Christmas Baking

Chocolate Fruit Cake

This is the perfect cut-and-come again cake for any time of the year. It lasts for a fortnight, but has the squidgy fabulousness of something so much less serviceable-sounding. I know there are a lot…

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Easy-Action Christmas Cake

I just throw everything into a pan, let the heat from the stove send buttery rum and citrus juices permeating into the currants, sultanas and raisins, add flour and eggs, a can of chestnut purée to gi…

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Pomegranate Jewel Cake

Many cultures use food that resembles money — lentils for coins, saffron for gold — in celebratory meals, to invoke a wish for prosperity and good fortune ahead, and this fragrant, light, flourless al…

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Christmas Cupcakes

These beauties also make a very good alternative to mince pies. I buy the icing ready made and dyed (which is why it isn’t a very convincing colour for holly, let’s be frank) and use cranberries as th…

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Clementine Cake

This, an adaption of Claudia Roden's magnificent orange and almond cake, is a wonderfully damp, dense and aromatic flourless cake: it tastes like one of those sponges you drench, while cooling, with s…

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Christmas-Spiced Chocolate Cake

I love a fallen chocolate cake, and have found most everyone else does too. The cakes are so called because they are compact and flourless and, when cooling out of the oven, their rich centres drop an…

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Gorgeously Golden Fruit Cake

This is the fruity blonde sister to that brunette temptress, my chocolate fruit cake from Nigella Christmas. It delivers, as promised, a cake of apricot-pear-and-ginger goldenness and goodness, so squ…

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Spruced-Up Vanilla Cake

This is a sleight of hand, or a trick of equipment rather than an act of brilliance. True, the cake does look incredibly complicated and seasonally impressive as it comes to the table, but that is all…

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Yule Log

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 comin…

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Smooth Hatbox Icing

I love a plain white-iced cake: smooth icing, wrapping the cake almost like a hatbox. I am happy to have this decorated, but I'd just as soon the decorations were also white. Here, I've cut out a wibb…

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Cider and 5-Spice Bundt Cake

Most of the time I refer to this as my Cider and 5-Spice Gingerbread, but I changed the name out of concern for those who expect a little more gingeriness from their gingerbead (although anyone is fre…

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Pumpkin Bundt Cake

It’s no secret that I love a bundt cake: it just looks instantly celebratory. Plus, once you have the tin (and if you don't, you can bake this cake in a 20cm/8 inch square tin) you do want to get good…

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Pecan-Plus Pie

This is somewhat of an Anglo-American enterprise. I have taken a pecan pie, and added other nuts, simply because for me, the English festive season means bowls of mixed nuts and the memory of my grand…

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Chestnut Cheesecake

There is no doubt about it, anything with chestnuts in it, even if they come vacuum-packed or canned and are perennially available, is so right for this time of year. The chestnuts are present, in the…

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Date and Marmalade Christmas Cake

This cake tastes like Christmas pudding — a very, very good Christmas pudding — the sort the Quakers (as I’m fond of quoting) once magnificently condemned as “the invention of the scarlet whore of Bab…

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Chocolate Cloud Cake

On days when I want the warmth of the hearth rather than the hurly burly of the city streets I stay in and read cookery books, and this recipe comes from just the sort of book that gives most succour,…

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Devil's Food Cake

Forget the name, this cake is heavenly. The crumb is tender, the filling and frosting luscious. When I made it one Friday, I expected my children, resident food critics much in the mould of the Grim e…

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Gleaming Maple Cheesecake

This is an exquisite cheesecake, tangy and delicate, with the pronounced smokiness and subdued sweetness of the maple syrup. It has a fabulously light, smooth and voluptuous texture, and two things he…

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Ultimate Christmas Pudding

I don’t deny it: there is something unattractively boastful about calling one’s own recipe “ultimate”. But having soaked my dried fruit for this pudding in Pedro Ximénez — the sweet, dark, sticky sher…

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Chocolate Pudding for Christmas Pudding Haters

