Spectator competition winners: Miss Havisham’s wedding cake and other recipes by fictional characters

In Competition No. 3312, you were invited to supply a contribution to a book of recipes invented by fictional characters, entries being for the Carrollean, Dickensian or Shakespearean sections.

Commendations to Martyn Hurst and Jon Robins, both of whom provided Uriah Heep’s recipe for humble pie, and to Mike Morrison’s Hamlet (‘Sous-vide or not sous-vide, that is the question…’); a dishonourable mention to Joe Houlihan’s Fagin (‘in a pilfery pie the ingredients is never the same, being, as I like to say, bestowed by the Almighty… some carrots from the parson’s garden, lifted of a black night; a pound of beefsteak, vanished from beneath the very beak of old Butcher Barnes…’); and a chef’s kiss to the winners below who earn £25.

Hack your dried, withered, decaying fruit into tiny pieces with a cold, brutally sharp knife. Stagnate in brandy, flavoured with tears of bitter abandonment. Leave overnight, abruptly, all alone. Beat butter and sugar remorselessly until they are the pale, drained colour of destroyed hopes.