INTRODUCTION I fell in Love with baking at an early age, although I’m not sure if it was baking that I loved at first, or the joy of eating raw dough before it hit the oven! Growing up with the nickname Hollow Legs, I have always loved to eat, and would consume copious amounts of food whenever and wherever possible. My anticipation of visiting friends was based purely on how much there would be to eat – whether it was egg sandwiches followed by shortbread biscuits at Tracey’s house, or digestive biscuits and squashed fly biscuits at Tammy’s house. Sometimes, it would be chocolate digestive biscuits at home. I would hold up the chocolate biscuits as close as I could to the two-bar electric heater in the corner of the living room, chocolate side facing the orange glowing bars. My trick was to hold it there for as long as possible, until the chocolate started going shiny and sliding down the biscuit, and then to blow on it gently and slowly lick the chocolate off, being sure to catch any on my fingers. Finally, creeping into the kitchen, I would throw the naked biscuit in the bin under rubbish so I wouldn’t be found out, reach into the tin for another chocolate-covered beauty, and start all over again! It was during my first year of school that I realized I could actually bake myself. When I was five years old, my beautiful primary school teacher Mrs Tutton announced that we would have a baking day at school. She gave us a list of the ingredients we’d need to bring along, weighed out in a tin. I remember skipping home as fast as I could and waiting patiently for my mum to wake up from her sleep after working nights. Pacing up and down with excitement, I decided to take the matter into my own hands, and started weighing the ingredients. Soon I was covered in flour, icing sugar, jam and butter, and the kitchen was turned inside out. My mother came thundering down the stairs at the cacophony ... needless to say, things did not end well and I was sent upstairs in a floury, blubbering mess after being reprimanded for waking her up and making the kitchen look as if little elves had thrown a baking party! Despite the false start, the next day I headed to school with a battered old tin full of the ingredients, as happy as Larry. One of the most vivid moments of my childhood is carefully unwrapping each ingredient, putting it into the bowl and listening with much more interest than usual as we creamed, sieved, mixed and dolloped the ingredients into each other, onto the tray and into the oven. I licked the bowl clean and decided at that moment that baking was a very good thing to do.