Are you a Christmas cake procrastinator? Do you start every festive season intending to make a gloriously boozy, fruit-packed cake, the kind that you make on Labour Day and put away to beautifully age? Only to realise it's nearly December already and you don’t have so much as a single raisin in the house or the correct sized tin…

Have you got a bunch of egg whites sloshing around after dutifully making hollandaise sauce or creme anglaise? Or is it just us that ends up with an accumulation of whites from time to time? Given the price of eggs, we don’t like to waste any part of a single one, but we don’t always want to bake meringue or pavlova, either…

While nothing says ‘I care’ or ‘look at me go’ like homemade dumplings, sometimes frozen ones are a total lifesaver when we’re running out of time. And when we make a dinner out of frozen dumplings, normally we just boil them, steam a pile of Asian greens…

Can’t get enough of coconut? Same here. We love it in this cake which has slightly retro vibes, and where coconut is represented in creamy, desiccated and extract form. With an amazingly fluffy texture and a ridiculously rich, lime-spiked, creamy frosting, it’s special enough to bring out for an occasion, but without the fuss of a layer cake...

Need an afternoon tea treat? Something to take to a family gathering? A cake/slice/dessert hybrid to serve with ice-cream for pudding? Taa-daa. Buttery, crumbly and fruity, this strawberry-rhubarb tray bake is exactly the simple pleasure you’re craving...

We’re getting our Austria on with these buns; one of us is contemplating a visit and the wish-list itinerary is quickly filling up with Schloss Schönbrunn, sausage, strudel, Strauss, the Christmas Markets at Spittelberg, sachertorte, the Secession Building, and everything to do with Sisi. And schnitzel. All the ’S’ things, basically...

Welcome to our pasta party in a cake tin! (Or frying pan, if you prefer… we did). This is SO easy to whip up and makes a change from the usual pasta dinner. Plus, it’s a bit of a blank slate: you can throw some sun-dried tomatoes, chopped olives, chopped salami, capers, anchovies or fresh basil through the mixture before baking...

Vietnam, bless it, has some unique ingredients and techniques that we go nuts for. Having been lucky enough to visit the country numerous times over the last 20 years, we can say, hand on heart, it has one of our all time favourite cuisines on the planet. The food is next level; it’s fresh, zingy and so incredibly varied, we never get sick of eating it...

Everyone with a brownie recipe in the known world and beyond claims theirs is The Best Ever. We’ve been making this version for decades now and stake our reputations on it actually being the best. The exact origins are a bit sketchy, long lost in the sands of time and dogged-eared cookbooks...

If you’ve been playing along with the LSC so far, you’ll be bracing yourself for the expected “this isn’t a hard recipe” and true to form, we’re saying “this recipe isn’t hard.” Cooking is all about timing and keeping a tidy bench most of the time, and this recipe has a third factor - breaking things down into manageable sub-tasks...

Rich. Dense. Decadent. No, that’s not a description of Ye; it’s this incredible cake. Flourless chocolate cake is a refined classic, and we think everyone needs a version in their baking repertoire. We love ours (we would!). It's great to bake for a crowd as it will serve 10-12, no worries, and it tastes as amazing as the chocolate and cocoa you use...

Pudding. If we ate it everyday we’d be the size of a bus but there’s a place for a sticky, sweet, stodgy treat. Which is around now, we reckon, when it’s not technically winter any more but it’s not bloody tropical either. And these dumplings are about the sweetest, stickiest and stodgiest we know...

Having never made American biscuits before, we initially imagined they’d be a bit like a scone, but they’re not really. Biscuits are loaded with butter, whereas scones contain relatively little. Some biscuit recipes use a percentage of vegetable shortening (Kremelta by any other name), but we prefer the flavour...

OK, so back to your dad. We’re not done with him yet. We’ve dealt with the savoury dads, so let’s address the sweet ones. If he’s a sweet tooth, here’s THE breakfast treat for your Pa; oaty pancakes dripping in gooey caramel sauce with roasted pears.

Is your dad a sweet guy or a savoury type? If you’re planning to make a fuss of him on Father's Day, that’s a detail you really need to nail down. No point making him sweet pancakes for breakfast if he’d prefer a cheesy, corn-y quick bread, loaded with roasted tomatoes, avo, a few leaves and whatever else he likes...

This isn’t our first slow-baked salmon rodeo, as you’ll know if you saw our recipe for Roasted Salmon with Dried Tomato and Walnuts a month or so back. Delicious. Because we loved the results so much, we’ve riffed off the same theme again, this time using harissa and some orange as complimentary flavours. (Our orange was a blood one but use whatever you have. We like the slightly spiky flavour of…

We’re always looking for ways to level up our breakfast routine because it’s easy to get bored with toast and jam, no matter how artisanal and generally amazing they both are. In our quest for a More Exciting Breakfast, we came across a recipe for Morning Glory Muffins, invented in…

Welcome to Fellah Köfte. With roots in Turkish and MIddle Eastern cuisine, it’s a humble kind of a dish using everyday staples that would traditionally have been super-cheap and constantly on hand. Depending on what burghul and semolina cost in your vicino, it’s still pretty cheap to make and if you can get Turkish pepper paste all the better…

OK, kids, let’s make choux pastry. It’s a weird beast for sure; you heat water and butter in a smallish saucepan JUST until it simmers and the butter has melted. Next, you dump in sifted flour, then stir like crazy over the heat until the mixture forms a cooked, smooth, floury ball that leaves the side of the pan…

We’re self-confessed jam-aholics. Give us a calm morning with plenty of hot coffee and sourdough toast slathered with butter (or ricotta) and scads of decent jam, and we’re happy-as. And note the use of the word ‘decent’ there. Being fussy about jam is not food-snobbery and if you’ve eaten…