Well bless my giddy aunt if I didn’t go and manage to shift the lot. Not even the teeniest muffin crumb remains. We raised a fantastic £350 and will be whacking the profits straight over to Amnesty International and Great Ormond Street.

As predicted, the keema lollies were very popular and a great talking point, despite the ribbing I received on Twitter for them.

However the first to go were the spinach rolls, I had the same people coming back again and again for extra bags of cherries and a couple of customers actually stood in front of me and argued over who should be entitled to the last piece of salted caramel and macadamia nut cheesecake. Smashing!
Despite my pre-stall whining and mewling about aching feet I absolutely loved it.

There’s something about standing around the middle of London in an apron that’s guaranteed to bring out one’s inner fishwife. I spent most of the day heckling passers-by and generally having a ball. My faith in the British public has been somewhat rejuvenated and I also adored the camaraderie with the other stall holders, the Blitz spirit of putting on a brave face together, and the roll out the barrel mentality of passing around glasses of Prosecco (it was too hot for tea) in the face of it all.

If you’ve been contemplating running a stall, I would say go for it. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing the amazed grins on faces as people take that first bite into a mouthful of something you’ve spent hours slaving over, and then paying you for the privilege.

In retrospect, I should have made double the amount of food and tagged it all a lot higher. We were after all, slap bang in the middle of London, and our main punters were tourists, so I would have got away with double some of those prices. However, I only charged what I would have paid for myself; and I’m a notorious stinge bag. If you’re thinking of setting up stall it’s worth checking out what the competition are selling, working out how much you can make in advance and, of course, having lots and lots of fun.

After riding this crazy culinary wave, today feels like a bit of a come down. After all my regimented planning, and baking and researching, that’s it. It’s all over, I’ve lost my voice and it’s just back to cooking for two… sigh!

Find a world of treats for eating on the streets

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First to cook is 23 stone street warden, Gavin Dyer, whose overly ambitious menu soon has him sweating… profusely.

Next up, super fastidious housewife, Alison Deare: cleans for at least 3 hours a day, doesn’t like any clutter as it ‘gathers dust’ and is worried about catching warts from the inside of eggs. Somehow in between her mopping and wiping Alison finds time to prepare an Italian-themed dinner for her guests.

Day three of the culinary competition in Torbay is the turn of political activist and bingo enthusiast, David Ward. A few cracks have started to show between the guests and he’ll have his work cut out keeping the peace.

Next comes restoration expert, Patrick Walker, who is keen to show off his palatial house, including ‘the biggest Aga in the village’. Will his classical approach to cooking live up to the setting?

It’s up to final host, Carol, to provide a pleasurable dinner party experience if she wants to try and win that £1000 final prize.

Watch the Torbay chefs in action, weekdays from 15th June, 5:30pm on Channel 4

Browse all the Come Dine With Me recipes

Deep in the rolling hills of Devon we were warming up for the imminent arrival of Christmas with snow, mince pies, turkey, a trip to the Christmas tree forest…. and a film crew!

Punctuated by the delivery of fridges, cherry pickers, Christmas lights and more, the house was filling up with all things Christmassy. The only thing missing was Willie…

Blue Peter preparation
The kids and I set about preparing the house. Being so far from the jungle and still wanting to have that Caribbean festive feel we started by covering the banisters in miles and miles of red, green and yellow ribbon. While the children cut ribbon and tied themselves up, in fits of giggles, I set about making an advent calendar and wreath for the door.

The advent calendar became a Blue Peter nightmare. It involved a spice rack and large piece of card, and then drawing, painting and glittering a twinkling town with Santa on his sleigh. Behind each door was a drawer with goodies inside. Late into the wee hours of the morning I worked… loving it, but fraught with its demand.

Willie, between the usual lengthy shifts at the factory, was busy organising his favourite thing – food glorious food.

Where’s Willie?
Over the week leading up to filming the house became stuffed to the brim with goodies but there was still no real sign of Willie… The Christmas crew were due to arrive early in the morning so we went to bed.

At 6.45am the alarm went off and just as the coffee was brewing the headlights of some eight large vehicles pulled into the driveway. The sound of familiar voices was a comfort, but as I was running late, I pelted upstairs in my dressing gown to wake the children. They were not amused. It was the first day of half term and they were having to get up earlier than on a school day. Fortunately the excitement of seeing the crew sustained them and they headed downstairs for a makeshift breakfast in the sitting room while the set up of lights, cameras and general rushing around ensued.

Before we knew it we were changing from one outfit to another, looking for lost shoes and boots (usually the dog’s department), monitoring the heat loss of the house as doors seemed to be constantly wide open, moving furniture, tidying as we went, and trying to keep an eye on three very over excited children. But where was Willie?

Suddenly he arrived from the factory and leapt onto the set to begin the making of various chocolate recipes.

Feeling sheepish
On the second day a whole sheep arrived – dead thankfully – and ready to be prepared by Willie and cooked for all our friends at our Christmas party. Little did the guests know when they arrived that their dinner was going to be dug up from the pit outside in which it had been cooking for 16 hours! The children all stood around in amazement as Willie and our friend Rob started digging and revealed this culinary delight which went down well amongst the ravenous party-goers with a glass of mulled wine. To add to the excitement it began to snow a little which was all that we had been hoping for to make it a truly Christmassy experience.

