Recipes

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

Nigella Lawson

This may well be — indeed is — the smell, the taste, the dish that says "family" to me and my siblings, and brings our long-absent mother back to the kitchen and the table with us. This is not merely a recipe, but my family's culinary fingerprint. It's not quite poached, not quite braised, and so I've settle on "praised" - which feels exactly right, as for me both cooking and eating it feel like a devotional act. And please read the Additional Information section at the end of the recipe before proceeding.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Bites

This is the wholesome, comforting version of a trad English (white) bread and butter pudding that my maternal grandmother always made. Use apricot jam or regular orange marmalade if ginger's not your thing.

Nigella Lawson

Now, this is a beauty. I don't mean flash or fancy — rather the opposite; there is something austerely handsome about its appearance, and yet gorgeously warming about its taste. But then, this laid-back Sunday-lunch pudding is what kitchen food is all about. I'm happy to leave the picture-perfect plate-decoration dessert to the professional chef and patissier. When I want to eat one, I'll go to a restaurant. That way, everyone's happy. I don't want to be too prescriptive about this marmalade pudding cake — which has the surprisingly light texture of a steamed sponge — as it doesn't seem in the spirit of things. I love the bitter edge of a thick-shred, dark marmalade and so tend to go for a proper, glamorously auburn, tawny one here; if this is too full-on for you, choose a fine-shred marmalade, instead.

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is just wonderful when you have friends over in summer, though not to be discounted for the rest of the year, either. There was a time I cooked it just about every two weeks, and it

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

I know the recipe looks finicky, and I can’t promise it’s a doddle, but it works easily and you will soon find you are rolling chocolate logs without a care. In fact, if you have a lot of people coming round, and you can find a serving dish or board long enough, it might be worth making 2 cakes and sitting them end to end, to look like a really long log. But even if you’re making just one log, I advise at least a freestanding mixer or a hand-held electric whisk: I wouldn’t contemplate this by hand. Now, it doesn’t look anything like a log when it is just a bald roulade, but once you’ve spread on the chocolate icing, made approximations of wood-markings on it (I use the sharp end of a corn-on-the-cob holder for this) and all, it does look quite impressive. I don’t go as far as the French, and make sugar mushrooms to adorn it: this is not only because I lack the talent, but also because a light snowfall of icing sugar is all this yule log really needs to complete its wintry perfection. And please read the Additional Information section at the end of the recipe before proceeding.

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

If there’s a family in Italy that doesn’t have a recipe for yogurt pot cake, then I’ve yet to meet them. And I love this plain cake with perhaps disproportionate intensity. There is something so quintessentially Italian about its scent — as it bakes, I think I’m in a kitchen in Italy — and its taste — that combination of lemon and vanilla — and even the old-fashioned charm of its method. This is it: your yogurt pot is your unit of measurement. And even though I saw from the original recipe that I copied down (from some scrawled piece of paper in the kitchen of a house I’d rented one summer), that the specified yogurt pot had a 125ml capacity, I have kept the same number of eggs for my 150ml yogurt pot. I work on the principle that eggs these days are larger than when the cake first came into being. Anyway, it works, and that’s the main thing. And this is the way it works: for 1 cake, you need 1 pot of yogurt, 2 pots of sugar, 1 pot of oil, 1 pot of potato starch or cornflour and 2 pots of flour. In keeping with this style of measuring, you will see that I have even stipulated 2 capfuls of vanilla extract.