Nigel Slater’s warming winter soup and cake recipes

Spicy lentils, sweet potatoes and glorious apple and ginger cake custardThere is a glow from the oven door. The reassuring golden light that tells us someone has been cooking for us. The light that, however briefly, puts everything right.More than ever before I want to open the oven door and find my old crock pot full to the brim with beans and spices baking sweetly, or a copper pan of fat-marbled meat braising on its bones. I need to come home to a veritable cauldron of soup thick with grains o