Let them eat cake

These muffins are a sweet-savoury way to get your five-a-day

You draw up to the pavement, not the sidewalk; you pop the boot, not the trunk; you take out your bum bag, not your fanny pack; you strap it over your trousers because, frankly, your pants are underneath. You have a little laugh as you turn the syllables a-loo-min-num over in your head and think how ‘semi’ means something quite different where you come from.

You hit up the grocery section, scolding yourself for not saying ‘arriving at the vegetable aisle’. In your mind you change cilantro to coriander and eggplant to aubergine and arugula to rocket before picking up a courgette, because there’ll be none of this zucchini nonsense and you need something to boil the living daylights out of for Sunday lunch tomorrow. Although hang on a minute…

‘We all know vegetables are good for us, but incorporating them into desserts and snacks adds to your veg count without even trying,’ says The Cycling Chef Alan Murchison. ‘The demands we place on our bodies mean cyclists should exceed the traditional “five-a-day”. In fact, double that. Courgettes are cheap to buy and even easier to grow at home, yet most people have no idea what to do with them. Here, the citrussy dried mixed peel and orange zest work really well with the neutral taste of the courgettes. But if you still don’t fancy courgettes, use grated carrot instead.’

Carrot. That you can agree on.