a recipe for jammy dodgers that I think you will like

What I’m reading: the latest edition of Eaten - this one about picnics

What I’m listening to: Sidetracked with Annie and Nick most recently about CMAT who I also listened to (a lot) this week

What I’m eating: my first proper dinner at the Plimsoll, which of course featured their burger - followed by an ice-cream pop-up at Fink’s (below)

As you may have seen on Instagram, I went to Dublin last weekend to see CMAT play in St. Anne’s Park. This was my sixth or seventh time seeing CMAT and it truly gets better and better every time. The CMAT band always put on a sensational show and participating in the Dunboyne two-step with 20,000 other fans feels like a spiritual experience. I love CMAT’s songwriting for many reasons: she writes profound and deeply relevant (at least, to me) lyrics and the music itself is an extraordinarily satisfying mixture of indie and country pop - not to mention the performance of the very talented CMAT band. Certified bangers, each and every one (except Vincent Kompany which I don’t like and that is my only exception). She released a series of singles in 2020 and 2021 which I devoured, and was a diehard fan by the time her first two albums came out in 2022 and 2023. Her most recent album, Euro-Country, is a true masterpiece and I listened to it on repeat for a week when it came out last summer.

If you are chronically online, you may have seen some of the discourse around CMAT circulating this week and last week. After Radio 1’s Big Weekend in 2024, the BBC was forced to turn off comments on a video featuring CMAT’s performance due to the volume of negative comments about her appearance. CMAT wrote the song Take a Sexy Picture of Me after this experience (which was repeated multiple times across multiple news outlets across the world). The crux of the issue is the nature of these comments: any post online that reaches a large number of people can expect a certain amount of “trolling”, but in this case, the comments pretty much exclusively referred to CMAT’s appearance, and specifically her weight.

I’m going to attach a little excerpt below of some of my favourite parts of CMAT’s commentary, but I do encourage you to go and read the full caption here and a related Substack post here.

it is literally so boring for me, a gorgeous genius, to keep having to yap on about how horribly i am treated because of my body … i also want to point out, to some very well-meaning people, that i am not being defiant. i am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk rock act of liberty. i simply have a body, one that i would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but i have had extreme difficulty in doing so … [my] success is increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that i would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if i was thin.

I don’t have a huge amount to add to the discourse, as I think both CMAT and the writer behind Front Row Feels have been incredibly eloquent in their narratives. It feels redundant to say the following (especially to the lovely group of people who I’m assuming subscribe to these emails), but my stance on the matter is the following: CMAT is an astonishingly talented songwriter, musician and performer, and her appearance (although she is also stunning) is the least interesting thing about her.

I do have a few small notes to add on a personal level; as someone who is simultaneously:

• a woman

• a woman who works in food

• a woman who spent her formative years in the diet culture of the nineties and noughties

• a woman who spends a considerable amount of time online

I am also quite a sensitive woman, with a tendency to overthink. These are my credentials.

If you are unlucky enough to have stumbled upon the side of the internet that proudly calls itself “SkinnyTok” - you have my commiserations. I went through a period earlier this year where my entire TikTok feed was flooded with videos advertising “toxic ways to lose weight” (literal name of video), ads for weight loss supplements and increasingly dramatic weight loss “transformations”. The refrain “skinny is back” has been thrown around so much that it’s almost lost its meaning - but the fact remains that many of our “role models” are becoming increasingly smaller. No matter how conscious you are of the changes in beauty standards, it’s impossible not to feel the pressure of an increasingly thin world.

I have several close friends who struggled with eating disorders when we were growing up, and I know that the pressure to be thin is nothing new. The elephant in the room is, of course, weight loss medication (GLP1s) - which, when used for their intended purpose, are miraculous drugs that have the potential to help millions of people. In the UK and Ireland, GLP1s are available only by prescription, which is meant to make the medication available only to those who need it. Unfortunately, it’s not hard to figure out a way past this, as I have learned from friends who have cheated the system to obtain GLP1s. In other words, in order to be on Ozempic, you either need to have Type 2 diabetes or be medically overweight - OR be willing to fake biometric data and have ~£200 per month to spare.

