‘Unlike anything you’ve ever eaten’: how to make lemon Shaker pie

Cooking in January is a very different beast to cooking in December. I don’t just mean the flavours (the dried fruit and spice, and dark, boozy, rich flavours of the festive period are relegated to the backs of pantries and drinks cabinet) or even the sentiment, whereby many will look to lighter,
simpler dishes to counteract the previous month’s excess. The process is different too. My January kitchen is quiet, the cooking or baking less frantic than that of the weeks that preceded it. It’s not performative, and there are no gargantuan grocery deliveries that require half an hour of fridge Tetris. There is no deadline and my days are less full, so baking is a pleasure which punctuates them, rather than an item on a to-do list. The baking becomes an end in itself.

I find the process of making pastry – especially pastry which is designed to flake or crumble, that needn’t have pin-neat edges, or perfect layers – soothing.