How wrong is it that Mary Berry’s 90th birthday isn’t a bank holiday?
The ex-Great British Bake-Off judge, who hit the milestone today (24 March) has some pretty on-brand plans for the event.
“There will be cake,” she told Vogue, “and champagne!”.
By rights, we think we should be celebrating with her – even Prince William has wished her a happy birthday.
But seeing as the powers that be apparently have no sense of justice, we’ll have to settle with recreating one of her genius recipes instead.
Here are nine that we’ve tried, tested, and loved; if you get to making any today, make sure you raise a glass to the legend.
I have previously said Nigella does the best crumble topping. That might be true for the specific crust, but for the whole shebang, my preference goes to Mary.
The celeb chef's secret lies in her egg-to-milk ratio (turns out it's much more important than I thought).
The celeb chef uses cream as the secret ingredient for this rich, decadent sauce (don't know it 'til you try it). The only downside is that the recipe takes hours to cook, but that's OK! Some things are well and truly worth the wait.
I love this punchy, spicy twist on a classic. Warning: you'll never go back to regular cream of tomato after trying this one.
Some things are better off simple; Mary knows lemon curd is one such food. This tangy, dandelion-bright curd is so delicious and easy to make, I found myself prepping six jars of it instead of finishing the meringue pie I'd initially planned.
OK, I'll be honest; Nigella's scone recipe slightly wins out for me. But the only reason I can transform Nigella's advice into a flaky, well-risen scone rather than a measly puck of a thing is because of Mary's advice (besides which, the recipe itself is not to be sniffed at).
I'll confess I didn't have as much bacon as her recipe demanded, which is why mine looks a little anaemic. Still, it tasted great, which is a testament to how forgiving her back-to-basics, failsafe recipe really is.
OK, so the French pastry is traditionally eaten around New Year's. But guess what? This is the UK! We put cream in carbonara! We crack open the Mini Eggs in February! Besides, it's a new year for Mary, and that's good enough for us.
I took tips from multiple pros when making my (not to brag, but perfect) carrot cake recipe. Mary's advice, to use muscovado sugar, made it deeper and tastier. Both she and Nigella recommend adding ginger to the mix too, which I swear by.