Last of the Liquorice by Dan Choppen

all my heterosexual prejudices. I would watch in amazement as my husband happily spent hours cooking something complicated by Yotam Ottolenghi even though it would be gobbled down in minutes, tried to hide my smirk when he’d contentedly arrange a bunch of flowers he’d brought in freshly cut from the garden, and marvel at the patience and unadulterated gayness — in my unenlightened mind — of him excitedly spending an entire day decorating a Christmas tree and wrapping the mantelpieces in foraged wreaths. Before I met Simon I would throw away Christmas cards (messy), and the only festive decoration I would allow in the house was a small, black china twig that sat on a shelf between 20 and 28 December. Humbug.

But a new age — and a new virus — has shaken things up. A year of lockdown and tiers forced some of us to find new ways to occupy ourselves beyond our stereotypical pastimes of yore: instead of sitting in pubs we were planting dahlia bulbs, with no football on we turned to cross-stitch, and we watched helplessly as office banter was replaced with home baking.

I resisted the latter for some months until late last summer; it was my mum’s birthday and I needed a cake. My husband was away and mum was spending lockdown isolating in our guest annexe (even that sounds quite gay), and so the cake-make fell on my shoulders. I’d noticed the new Skye McAlpine cookbook popping up all over the place and so I Amazon-ed a copy and decided I’d make a flamboyant meringue confection; it sounded quite easy and looked quite impressive. To my and others’ surprise, the lemon meringue cake was quite a success. I posted a picture on Instagram and was rather pleased by the comments, including one from McAlpine herself. I then tried another meringue cake recipe which was quickly hoovered up by friends, was asked to make two more for other people’s birthdays and so it went on. I had inadvertently, even reluctantly, become a baker.

Come the autumn I was glued to the entire series of The Great British Bake Off each Tuesday night. I cried with happiness at how sweet everyone was in the final episode and started following Peter, the winner, on Instagram. I could be found wandering around supermarkets popping things into my trolley such as vanilla extract and muscovado sugar that only months earlier I had never even heard of, and I spent hours online trying to source glacé fruits for my rather spectacular Christmas cake.

And so here I am today, in the kitchen, gently browning the swirls and peaks of my pistachio panettone cake. When I was in my teens, I told everyone that I wanted to be like the television presenter Robin Day when I grew up — a ferocious interrogator of the political establishment. The reality is I ended up being more Doris Day than Robin; more handheld blowtorch than Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The only Peaky Blinders in my life are the ones on top of my meringues. I’ve decided to come out. Again. I’m blender fluid.

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