I want to tell you about this brilliant gingerbread recipe, which Dan inferred from a book called From Eccles Cake to Hawkshead Wig: A Celebration of Northern Food. It’s a revelation. It’s also remarkably fool-proof: I haven’t managed to cock it up once.

Cream the marge, sugar and golden syrup. Add the flour, ginger and cinnamon and stir it up. Add nuts if you want. Squidge handfuls of the dough into thick, flattish rounds. Put them on a baking tray (they don’t grow much in the oven so you can put them quite close together) and bake for 25 minutes at gas mark 3 (170º C). Yum yum yum.

According to Dan’s version of the recipe, these quantities make about 18 biscuits. I find that, taking into consideration all the uncooked dough that gets eaten before the gingerbread goes in the oven, 12 is a more realistic figure.

Incidentally, for those of you interested in scale, this is a side plate (not a dinner plate).