My earliest memory is of Weetabix. I lived on them. For my favourite meal, breakfast, I could get through six Weetabix, with milk and sugar, getting them perfect – not too dry, not too mushy. One day, before she went off to work, Mum poured on salt instead of sugar and I was devastated.

I was never allowed in the kitchen, sadly. I was a clumsy child, energetic and knocking into things. I'd spill things and get food down me, so Mum never wanted me in there. If I said I'd help, she'd draw breath. It was a reason she sent me to ballet classes – to control my clumsiness. And to sort out my bendy legs.

At 13 I started, late, at the White Lodge [the Royal Ballet's school in Richmond Park]. It was 15 to a dorm back then and the food wasn't great. I remember tongue sandwiches quite a lot. We used to head to Sheen for chips, and one friend, from up north, introduced me to pork scratchings.

Two months after I joined the company, at 18, we went on a tour of China, Japan, Thailand. I vividly remember packing my tour box – theatre make-up, ballet shoes, dance clothes and lots of Cup a Soups. They were still in Mao suits on bicycles in Shanghai and Beijing and food was boiled cabbage with stringy bits of meat for breakfast and these weird white balls for lunch.

I was performing Juliet [in Romeo and Juliet] in Buenos Aires and the rattling and crunching of popcorn in the stadium was offputting. The ballet is serene with many still moments, so constant popcorn doesn't really suit that.

I was never a dancer who was self-conscious about everything I ate. It was about having enough carbohydrates and proteins and eating at 2.30pm so you didn't get stomach cramps from nerves. But I never really thought about everything going in my mouth until I had an injury and was on the sofa, leg in a cast, feeling, "Oh my God, I'm turning into a couch potato."

When I began learning to cook after retirement from the Royal Ballet my cup cakes were the first thing my daughters appreciated. Now I have time I make everything for their parties. I loved how my grandmother in Australia made angel bread with hundreds of thousands, so I do all that now.

I associate Strictly Come Dancing with crème brûlée. I have a little fridge at the BBC that's full of it. I nibble constantly.

The compact edition of Darcey Bussell: A Life in Pictures (Hardie Grant, £16.99) is published next month