Young British Foodies.
Each year an awards ceremony highlights grassroots talent across the food world — the unsung heroes, emerging chefs, writers and creators who pour passion into food but haven’t yet gained widespread recognition. Branded the Young British Foodie awards, or YBFs, these accolades celebrate people who live and breathe food and are still finding their place in the industry.
Entries for the 2017 awards are now open. Anyone can enter across categories ranging from foodservice and drinks to food writing and social media — details are available on the YBFs website.
To mark the occasion, I’m sharing the piece I submitted for 2016. I like to think it came close to the shortlist. Enjoy this snapshot of my experience while I draft my 2017 entry.
“But… you said everything would be OK, you promised you’d make things work! How can you let me down like this? How dare you! I can’t believe you did it. I can’t believe you treated me like this, led me down the garden path, wasted my life, used me and then trampled on my dreams! I’m never talking to you again, that’s it, we’re over! Wahhhhhhhhh, wahhhhhhh!”
Sound familiar? It does to me.
This outburst wasn’t aimed at another person. It was the internal monologue between me and a cookbook after I followed a banana bread recipe that still came out with a soggy bottom, even after extra baking. The recipe had felt intimate and reliable while I read it, as if written directly to me. When it failed, it felt like a personal betrayal.
A failed recipe can provoke strong emotions: anger, disappointment, embarrassment and sadness. Cooking is a solitary, focused act that stirs up intense feelings — joy when something succeeds, or frustration when it doesn’t. You invest time, care and hope into the process, and when the result falls short, it stings.
The high of a successful bake is euphoric — a rush of pride and pleasure that can feel almost addictive. Conversely, failure can trigger a hot, overwhelming rage. In my case, the soggy-bottomed banana bread felt like a catastrophe: two hours of my Saturday vanished into something unusable. I reacted impulsively, flinging the tin and its contents into the bin in a moment of theatrical despair. It was over in an instant.
Of course, in the wider scheme of life this loss is small, especially compared to hours wasted watching curated lives unfold on social media. Still, the emotional impact of a botched recipe is real and sharp. A recipe represents a tacit agreement between writer and cook: follow these steps and you will be guided to a good result. When that promise collapses at the final stage, it feels like being let down by someone you trusted.
There’s more at stake than ingredients and time. When we cook from a recipe we hand over trust: trust that the instructions are clear, the quantities right and the timings realistic. We look to recipes for reassurance and companionable guidance. When they fail, we don’t just lose a cake or a meal — we lose a little faith in the process.
That sense of betrayal — the idea that someone else’s guidance has undermined your effort — can feel disproportionate, because we often externalize blame. It’s easier to point at the author, the source, than to question our own choices. But that’s a different conversation.