Marks and Spencer announced today that they have fired their pastry chef, Wilmer Croquenbouche, after customer outcry regarding Croquenbouche’s most recent concoction.
Croquenbouche’s delight in Christmas has been a highlight of the holiday season for the last three years, but as in so many things, 2020 seems to have destroyed him.
“Last year, Wilmer created gingerbread iPhones, with different screens designed in frosting,” Marks and Spencer CCO Alan Zimmler said in an interview. “He skirted the line with some of the Instagram influencer posts he recreated, but his ability to create abs on actual gingerbread was so impressive, and the cookies were so popular, that we let it slide. Allowances must be made for creative types.”
But Croquenbouche’s 2020 entry in holiday baked goods was a bridge too far for Zimmler and the venerable department store. Dubbed “Santa’s Yumnut,” the new pastry is a hybrid of a donut and a yum-yum. And according to Croquenbouche’s notes, they boast a “sweet Santa’s belt topping.”
“I’ve never been so offended,” M&S shopper and mother Susan Howell said, peering more closely at the offending treats through the display case, a slight flush coloring her cheeks. “My children shouldn’t be subjected to this… this sexualization of Santa Claus! Imagining Santa’s patent leather belt as a treat, or Santa climbing on top of you, sweet and moist, finding his way to your innermost pleasure zones the same way he unerringly finds the homes of the good little boys and girls, but you’re not a good girl you’ve been very very bad and Santa knows that.” Ms. Howell abruptly walked away, clutching a bag of yumnuts to her chest.
“This was just too much,” Zimmler added, apologetically. “I’m always happy to push the envelope—our display of animal mannequins wearing human wigs like fur coats should be proof of that—but we can’t allow any hint of sex to encroach upon the holidays. That’s not what this time of year is about.”
As for Mr. Croquenbouche, he is allegedly taking the opportunity to open his own pop-up savory pastry shop, Meat Cute.
