Pudding

This week I decided to bring all the fun of the fair into my kitchen and make churros. Churros are a dough enriched with butter and eggs, that are piped into lengths and fried in very hot oil until crisps and light. There’s nothing quite like the smell of sweet, hot dough, frying. In the days when I used to churn out hundred of doughnuts overnight in our small kitchen for events, I’d crawl to bed in the small hours of the morning, wearing the distinctive perfume of that pastry. There are different types of fried dough all over the world – bombolini, beignets, gulab juman, yum yums, funnel cakes

I often find myself turning to lemon-filled recipes in January. I think it’s something my baking subconscious realises before I do – that cold, dark days require the antithesis, something bright and bold, something cheering. You know what they say: when life gives you lemons, make lemon meringue pie.  Unlike its austere, pared back French cousin, the tarte au citron, the lemon meringue pie is never going to be a subtle pudding: a lurid, chartreuse centre hidden by big billows of toasted meringue, piled ludicrously, disproportionately, toweringly tall. It quivers and wobbles on the plate, crisp and firm on the outer edge, giving way to a marshmallowy interior. But that’s