‘Everyone assumed it represented a poo emoji!’ 27 writers on the greatest cake of their life

From the blissful threat of ‘death by chocolate’, to a book made of sponge and the lemon drizzle to end them all, these are the bakes that left the biggest impressions The Sorting Hat sponge I made for my son’s Harry Potter party is not the best cake I’ve ever tasted.

That would be anything baked by my granny, or the coffee religieuse au cafe (a choux pastry puff) I ate in Boulogne-sur-Mer with my mum. But it’s the most surprisingly edible cake I’ve ever made – a vaguely Jamie-Oliver-esque recipe with buttercream filling and tinned mandarin slices. It didn’t only work; it tasted great, and wasn’t quite as teeth-screechingly sweet as expected. My one regret is that I over-pimped the decoration: it looked so sinister in the fridge with its cold, Sorting Hat stare that the next…