What a four-year-old taught us about the magic of baking a chocolate cake
Valentine’s is on the horizon, which means we are about to officially enter chocolate cake season – that soft-focus part of winter when confectionery and romance blur together.For our four-year-old goddaughter, it is always that time of year.Just hearing the two words together makes her roll her eyes and roll out her little tongue in anticipation of pleasure, like a cartoon kid.When we told her we would come and bake a chocolate cake with her, there were squeals of joy.Settling on a recipe was the first challenge – Ravneet Gill’s fudgy one, Felicity Cloake’s perfect one and Benjamina Ebuehi’s traybaked one were all contenders.
We eventually landed on Samin Nosrat’s much-loved, tried-and-tested midnight chocolate cake.It was to be a learning experience for us as much as for her – we never knew that you can make chocolate cake only while wearing a crown.She had to explain this to us at length.The reasoning had something to do with warding off ghosts and crocodiles – or perhaps the crocodiles were warding off the ghosts, and the crowns were for something else.Bluey was involved as well.
After donning our crowns and aprons, and setting off to the kitchen, it became very clear who was actually in charge of the process.Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and the girl, who speaks mostly in the imperative, began shooting out instructions with the speed and confidence of a football coach.At one point, we had to cut baking paper to size, then we had to draw dragons on the baking paper, which led to a very serious discussion about which of the dragons was good and which evil, and how many there should be of each, in case we needed to draw more.(The verdict: in life, as in cake, balance matters.)When baking with a child, precision gives way to play, efficiency to imagination.
Throwaway moments – lifting a heavy bowl, cracking an egg, sifting cocoa, licking a spoon, placing a cake in the oven – become moments of reverence and revelation.Burying our noses together in the cake fresh out of the oven to breathe in that smell, the anxious anticipation for it to cool so we could decorate it.There is no overstating the importance of sprinkles to the process – here, more is more is more is more, and the merits of each type can be endlessly discussed and compared.Over the next few weeks, we will be baking lots of chocolate cakes, as well as babkas, heart-shaped cookies and many other sweet romantic treats, and while we have certainly – maybe sadly – outgrown sprinkles, this kitchen experience has been a timely reminder that baking is nothing short of magic.All of this is to explain that if you see us in one of our places carrying a tray of baked goods, we may be wearing paper crowns.
Feel free to talk to us about dragons.An island paradise | Around about this time last year, we were in Sri Lanka, and a chunk of our heart is still there.We were thinking about it when ensconced in the beautiful new Hoppers in Shoreditch, where everything – the light filtering through the slatted shutters, the beautiful painted ceiling, the tunes from the speakers, the woven rattan bar and chairs – reminded us of the enchanted isle we love so much.Everything on our table was a perfect balancing act: the potent heat of spice tempered by the richness of slow-cooked meat, seared seafood and fish, flashes of tamarind and guava, chilli-dipped lime … The crab omelette is something we will order every time we come back here, which will be often.An Italian culinary getaway | Our fantasy holiday is something not far off this: an olive grove in Abruzzo, in-depth culinary tours in one of the world’s most beautiful and delicious regions, and two legendary chefs to cook for, and with, us.
Rosie Sykes and Barny Haughton are giants of the food world and will take a lead on this Italian getaway of dreams.The return of Nigella | We are giddy with joy at the news that Nigella is joining The Great British Bake Off team.She has been off our screen for a criminally long time and Bake Off has been off our radar for years, but suddenly it’s got interesting again.What will the queen of the double entendre do when she is facing a soggy bottom? Finally, something to look forward to.If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive Feast in your inbox every Thursday.
Price of average UK home passes £300,000 for first time, Halifax says
The average cost of a UK home passed £300,000 for the first time in January, as house prices increased at the fastest rate since November 2024.Data released by Halifax showed that house prices rose 0.7% month on month last month, the fastest rate since a 1.1% increase was recorded in November 2024. On an annual measure, prices grew 1%
Almost a quarter of soup on sale in UK supermarkets has too much salt, study finds
Nearly a quarter of all soup bought in supermarkets contains too much salt, with one brand containing more salt than two McDonald’s cheeseburgers, according to research.Soup has long had a reputation for being a healthy choice for lunch. The analysis of nearly 500 varieties of tinned and chilled soups sold in supermarkets found that 23% contained too much salt.Of the 481 soups Action on Salt and Sugar (AoSS) tested, nearly half (48%) of branded soups and 6% of supermarket own-brand soups still exceeded the government’s voluntary salt target of 0.59g per 100g serving
TikTok could be forced to change app’s ‘addictive design’ by European Commission
TikTok could be forced into changes to make the app less addictive to users after the EU indicated the platform had breached the bloc’s digital safety rules.The EU’s executive arm said in a preliminary ruling that the popular app had infringed the Digital Services Act (DSA) due to its “addictive design”.The European Commission said TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users worldwide, had not adequately assessed how its design could harm the physical and mental wellbeing of users including children and vulnerable adults.By constantly “rewarding” users with new content, the Chinese-owned platform fuelled constant scrolling and shifted the brains of users into “autopilot mode”, the commission added, which could lead to compulsive behaviour and reduce users’ self-control.The preliminary ruling accused TikTok of ignoring indicators of compulsive use, such as the amount of time children spend on the app at night
Deepfake fraud taking place on an industrial scale, study finds
Deepfake fraud has gone “industrial”, an analysis published by AI experts has said.Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams – leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus – are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident Database.It catalogued more than a dozen recent examples of “impersonation for profit”, including a deepfake video of Western Australia’s premier, Robert Cook, hawking an investment scheme, and deepfake doctors promoting skin creams.These examples are part of a trend in which scammers are using widely available AI tools to perpetuate increasingly targeted heists. Last year, a finance officer at a Singaporean multinational paid out nearly $500,000 to scammers during what he believed was a video call with company leadership
House of ice on a warming planet: Italy’s turn for the Olympics winter mirage
There will be twists, flips and turns to savour in a Games whose financial and environmental costs nonetheless continue to spiral out of controlPierre de Coubertin never wanted a Winter Olympics. He spent the best part of two decades lobbying, politicking and organising before he finally got the first summer Games up and running in Athens in 1896. Its winter sibling though, well, “the great inferiority of these snow sports …” de Coubertin once wrote, “is that they are completely useless, with no useful application whatsoever.” He allowed ice skating and ice hockey, the two stadium sports, to be part of the roster for the early summer Games, but it was another two decades before he was persuaded to hold a separate winter event.That was in 1924, in Chamonix
My simple message for England: get the ball into Arundell’s hands early against Wales | Ugo Monye
Optimism abounds about England’s Six Nations chances. They go into a tournament considered as one of the genuine favourites for the title for the first time in years and they have the body of work to back that up after 11 consecutive victories. That sort of winning streak leads to greater expectations but these players can walk tall and handle external pressure.I would warn against expecting another 50-point victory against Wales on Saturday, however. The fixture list aligns perfectly for England – if Steve Borthwick were to handpick his side’s schedule then this would probably be it – and while I fully expect them to beat Wales and claim a bonus point, we have to remember that they are never at their best at the start of a campaign
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