An ingredient can easily sit in the pantry forever, before we suddenly rediscover it and see it in a new light. Here it’s dark brown soft sugar, which we have always loved but have never made a concerted effort to build a whole cake around, using its deeply unique toasty notes and the sugary moisture that it holds within. It does, however, make the cake sink in the middle ever so slightly, but we don’t mind – once it’s topped with cream no one will ever know!

Any sumac strawberry fans will recognise this as a play on the recipe that features in Simple. Using dark brown soft sugar (or dark muscovado), instead of icing sugar as before, gives the berries an almost tamarind-like treacliness. They’re delicious on top of ice cream, or with plain yoghurt and a handful of the granola. They also go especially well as a topping on this brown sugar cake.

The brown sugar cake and cream are pretty perfect as they are, but they are truly completed by the sumac roasted strawberries; it really is (blissful) death by brown sugar. Still, you can take all kinds of different directions and finish the cake with chocolate shavings, a drizzle of carob or date molasses, passion fruit pulp or raspberry jam. These are best eaten on the day they’re made, as they lose their vibrant colour after a few hours.