PEACH TEA COOKIES

When your loud mind is kept quiet by late night cab rides and origami in toilets and voices and friendly smiles, it does seem like the sky has opened up for a moment, and a light hits the skyscrapers and the rooftops and your skin and the City looks all pretty and shiny below your feet. But when midnight comes again and reality falls right onto your head from four metres high, the only companion you’re left with is a face so tired and puffy that you could cause criminal offence by the way you look; along with a concerning amount of broken things to fix. It’s only then that you finally realise you’ve got to take your usual crammed bus home and hang your head in shame, have porridge for dinner and employ what’s left of your strength to dig out that recipe you came up with during that part of your life when you were crossing paths with a part-time cookie monster and full-time ally. And even though there’s a high chance of your face being painful to look at for quite some time still, sitting together eating tinned fruit salad and sipping Turkish bottled water and munching peach tea cookies makes you feel like things are a little bit less broken already.

MELONPAN - JAPANESE BISCUIT BUNS

You know it’s time to make Melonpan when your Japan guidebook has been collecting dust on a shelf for almost a year, but still you can’t wait to print out yours and your daddy’s tickets to Morocco this week. And never mind the nosebleeds, David Wilson falls from the sky to improve your life like jam on toast.

Don’t ever tell him I said that.

And when Alex and Lauren and I sit on the steps on our lunch break with tired and crumpled faces like a punk version of the three musketeers. Or when your new mission in life becomes giving Cake Wednesday a Chinese twist.

But also when you think your heart is going to burst from sorrow and guilt (although someone’s there with you this time), and when you just don’t know whether you’ll be flying half a world away in a couple of months.

Because it turns out that sometimes (but only sometimes) change isn’t so terrifying, and it’s nice to sit in your (not for long) flat munching vegan sweet buns with a biscuity crust until you finally allow the seasons to turn.

CARROT CAKE

For Dom,

Happy Birthday

NANAIMO BARS

To try and lift up the London fog.

STRAWBERRIES & CREAM CHEESECAKE

I really should start writing an autobiographical pocket novel called ‘The unbearable loneliness of a being on bank holiday weekends’ or ‘Izzy’s day out’ or ‘I should have stayed at home’ and the story would go like this. One weekend someone doesn’t have time in their life for vegan cake, and another obviously less antisocial individual escapes to mainland Europe for coffee leaving you all alone staring at the ceiling of your tiny tiny studio flat in a part of town that’s suddenly turned into something too trendy for your run-away-from-home self to hang out unaccompanied by a freelance jewellery designer husband and a toddler. But not all is lost. Never mind washing your hair (it adds to the charm), you jump on a train to dear Peckham, where people’s main concern appears to be the price of plantains and you can wander around middle Eastern bargain stores that resemble Narnia and art galleries and take photos of songbirds in alleys and sit in cafés sipping rhubarb tea and writing postcards to worried parents who now label you as bohemian, then go back home with a new-found quite concerning feeling of belonging, a bag of blackcurrant sweets and twelve hundred grams of strawberries for your (almost) raw vegan cheesecake because as it turns out, you are one of those people who do have time in their life for vegan cake and I fail at seeing anything wrong with that.

The end.

MANGO SORBET WITH CHOCOLATE

Spring really should sort itself out and shut the doors to winter once and for all, like the Stalinist Russian regime that rules my brain shuts tries but miserably fails to shut the doors to people who never opened theirs to me. But whether you too are a miserable Londoner who struggles to enjoy ten minutes of warmth and sun per day, or you live in a normal place where seasons are a thing, you can still relish some delicious raw fruity sorbet with a crunchy dark chocolate topping. It’s ready in an instant and provides instant peace for your tummy and soul, and who gives half a duck about doors or seasons or wastage of feelings after all.

QUINOA CAROB MUFFINS

Superfood muffins come to a very good use when you go clubbing on a Monday night and miss your last train to Hogwarts or when the cursed and blessed open road that people call life makes you emotionally unstable and incapable of deciding whether you want to spend the rest of your life in a Scottish mansion with a view or in a studio flat in Peckham that very closely resembles a bunker from the Great War. In fact, they are so good you can munch on them without really worrying about TV cables or overworked Chinese project managers or falling asleep on your keyboard at work or work in general or dressing appropriately or again being overqualified for relationships. There’s the wonders of quinoa carob muffins for you.