Darina Allen on cakes and baking: Buy the finest ingredients and always use butter

This week I am going to devote my entire column to cakes and baking. This was prompted by a recent delicious encounter at Philip’s bookshop in Mallow, Co Cork. Philip, Catherine and June O’Flynn invited me back to celebrate 30 years of business.

They reminded me that I had first come to their shop in 1990 when I had brown hair and huge red glasses, to sign copies of my Simply Delicious cookbook.