Trusted British chef recipes, tested at home
Nigella Lawson’s salted chocolate tart is a rich, silky chocolate filling set in a no-bake Oreo biscuit base, flecked with smoked sea salt and served with crème fraîche. It cuts into 14 slices, from her book Simply Nigella. She says she’d always avoided chocolate tarts, not from laziness but because she never felt the pastry …
Nigella Lawson’s honey pie is a rich, salty-sweet honey custard baked in an easy no-roll olive oil crust, finished with a scatter of sea salt flakes. It cuts into 14 modest slices, from her book Simply Nigella. She adapted it from the Salty Honey Pie in the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, saying she …
Nigella Lawson’s rum-spiked French toast is slightly stale white bread steeped in a rum, egg and brown sugar custard, fried in butter and doused in a golden-syrup-and-rum syrup. It serves 2, from her book Cook, Eat, Repeat. She calls it her favourite French toast of all time, one she doesn’t make nearly enough. It came …
James Martin’s baked blueberry cheesecake folds whole blueberries through a vanilla, lemon and cream cheese filling on a baked digestive biscuit base, bakes it in a water bath at 180°C (gas 4), then cools it slowly in the turned-off oven for at least two hours, preferably overnight. It serves six to eight with a warm …
James Martin’s American baked cheesecake sets a rich filling of cream cheese, eggs, lemon zest, vanilla and bourbon-soaked sultanas over a sponge base, baked in a water bath at 180°C (gas 4) for 50 minutes until golden on top. It’s served in wedges with caramelised bananas and maple syrup or caramel sauce. It serves ten. …
James Martin’s chocolate profiteroles pipe choux pastry into small balls, bake them until golden with steam in the oven for extra lift, fill them with orange-zested whipped cream, and drown them in a dark chocolate sauce made from a sugar syrup. The recipe makes about 20 and is built in three separate stages: pastry, filling, …
James Martin’s sticky toffee pudding bakes a moist date sponge, made with demerara sugar, golden syrup and black treacle, in individual moulds, then drowns each one in a muscovado toffee sauce. The whole thing comes together quickly in a food processor, bakes at 200°C (gas 6) for 20-25 minutes, makes six, and is served with …
James Martin’s apple charlotte encases a chunky, apricot-glossed apple filling in a case of butter-soaked white bread, baked until the outside is golden and crunchy and the inside stays warm and appley. It uses 1kg of cooking apples and 12 slices of bread, bakes at 180°C (160°C fan, gas 4) for 30 minutes, and serves …
Nigella Lawson’s rice pudding cake is a British reworking of the Italian torta di riso, made by cooking Arborio rice in lemony milk, then folding it with whisked eggs and baking into a tender, nutmeg-scented cake. It bakes in a 20cm springform tin at 160°C (140°C fan) for 45 minutes and gives 8-12 slices, served …
Nigella Lawson’s New Year doughnuts are Dutch oliebollen, little yeasted dough balls made with a nutmeg-and-lemon-scented batter, fried at 180°C for about 5 minutes until crisp outside and soft within, then dusted with icing sugar. The batter proves for around 1¼ hours. She frames them in Cook, Eat, Repeat (2020) as her way of celebrating …