PARKIN - YORKSHIRE GINGERBREAD CAKE

When you greatly dislike black treacle and have a moderate-to-high aversion to ginger you just have to question what you are doing with you life and why it is exactly that you sit on the kitchen floor for an hour and a half on a school night with your eyelids dying to call it a day and stare blankly at the oven waiting for a boatload of gingerbread cake to slowly take its shape (and that’s without even taking into consideration a prequel of flapjack incidents and ingredient crises and creativity crises and identity crises, the prospect of a cooling time a stone’s throw to eternity, four entire moons before you even get to slice the thing – it’s got to be STICKY, and the sudden urge to sack it all off and never mind the tooth decay, peacefully suck on the container of golden syrup that is invitingly sitting in front of you like you do on a baby’s bottle).

I don’t think I can find an answer to these questions and I most definitely don’t need a slab of vegan Parkin to come to the conclusion that I don’t know what I’m doing with my life; but what I do know is that as soon as I munched my way through the first of one too many squares of this soft spongy cake, this revelation made its sticky way to me – that catastrophes are source of the best stories; that solitude leads to adventures, bear-shaped brioche buns and good night’s sleep; that nine-to-five jobs cater for sunshiny Daves and little lions (and sponsor phone calls to them), and film cameras for lifetime accomplices; and that if you tie yourself to someone’s balloon and let it go, just before it bursts you get to touch the clouds and they feel like candy floss. And that, if from horrid treacle and soapy ginger comes heavenly Parkin, there’s got to be room for hope.

FIG GINGER NUT CHEESECAKE

It’s good practice to write handover notes when you leave for a more or less significant period of time, even when flying eight hours behind and then back feels like you’ll only be gone for the night, and when the state of you in the limbo of the pre-departure is not too dissimilar to when you pour a cheesecake mixture into the tin before going to bed and think, duck knows if this will ever set.

To those who are left to spend the night time all by themselves in my absence (and to stare at the fridge like lunatics), I wish to pass on the following words of wisdom.
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- If the thing doesn’t set, you can always have fig soup. Or just accept it’s a disaster (there’s beauty in every stumble), and start a baking blog about cheesecake disasters. It might take off, James says.

- Write stuff. If you’re too shy, invisible-write stuff.

- Masquerades are a necessary evil, but that doesn’t justify dressing up for the best part of twenty-five years just because it so happened that you forgot to take your costume off (you got there eventually).

- Royal Mail may also be a necessary evil, but even when they get confused and send your Italian dad’s parcel off to India (I’m known for not holding grudges), it doesn’t mean you are authorised to disrupt the continuum of space and time on the entire office floor shrieking like a banshee at customer service employees.

- Escape as and when deemed needed, but make sure you reserve every bit of your anxiety for what you’re escaping to.

- Foxes are underrated. Walk with them.

- Sit in cafes with the most serious expression in your repertoire and type on your laptop with the solemnity of manner you’d have when applying for a programme manager job. No one needs to know you are secretly creating cute animations out of hand-drawn badgers, photos of Birmingham and vintage trumpets.

- Five-storey buildings with a sinking-ship feel are not suitable for the emotionally unstable. Stick to orphanages, cafes in art galleries, edit suites and coffee shops that sell custard tarts whenever possible.

- Winter is cold. Summer can also be cold. Sometimes there is no summer. Wear jumpers; allow yourself to be hugged. This will keep you warm.

- Eat fried plantain, appreciate double entendres, and try not to demolish Persian cafes with your outstanding gracefulness, as this may result in getting banned from Peckham and sent back the other side of the river in eternal exile.

- Work is a sentence.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. Most times you wish they didn’t. But they can make for nice stories. Have your notebook ready.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. And right into place after that. Be astounded, smile.

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It would be nice if this was finally my journey to the end of the night; and if that’s the case for you, and someone’s enlightened notes help you make it through to the morning (even if it’s the darkest, rainiest Monday morning and your eyes are all puffy), you may also wake up to find that the cheesecake you made has set during the night.

That officially gives you the right to this wonderful thing known as, cake for breakfast; and it’s a sign that not all is lost.

I may be back in time for a slice, but bye for now.

PEACH & GINGER SPELT MUFFINS

I spent the day reading Italian recipe books from the late nineteenth century and baking. Can you think of a better way of celebrating Muffin Sunday? I’m sure you can’t. Happy Muffin Sunday everyone. After banana and strawberry and lime and coconut, here’s a version with summery fruit, spelt goodness and a hint of spice. You can munch on these whilst I try to veganise a 1909 cake recipe that calls for 8 eggs and half a kilo of lard.