Rhubarb Cake
(Especially for Liz.)
Main cakey bit:
2 cups of self-raising wholemeal flour
1 cup of milk (I used soya)
2 cups of rhubarb (chopped into small pieces, and raw)
1 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of butter
Generous splosh of vanilla essence
Large pinch of ginger
2 eggs

Topping stuff:
1 cup of dried coconut
1 (other) cup of dark brown sugar
1/4 cup of sunflower oil

So. Proceed thusly: 
Mix the butter and sugar together. I read the word ‘cream’ at this juncture, but simply couldn’t be arsed – that means a large whisk and a very long time – so took a shorter and less taxing route: squish the butter and sugar together with a fork until it’s one big sticky lump. Sling the vanilla in, and beat in the eggs. Add the milk, stirring vigorously, and be prepared for a quick curdle issue or two. If it does curdle, don’t fret: adding the flour will sort that out, which leads me seamlessly on to the next bit, which is, astonishingly, adding the flour and the rhubarb. Mix the resulting batter until there are no lumps, and then put it in a lightly-oiled (sounds like a stripper, doesn’t it?) eight-inch cake tin. The best sort for this, I find, is the ones which have bottoms wot come out – that way, you can smugly push the cooked cake out without covering yourself in topping bits. Preheat the oven to 180°c, while you fart about with the aforementioned topping. For ‘fart about’, read ‘just mix the ingredients together, then sprinkle over the cake mixture.’ See? Not exactly challenging, is it? The cake takes about forty minutes or so; you’ll probably want to let it cool for a few minutes before attempting to get it out of the tin. It goes down particularly nicely with a cup of Earl Grey. 

So, pittas. Thusly:

Take:
1 mug strong white flour
1 mug strong wholemeal flour
1 mug warm water, with a large spoonful of honey dissolved in it
1 generous tsp yeast (or a sachet)
½ mug sesame seeds
Slug of olive oil
Extra flour to prevent attachment to worktop from becoming permanent

Then
I generally (attempt to remember to) grease a medium-sized bowl at this juncture for the dough to rise in while you’re off doing something else, like, well, eating your own body-weight in strawberries. (What? What? You’re telling me you don’t do that too?) Then roll your sleeves up. Doughy arms is just not a good look on anyone (although it is one I sport regularly). The more organised among you may even like to don an apron. Once suitably armed (har), stick the dry ingredients in a large bowl with the olive oil, and add the warm water.

At this stage you will encounter the stickiest substance known to man; persevere, rolling it about until it is at least a coherently sticky substance with no little pockets of dry flour to mar its gooey loveliness. If it’s just too sticky for words, add a fistful of flour to make the dough workable, and then roll it gently into the medium bowl for rising. Leave it somewhere nice and warm, and basically forget about it for an hour or so, but not to the extent that you omit putting the oven on (about 200°c), about ten minutes before the hour is up (depending on how crap your oven is; ours takes about half an hour to achieve the dizzy heights of such temperatures).

Be prepared to greet The Dough That Took Over The World when you return, as hopefully it will have doubled in size. This being the case, roll it out of the medium bowl on to a nicely floured worktop, and knead it gently for a couple of minutes, using flour where necessary to prevent things getting too adhesive-ish. Divide it into about eight, and work each division into a pancake shape and pop it on a lightly-greased baking sheet.

When the oven’s heated up, whack the pittas in for about fifteen minutes. They should puff up nicely while cooking; to keep this puffiness, rather than allowing them to become cracker-like, wrap them in a tea-towel when you take them out of the oven, and put the tea-towel bundle into a paper bag. (It may seem lunatic, but it really works. Thanks for that one to the Moosewood bunch, without whom I would probably have been doomed to an eternity of ever-so-slightly crunchy pittas. Oh woe – woe is would have been me.)  Let them cool and then stuff ‘em with hummus, shortly before stuffing yourself with, er, them.