These friends have told me - with a genuine air of relief - that GLP1s have got rid of the “food noise” in their heads. “I don’t think about food at all anymore!” they boast. “People are so much nicer to me now that I’m thin!”. I find this trend incredibly sad, especially as someone who has dedicated their career (and indeed their life) to the pursuit of things that are really, really delicious. I am all too aware that it’s not just my self esteem that is in danger - but the industry I work in too. At the restaurant where I work, we have seen a marked decline in appetites - whether because of societal pressure or GLP1s (or indeed cocaine).

I may be reading into this too much, but I can’t help but wonder if a diminished appetite is correlated with a general lack of enthusiasm. I rarely see my friends getting giddy in their excitement for something; it may just be a symptom of getting older, but I fear that in our effort to become smaller and take up less space, we are losing our exuberance. In my experience, it’s rare these days to see someone get really excited about something - whether that be a cold crisp pint, a new album release or a long-awaited dinner reservation. Bring back exuberance!

Essentially, I echo what CMAT said - it is literally so boring to keep having to have this conversation. The constant discourse around women’s bodies detracts from what is really important (music, food, health, love, friendship) and time spent talking about other people’s bodies or worrying about your own is time WASTED - time that could be spent cooking! Swimming! Reading! Frolicking! Foam rolling! As you can see, I don’t have some great solution - I just wanted to weigh (lol) in on the conversation in the hopes that some of you can relate.

On an entirely unrelated note, here is a recipe for Jammy Dodgers that I made this week. They are composed of a lovely lemony shortbread biscuit (which I believe those in the States would call a “sugar cookie”), a jam of your choosing and a vanilla buttercream. They resemble the Jammy Dodgers of my childhood in appearance only: I like to think that they are much more delicious. The shortbread is crisp and buttery and the buttercream is light and fluffy - and most importantly, these biscuits are the perfect vehicle for a seasonal JAM - such as the strawberry and rhubarb number you’ll find below. There are so many wonderful fruits in season at the moment, and these biscuits are the perfect way to showcase any jam you might make. Here is a link to some other jams I made last year, but really the world is your oyster. Raspberry would be particularly good in these. You’ll find the PDF at the very bottom.

Bon appétit x

Ingredients

Biscuit
160g butter
100g caster sugar
Zest 1 lemon
1 egg
200g plain flour
70g ground almonds
4g baking powder

150g jam

50g icing sugar, to finish

Buttercream
100g butter
200g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Place butter, sugar and lemon zest in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Beat for 3-5 minutes until homogenous and creamy, scraping down the sides of the bowl halfway through.

Add the egg and beat to combine.

Add the dry ingredients and mix until it forms a smooth dough - but don’t overmix.

Wrap tightly in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Roll out between two sheets of baking parchment to about 3mm thick.

Cut out discs (I used a 7cm cutter), and then use a smaller cutter (I used a star, but you could also use a heart or just a smaller round cutter) to cut out the centre of half the biscuits. Place on a lined tray.

You can re-roll the biscuit dough here, but you may need to chill it again for an hour or two.

Preheat the oven to 170C. Bake the biscuits on lined baking trays for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.

Allow to cool.

To make the buttercream, beat all ingredients together in the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment for 4-5 minutes until light and fluffy. Place the buttercream in a piping bag.

When the biscuits have cooled, pipe a ring of buttercream around the outside of the biscuit, then place a small teaspoonful of jam inside each one. Dust the other half of the biscuit with icing sugar, then place on top.

Ingredients

1.5kg rhubarb
750g strawberries
Juice of 5 lemons
Splash of Campari
1.5kg sugar

Method

Trim the rhubarb and cut into roughly 4 inch batons. Remove the stalks from the strawberries. Place the fruit with the lemon juice in a wide pan over a medium heat. Cook until the juices have released from the fruit and it has started to break down. Bring to a simmer, then add the Campari and sugar and bring back to the boil. Cook for 20-30 minutes, until it reaches 105C.

Sterilise the jam jars by washing with warm soapy water, rinsing, then placing in an oven at 120C for 20 minutes until dry.

Place the warm jam in the hot jars and seal while hot.