I bake.

I have all the ingredients an Urban chef needs: expensive Green and Black's Chocolate, a recipe - in American measurements - downloaded from the Internet and a Starbucks overall (Purchased from eBay).

I am making muffins.

I cream the butter and the sugar and melt the chocolate in a bain-marie. I prove to myself that by knowing the French term for something I am a good cook. I stir the chocolate. I like my chocolate like I like my coffee. And I like my coffee like I like my women. Ground up and in the freezer or strong, black, bitter and with a slight hint of orange.

In fact there isn't a chocolate that has been made that is too bitter for me. I am praying that the Hotel Chocolat Gods will eventually have some 100% chocolate so I can try some. It is normally a chef's perrogative to have a glass of red or white when cooking a stew but since I don't drink alcohol or make casseroles, eating cooking chocolate is the closest I get.

But this chocolate is dark. It is darker than a comedy written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker. And it's bitter. It is bitterer than Bertie Magoo, the bitter blue city fan, after realising that city last won a trophy 31 years ago, the year Elvis died.

I slave over the bowl, mixing thoroughly.I miss the bit in X-Men2 where Halle Berry goes all albino and Hugh Jackman takes his shirt off.

After taking legal advice, I decided to remove the poisoned muffin. This, I am told, would constitute manslaughter if I had an expensive lawyer and murder if I got a cheap lawyer.

Why am I baking? It is my Birthday on Saturday and I am fullfilling the time honoured British tradition of giving my co-workers high cholesterol as my Birthday present to them all. It is a 9 birthday this year so the next 12 months will be spent worrying, fretting and pulling what is left of my hair out as I approach a big 0 and the inevitable decline into older middle age. And, if reading Swallows and Amazons when I was 10 hadn't put me off books for life, I would have posted my Amazon Wishlist.