Programmes based on cooking always mean there is plenty of food about. But imagine my surprise when I went into the catering kitchen and saw four robust turkeys for the five of us! In order to have the shots run seamlessly, most dishes are shot in varying degrees of readiness. So there was one turkey to be prepared, one being cooked, one for the pack shot, and one for the next day to cook and actually eat at the Christmas dinner! Not wanting anything to go to waste the crew plus family, ate more turkey, Brussel’s sprouts and mince pies than is usually required…

Christmas trees, stockings… and hotdogs
Great winds and some freak weather meant that every morning when we came downstairs the 18-foot Christmas tree outside had blown down! It was quite an ordeal to get it back up. For the party we decorated it with stockings made from the hessian cacao sacks and stuffed them with nuts, tangerines and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

To wrap it up, Willie’s chocolatey Christmas was perfect. In between the shooting we all had a wonderful time, with snowball fights, a Christmas party and Christmas dinner with the family. The highlight was probably a visit to the Bath Christmas Fair where we rode the Carousel and ate hotdogs… and more chocolate, naturally!

Catch up on all the goings on during Willie’s Perfect Chocolate Christmas

For a list of Willie’s chocolate stockists, please see www.venezuelanblack.com

There are said to be two rivals for the title of world’s hottest curry: The Bombay Burner from The Cinnamon Club in London and the infamous Curry Hell from the Curry Capital in Newcastle. I wanted to try both and, as a kind of control, I also thought I should try to come up with my own.

I took on the homemade curry first. I should admit that I mainly chose the recipe because it looked really easy. It was just a basic mix of chilli, chicken, garlic and vinegar, made all the more appealing by the command to wash it down with two pints of lager.

But the actual chilli spices I found looked serious. These were the wonderfully named Satan’s Ashes from the Chilli Pepper Company in Cumbria. Affidavits on their website spoke of near hallucinatory meetings with the devil himself.

None of that happened to me, but then, I did only manage three mouthfuls. The stuff had already brought tears to my eyes as I cooked it. The experience of eating it was, at that stage, the most painful thing that food had done to me. Had someone let off a blowtorch in my mouth it couldn’t have felt worse.

But what did feel worse was the second contender: The Bombay Burner.

Inspired by traditional food from Hyderabad, this lethal dish is a mixture of lamb mince and Naga chillies. These latter are – according to the Scoville scale – about 100 times hotter than jalepenos. Which is about 1,000 times hotter than I fancied eating. Especially when the head chef on the day started telling me stories about what had happened to other foolhardy diners. Everyone claimed it was the hottest thing they’d tasted. And pretty much everyone failed to eat more than a couple of mouthfuls. When one party of young men goaded each other into finishing their portions it literally ended in tears. One left the restaurant in an ambulance. By the time I’d signed a legal disclaimer stating I was aware of the risks involved, I was distinctly uncomfortable.

The feeling wasn’t helped when the Burner itself arrived. Within seconds, I was in agony. It wasn’t just hot. It was like being stabbed with a thousand knives. Like Bambi declaring at the end of the film that he’s just caught the plague and all the little woodland creatures are going to get it too.

Luckily, soon, I was subject to an extraordinary head-rush. My synapses were flooded with endorphins. My heart was pounding. I began to feel light-headed and pretty great in a couldn’t-possibly-drive-a car-kind of way.

So I ate some more. Now I hardly felt it. That was even more worrying. I decided it was probably best I stopped.

I’ve since learned that extremely hot chillis have a powerful effect on the pain receptors in your mouth. They apparently over-stimulate them so much that your brain stops taking signals from them and they are temporarily unable to tell it when something is going wrong. So it was probably just as well I ate no more. Especially considering what happened to me when I went to relieve myself the following morning…

Impressive as the Bombay Burner was, I was still afraid that its main rival might beat it. Curry Hell was invented in 1977, and was for years apparently known as the world’s hottest meal. And while a few of the staff at The Cinnamon Club had actually tried the Bombay Burner, when I spoke to the Curry Capital’s current manager he told me he would never sample Curry Hell. “I’ve seen what goes in it. And I’ve seen too many people in pain,” he told me.

Until then I had been feeling pleased with myself for tracking the thing down. When I’d first learned that the other claimant was in Newcastle, I’d thought I would never be able to get any. Then I’d spotted that Curry Capital also hold the World Record for the furthest takeaway delivery: they once flew one over to a homesick Geordie in Sydney. Compared to that my home in Norwich would be no problem.

Except, fortunately for me, it never arrived. Whether lost in the vagaries of the postal system or impounded because of its toxic qualities, Curry Hell didn’t reach my door. I was left unable to judge with authority what the world’s hottest curry may be. But mighty relieved.

Think you know of a hotter curry? Tell us in the user comments below.

Try cooking some of your own hell-raisers with 4Food’s curry recipes.

In this case it’s Delia Smith’s Food and Wine Workshop at Norwich City Football Club. And here’s the moment he revealed his true identity to Delia, who until then was totally unaware that one of the world’s most famous chefs had been posing as a punter at her school.

See how Gordon faced up to this latest challenge – the first of many surprises – when he returns to our screens for Cookalong Live, starting Friday 24th October, 9pm on Channel 4