Rice cakes, but the version I actually eat

Every version of this recipe on the internet is a variation on the same idea, and most of them are slightly worse than they need to be because they’re trying to be a dessert. Ride food isn’t dessert. It needs to be sweet enough to want at hour three, savoury enough to not be sickening at hour five, and structurally sound enough to survive a jersey pocket.

This is the version I’ve settled on after roughly two seasons of tinkering.

Method

1. Rinse the rice until the water runs clear. This matters more than it sounds — unrinsed rice makes a gluey cake that doesn’t slice.
2. Cook the rice with the water in a rice cooker, or covered on the lowest heat for 18 minutes then off the heat for 10. Do not lift the lid.
3. While it’s still hot, fold in the cream cheese, honey, brown sugar and lemon zest. It will look wrong for about a minute and then come together.
4. Press into a lined tray about 3 cm deep. Press it hard — compaction is what keeps the slices intact.
5. Salt the top. Chill at least two hours, ideally overnight.
6. Slice into eight bars and wrap each one individually in foil.

Wrap them individually. Unwrapping a shared block at 35 km/h is how you end up with rice in your shoe.

Notes after two seasons

• Sushi rice only. Long grain will not bind and you will be sad.
• The salt is not optional. At hour four the sweet version becomes actively unpleasant; the salted one still goes down.
• Foil beats cling film — it opens one-handed and stays open.
• They keep three days in the fridge and freeze well for about a month. Freeze them wrapped, thaw in the jersey.
• Roughly 60 g of carbs a slice, which makes the maths on a long ride pleasantly simple: one an hour, plus a bottle.

For anything over four hours I swap the lemon zest for a spoon of miso and drop the honey to two tablespoons. That version sounds worse and is better.