and white. I use the singular because the plural makes me uncomfortable. A black and white is just a cookie that’s half black and half white, no magic. Very rich they are. There are big ones and small ones, and I can’t eat a big one in one sitting. Now remember, I have no trouble ingesting a pecan bun. But a black and white...

Ordering them is awkward. People generally say “black and whites;” “I’ll have a dozen black and whites”, but somehow it doesn’t sound right to me, like you’re getting many whites, but only one black. I thought of blacks and white, (you know? Like brothers-in-law) but that doesn’t work at all. Blacks and whites might be okay; I’ve tried that: “I’ll have 6 blacks and whites” but then they look at me funny. So I just buy them where you don’t have to ask for them, or in extremis I’ll say give me 7 of those black and white cookies, acting like an out-of-towner who’s never seen them before. (I was introduced to, ahem, blacks and whites after living here about a month, I’ve never seen them anywhere else). One time I asked for 6 whites and 3 blacks, but they threw me out of the bakery.

That’s it, really, for pastry, except for those apple things. I get them sometimes for breakfast at the hospital. I’m not sick, I just go there for breakfast because I like the pastry. The apple things, they have this spiral shape, and the apple goo in the middle, and I like to eat around the spiral, but then I’m left with just the goo, which is tasty but not all that easy to hold, and so I have to eat across the spiral, but we all have to make sacrifices…