M y record for making ricotta and lemon ring cake is three minutes and 42 seconds. That doesn’t include heating the oven or baking, or finding a recipe, which is in my head. It does include getting out the utensils (bowl, spatula, grater, scale, ring tin) and the ingredients (ricotta, olive oil, flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, lemons), then speed-mixing everything in one bowl, scraping the batter into the tin and getting the tin in the oven via a discus throw. The timer is stopped as the oven door is closed. This is not relaxing cooking, it is entertaining cooking. And it is gratifying, having proved my partner wrong when he said it would take me at least five minutes. I was disappointed, then, to find myself on terrible form the other day, when a chocolate-chip version of the same ring cake took me five minutes and 19 seconds.…