Last week I fancied something deeply chocolatey, and I knew a shop-bought cake wasn’t going to fix my need. I scratched around in my hateful little baking cupboard — hateful because it’s so narrow and deep, I dread to think what’s in the back — and discovered two packs of chocolate chips, one dark, one milk. Triple chocolate chip cookies it had to be.

My cookie recipe is always just the first one that comes up on Google. If I wanted to share the best with you, I’d recommend Ella Risbridger’s cookie recipe from her book Midnight Chicken. I didn’t use that recipe though. I think it was BBC Good Food’s this time. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The results were tremendous.

I make cookies in a bowl with a wooden spoon. It doesn’t seem necessary to hassle my 40+ year old Kenwood with such an easy-peasy baking session. I’ve always done them this way, and I’ve always hated getting aching arms from creaming the butter and sugar together, so now I also always swap the butter for baking spread or similar. Look, I’m the one eating them, not you.

On the way to creating soft, crystal-packed sugar-butter-cream, my heavy-handed beating snapped my spoon in half. I loved that spoon, it was my favourite utensil in the whole house. You could tell because one side of it was straight in a diagonal line, worn down over years of stirring, and the handle was chipped from being rapped on the edge of pans throughout its long and useful life.

I don’t like change. I still look for that spoon every time I cook. But it gave me two decades of service, I worked it out. 20 years I’d had it, since I stole it from a student let when I moved out because I’d enjoyed cooking with it so much. That spoon made chilli when I needed comfort food and risotto when I needed to use up roast chicken. It was adept at stirring soup, and I never saw a pasta dish it couldn’t handle. My replacement spoons are adequate, but they don’t fit in my hand the same way. They aren’t smoothed by my cookery, my energy, my love.

I have always been quick to anthropomorphise objects and then become upset when they break or I lose them. This is why I’m not allowed to name the van, and why I’m still sad that my first car (Jeff) broke down for the last time in 2017. Being attached to a wooden spoon is different though. It came with me on move after move, and was a part of every meal I cooked. Every single meal! Can you believe that! What a pleasure to have had such a wholesome sidekick all along. Rest well, little spoon. You made my cooking better.

I’m running another writing workshop!

On Wednesday 29th January at 6.30pm UK time, I will be hosting an online writer’s workshop for writers who want to start their own blog or newsletter, or who started but then stopped again, and need a bit of push in the right direction.

It costs £20 to book, and if you’re interested but don’t want to book right away, please do get in touch with me (you can just reply to this email, or message me directly) to ask any questions you might have. All are welcome.

What’s it all about, then?

This workshop, unlike the last few I ran which were about finalising work you’d already written, is about getting started.

I figured quite a few people’s new year’s resolutions or goals for 2025 would feature finally getting those words out of their head and onto the page. I want to help with that.

Build Your Own: Blog will be all about starting a blog or newsletter, exploring what to write in a blog and when, ideas generation tactics, being brave enough to let other people read your work, and more.

Why should you listen to me?

My own writing career started when I worked on my (now defunct) personal blog The Snap and The Hiss. It was a place for me to try out ideas, test my writing skills, and play with styles and topics in ways that interested me. I did this while I worked full time in marketing and part-time at a pub — so yes, if you want to write, you do have time!

As Deputy Editor of Pellicle, I encounter writers in various stages of their careers. One of the first things I tell new writers to do is to start a blog or a newsletter, and use it as a boxing gym to battle with all their ideas and experiences until they’re truly ready to step into the ring. I can change this metaphor into any sport you like, if you so wish, if it helps you to understand better. I’m not sure why I chose boxing.

I truly believe that blogging (and I count this newsletter as blogging) is integral to my writing practice, and without it my work would never progress. It’s a tool for continual improvement, yours, to be used any time you feel like it.

When is it?

• Wednesday 29th January

• 6.30pm UK time

• £20

Book your place

To book onto the workshop, just click here and follow the instructions to pay for your place. Please make sure to include the email address I can best reach you on.

Once you have booked on, I will send you an invite to the video chat link, and more information on what to expect from the workshop.

Hopefully, I’ll see you there.

Katie xox