Chocolate Tiffin

Tiffin belongs to rainy afternoons and the kind of day when you want something sweet but cannot face turning the oven on. It also belongs to summer, when the kitchen is already too warm and a fridge cake feels like the only sensible option. In truth, it belongs to whenever you want it. There is no season for tiffin. There is only the moment youdecide you want one.

It's a Scottish thing originally, though it has spread across the British Isles and become the kind of bake-sale staple every village hall knows. Famously it was the cake William chose for his wedding. A grown man asking for a chocolate biscuit cake at his royal wedding feels exactly right to me. Tiffin is what childhood tasted like for a lot of us, and there's no improving on a thing like that.

The method is barely a method. You melt butter with cocoa and golden syrup, you stir in crushed biscuits and raisins, you press it all into a tin and pour melted chocolate over the top. Two hours in the fridge and you have something. The hardest part is the waiting, and the second hardest is cutting it cleanly without snapping the chocolate into shards. Both problems can be solved with a hot knife and a bit of resolve.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first time I made it for my niece, who declared it the best thing I had ever made. I have made fancier things since. None of them have earned that review.