A wise man once wrote in his File Of Facts that "one man's energy bar is another man's flapjack". Before he knew it, that same slow-release snack, packaroo with miscellanous seeds and crunchy bits of nutritious niceness, had been consumed, devoured, and had ceased to exist in its current form.

Recently I are been sometimes baking. Turn to page 348 of your 1966 edition of Good Housekeeping's Cookery Book and you'll find a can't-fail recipe for ginger nuts, a surefire hit. Particularly lovely when they're cooling, mine turn rapidly to impenetrable bullets, harder than (and the reader may wish to insert her own metaphor at this point) a miner wearing a T-shirt in January while strapped in to NASA's Vomit Comet and shouting answers to a Mensa quiz.

So hard that me & eldest discovered that you can drop them in a cup of tea — they float — and, after two minutes, remove them still intact. Gap in the market there for a dunk-proof biscuit?

Repeat until you're well-risen and a nutty brown colour:

flapjack
catflap
blackcat
jackblack

If You Take Away With You Nothing Else

Fairings & shortbread:

1. advisable to warm the spoon before plunging into syrup
2. stir it, scrape it, make it, bake it
3. next time I'll lower the heat and use a smaller tray

Be seeing you!

Ed