Watching the numerous baking programmes that have become so popular on the TV my ears pricked up at the mention of a cake named for one of the world’s great bike rides – the Paris-Brest-Paris.

Created in 1910 to celebrate the race which has now become of the great tourist trials of the cycling calendar it is apparently a wheel shaped circle of choux pastry with various fillings, including lots of cream.

Well I was just nipping into the local bakery-patisserie last weekend to get some bread for lunch when looking at me from the centre of the patisserie counter was a mound filled with fruit and cream, topped with toasted almonds and icing sugar with the proud label “Paris-Brest”.

Well it wasn’t so much looking at me as shouting “eat me!”

I can report that it was a light and fluffy delight. Could I eat a whole one? Under normal circumstances certainly not, we shared it. If I had biked 1200 kilometres from Paris to Brest and back I could probably eat several.

So number one of what is probably a very short series – cakes named after bike races. I am available for testing others in the series.