Cookie Tin Corruption

Tesco's Espress chocolate section, and pre-chick-flick Sunday afternoon- two things that go together a bit like Rooster House and 3.30am, or John and Edward- we all know it's a daft idea, but for some reason we can't seem to help ourselves. Anyway, as I cast a calorfically ignorant eye over the rows of various colourful, glossily tempting little packets, one in particular drew me in. Surely not....yes, it seems our multi-tasking, combinationaphillia society, who squahes cameras into phones into mp3's into satnavs into cars into coffee-makers with torches and speed-dials, has just, shamelessly, crossed the final line. The line that divides simple, innocent human pleasures from the speed-snacking, efficient-eating, want-it-all-want-it-now decadent droids that have no time for a proper cup of tea and a sit-down.

There is now a chocolate bar called Galaxy Cookie Crumble, which is basically chocolate with cookie bits in. As opposed to your regular cookie with chocolate bits in, that we all know and love. Apparently double and triple chocolate cookies aren't enough anymore, and scientists have spawned this extreme superbreed of snack that overshadows the legendary cookie itself.

When once the humbly delicious cookie served us well in our peckish moments, now the chocolate has stolen the show, in an effort to combine stuff we like into a Transformers-esque idea of ultra-chocosensation. Whatever next? Will the beloved cookie become obselete, and in a few years time be nothing but a biscuit tin myth? Drastic action must be taken- buy and consume as many Galaxy Cookie Crumbles as possible. It's the only way to stop them reaching the masses, by which time it will be too late...

Lemon Baked Cheesecake- lazing on a Brummie afternoon

Spanking new spring-release tin, dodgy oven, lime green borrowed bowl and recipe book littered with patchy daubs of cakemix gone by. An hour for me, myself, and Good Housekeeping. Labrador-on-walkies levels of contentment.

Rushing and intermingling of the many various little grains, course and fine, bleached, bright and broodingly dusky. Crack and slap of egg and curd, where’s the wooden spoon, don’t forget to get the bits round the sides. Humming and stirring, a distant radio, a clatter fades upstairs. I lean against the sink meditatively, spoon to bowl, bowl to hip, spilt corn flour a shadow on my jeans, and a carefully tuned ear confirms my suspicions. Its Hugo’s room the Mcfly is coming from.

¾’s of a Gossip Girl episode and 1 pensively savoured Milkybar later, and the oven is swelling with lemony warmth. A giant coin of golden cream, a speckling Demerara blush skims the depths of glowing pudding. The buttery biscuit base holds its own, despite me having boshed the digestives in a Tesco bag after the whisk did a runner. A proud fork prod confirms it: shareable. It even looks a bit like the picture.