Let them eat cake with half the sugar

As a fan of Tamal Ray, I was surprised that he didn’t challenge the decades-long orthodoxy of equal parts of fat and sugar in cake recipes (Have your cake and eat it: how to cut down on sugar, 18 May). You can always reduce the sugar – often by half. Nobody’s complained about my cakes in the last 60 years.
Anne Eardley
Manchester

• So special constables are to be given stun guns (Report, 16 May). When they were being introduced for police use in the UK, weren’t we told that they would only be used where the alternative would be a firearm? How long before we have a fully armed police force?
Gareth Hopcyn
Stockport, Greater Manchester

• We too, like Jan Cook, have wildlife this spring that has been scarce or nonexistent for years (Letters, 17 May). Seen or heard from our garden have been double the usual number of swifts and frogs, a hedgehog and a cuckoo. Let’s hope nature is fighting back.
Geoffrey Randall
Eye, Suffolk

• While I am delighted for Jan Cook, I am saddened by the absence of swifts in our neighbourhood this year. In past years there have been many of these wonderful birds swooping and screaming up and down the street and nesting under the eaves in our house and others in the road. But this year I have seen only two.
Judith Kent
Barnet, London

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