Final curtain: Ruby Tandoh's treacle pancake and chocolate cookie recipes inspired by Tinseltown

This is my final baking column in Cook. The past couple of years spent writing these recipes for the Guardian have been really special. I’ve been able to share with you the highs and lows, the triumphs and total flops, of my experiments in baking. It’s a constant challenge to come up with recipes that are inventive but still approachable, that don’t need a plethora of weird and wonderful ingredients, but which still take me out of my comfort zone, and teach me (and you, I hope) something new.

That challenge was always welcome, though, and the lessons I learned have made me a better baker for life. But more than that, I’ve rediscovered the joy in the food I eat: writing in praise of flavour, food and gluttony each week has reminded me of what it means to cook for pleasure and to eat with gusto. It’s taught me that every adventure in cooking should be as exuberantly carefree, as joyful and as fun as a One Direction chorus. Cook what you want, eat what you want, enjoy yourself.

Treacle ginger pancakes

There’s a scene in Little Miss Sunshine where the extended Hoover family, crowded self-consciously around a table in a diner, put in their breakfast orders. Dad, Richard, has the number five with coffee, uncle Frank the fruit plate with a camomile and honey, Dwayne the garden salad, and when it’s the turn of bespectacled, chubby-cheeked beauty queen wannabe Olive, she plumps for waffles à la mode, asking first what à la mode actually means, and stepping jubilantly into her choice once she hears that it means that she’ll be having ice-cream.

An argument flares between the adults in the family, either needling Olive over the dangers of fat and fatness, or empowering her to eat what she wants. Olive wavers, but soon tucks into her bowl of ice-cream with a greedy zeal.

Even if you don’t have to debate your breakfast choices with your dysfunctional family, there are still a million booming opinions flung at us every day: about good food, bad food, good bodies, bad bodies, things that will kill us and smoothies to save our souls. Some of these pressures are internal, as we fight for control over what we eat and how we look; others come from the outside, certain bodies valued and legitimised over others, and the food we eat – “real” versus “junk”, fast versus slow – held up for derision or praise all the while.

It’s not for me to tell you what you can or should eat, and maybe pancakes and ice-cream for breakfast isn’t something you want, or are ready for, or can be seen to indulge in. That’s OK. But as someone who struggled for so long to surrender to my appetite, I find so much joy in breakfast feasts like these: it’s about giving yourself whatever advice you’d give Olive, it’s about enjoying the food you love.

Makes 16
40g butter
175g plain flour
3 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
3 large eggs
2 tbsp black treacle
Zest ½ orange
175ml milk
5 tbsp glace ginger (or chopped stem ginger)
500ml vanilla ice-cream, to serve

1 Melt the butter in the pan that you’re going to fry the pancakes in, then decant into a small, clean bowl to cool slightly. Leave the butter residue in the pan.

2 Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg in a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs, then beat until smooth and sticky before stirring in the black treacle and orange zest. Slowly whisk in the milk, until the batter is just thick enough to hold in neat pancake shapes when poured into the pan. Add the melted butter.

3 Heat the greased pan over a low heat, then cook the pancakes in batches, adding just enough batter to give an 8-10cm diameter pancake each time. As soon as you’ve spooned the pancake mix into the pan, sprinkle 1 tsp of glace ginger on top of each. After 1-2 minutes, when the underside is lightly browned and the top is just beginning to set, flip the pancakes and cook for a further 1-2 minutes to finish.

4 Serve with plenty of maple syrup, a sprinkling of orange zest and – most importantly – a couple of scoops of vanilla ice-cream.

Triple-chocolate cookies

In case you’re not familiar with your classic mid-1990s teen movies, here are the two take-home lessons from Clueless: being an all-round do-gooder needn’t come at the expense of being perfectly cute and impeccably styled; and when your crushes come over, you should always have something baking.

Alicia Silverstone’s Cher puts the latter into practice when (unattainable) dreamboat Christian comes round, prising a whole log of cookie dough from its packet, dropping it on to the oven tray and baking until smoke billows from the kitchen.

Here’s a foolproof cookie recipe that even the most clueless bakers can embrace, for when you need to prove your domestic prowess, even if that just means making a batch for yourself and eating them while you mastermind your next great outfit.

Makes 10-12
125g salted butter, well softened
150g soft light brown sugar
1 large egg
175g plain flour
30g cocoa powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g milk chocolate, in chunks
50g dark chocolate, in chunks
50g white chocolate, in chunks

1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Line a couple of large baking trays with baking parchment.

2 Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until smooth, then add the egg, flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and all the chocolate chunks – the milk chocolate, dark and white chocolate. Combine thoroughly, until you’ve got a thick, sticky dough, but don’t over-mix.

3 Spoon mounds of the cookie dough on to the prepared trays, leaving plenty of space between them (if you crowd the cookies, they’ll fuse in the oven and you’ll be left with a single mega-cookie). Bake for 12-14 minutes until the cookies are golden brown and well-spread, and the chocolate chunks molten and gooey. They’ll be really soft at this point, but will firm up as they cool, so leave them undisturbed on their baking trays until they’re at room temperature.