When I first moved out of London to live in the countryside, it took me a while to feel at home. For the first few weeks I felt very out of sorts. ‘Bake a cake,’ my partner said, not remotely altruistically since I had not made any homemade goods since we’d moved in. So I did. The first thing I made was that most English of tea time treats, a Bakewell tart. I make a really good Bakewell tart, from a recipe found long, long ago and never bettered. And it worked, I felt at home.
