THE ACT OF BAKING is meditative for me. The repetition – measuring, creaming, folding, scraping – brings calm. I’ve been doing this for long enough now that it feels like muscle memory, and yet I’m still learning, still evolving. I come back to cake because it is familiar, but never boring. It reduces stress, restores rhythm, ignites memories. It feels like my baking home, the place my passion was first born.

This book is full of ingredients and flavour combinations that have become part of my personal baking DNA – markers of memory as much as taste. Apples, plums and morello cherries will always remind me of my baba, her pantry lined with jars that were just the right kind of sour-sweet. Chocolate and hazelnut takes me straight back to Mum’s kitchen, where I’d sneak spoonfuls of Nutella when no-one was looking. Pandan and coconut now coils itself in a soft spiralled roll – a reminder that I’m always evolving as a baker, but never without drawing from the threads of my past.

As with all of my books, I implore you to use these flavours  as a suggestion, but work with the ones that hold precious memories for you. Because, in the end, cake is so much more than just cake. It’s the taste of nostalgia, of comfort, of home.