Courses & dish types
Baking recipes
Where measurements start to matter.
Baking is the part of cooking that behaves like chemistry, which is why it is written in grams here and why the order of operations is not negotiable. Creaming butter and sugar is aeration. Rubbing fat into flour is about coating the protein so it cannot form gluten. Folding is about keeping air that has already been incorporated. Substituting one fat for another or one sugar for another changes the moisture and the structure, not just the flavour. The recipes here say what each step is for, so that when something goes wrong there is a diagnosis rather than a guess.
12 recipes
Vanilla Custard
A pouring custard of egg yolks, milk and cream thickened over low heat until it coats the back of a spoon.
Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake
A creamed-method lemon loaf finished with a granular sugar and juice drizzle poured on hot, which sets into a crunchy crust.
Dark Chocolate Brownies
Fudgy brownies built on melted dark chocolate and eggs whisked to a foam, which is what gives them their paper-thin crackled top.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies made with browned butter and a long overnight rest, which deepens the flavour and stops them spreading thin.
Soft Milk Rolls
A dough enriched with milk, butter and egg, baked as a pull-apart tray of rolls with a close crumb that stays soft for days.
Skillet Flatbreads
Soft stovetop flatbreads cooked in a dry pan in about two minutes each, ready in the time a pot of dal takes to simmer down.
Seeded Rye Loaf
A dense oval of dark rye and seeds, mixed rather than kneaded because rye forms almost no gluten to work with.
No-Knead Sourdough Focaccia
A slow sourdough focaccia fermented overnight in the fridge, dimpled deep so the pockets fill with olive oil and flaky salt.
Everyday White Tin Loaf
A straight-dough sandwich loaf made with commercial yeast and no starter, baked in a tin so it slices square for toast.
Cinnamon Bun Concoction
Two tubes of shop-bought cinnamon rolls, cut into pieces and baked in a maple custard. It comes together in ten minutes and feeds a table.
Buttermilk Soda Bread
A yeast-free loaf leavened with bicarbonate of soda and buttermilk, in the oven ten minutes after you start and cooling within the hour.
Apple and Blackberry Crumble
Tart Bramley apples and blackberries under a rubbed-in oat crumble, mixed by hand in one bowl with no mixer needed.