Christmas pudding isn’t for everyone and, even though I have faith in my pudding’s ability to convert, there’s no point nagging or, indeed, fighting against real, die-hard antipathies. Besides, I have…

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Mini Pavlovas

These may be mini pavlovas, but there's a big old batch of them, as this recipe comes from a time when my children were little and I would make these for the school summer bake sale. Obviously, you ca…

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Glitzy Chocolate Puddings

If you've got an electric whisk — either a hand one or a freestanding mixer — this is very low effort indeed, but it is a real showstopper. There's something quite extraordinary about the greedy silen…

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Holiday Hot Cake With Eggnog Cream

A warming, welcoming pud full of seasonal spice that can be thrown together in a matter of minutes. Truly a pudding to give thanks for. As for the eggnog cream, by all means add a grating of nutmeg if…

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Marshmallow Crispy Squares

You'd think this was designed to keep the children happy, and while that's OK with me, it is the adults who seem to find this particuarly irresistible. If I can find a tub of edible disco glitter in o…

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Cappuccino Pavlova

I am inordinately proud of this, and am not ashamed to say so. I have long been a pava-holic but this is my first venture into a fruit-free (though far from fruitless) version. The instant espresso po…

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Honey Pie

This is adapted from the Salty Honey Pie from the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book. I haven’t fiddled much with the ur-version — why mess with perfection? — but mine does have an easier-to-make, no…

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Chocolate Gingerbread

I’d never come across a chocolate gingerbread, and after making this one for the first time, I wondered why not. There’s something about the glottally thickening wodge of chocolate chip and cocoa that…

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Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova

You just cannot beat a pav in my book, and I glory in particular this dark beauty. The crisp and chewy chocolate meringue base, rich in cocoa and beaded nuggets of chopped plain chocolate, provides a…

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Christmas Chocolate Cookies

I love these dark, fat patties of chocolate shortbread exuberantly topped with festive sprinkles. There’s something so cheering about the sight of them, but they have more in their favour than looks:…

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Edible Christmas Tree Decorations

I couldn’t have Christmas without these, or at least, not happily. Rituals are essential to give us meaning, a sense of ceremony, and making these peppery, gingerbready edible decorations is how I hav…

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Star-Topped Mince Pies

This is the way I make my mince pies, and there is no changing me or them: they are small, to be popped straight into the mouth in one go; the pastry is plain, the better to contrast with the rich, fr…

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Christmas Morning Muffins

I have never quite understood how people can go in for vast, rich breakfasts on Christmas morning. I am hardly a modest eater by anyone's standards, but even I can't quite accommodate a platterful of…

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Vanilla Shortbread

Even if you have never baked anything in your life, you will be able to make these with untroubled ease. And I hate to say this — as someone with a once-serious Bahlsen habit — but they are so much be…

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Christmas Puddini Bonbons

These are delectable little bonbons made by mixing up cooked and cooled Christmas pudding (see Additional Information below), liquor, syrup and melted chocolate, rolling them into small balls, then dr…

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Chocolate Salame

I’ve encountered quite a few versions of chocolate salame in Italy — coming to the conclusion that it’s really an Italian version of our chocolate refrigerator cake — and although I am not normally a…

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Baklava

This is so temple-achingly sweet that one small marked-out diamond, or maybe two, is enough. But even so, I love its perfumed sugariness — as much as I love the tender, rose-shot green of its equally…

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I felt like I was transported somewhere else when I first ate these...

Rocky Road Crunch Bars

If ever there were questions raised about the need for Rich Tea biscuits, then Rocky Road would be all the answer required. A doddle to make, and easily transportable, a batch of these has saved me of…

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Hokey Pokey

Hokey pokey is a Cornish term for honeycomb. It is wonderful eaten in golden shards or crumbled into the best vanilla ice cream. It is also the perfect present to take to a dinner party. Better than f…

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Forgotten Cookies

These little cookies — described by one friend as tasting like a cookie within a cookie — are really a mixture between a meringue and a cookie. Hence they've become known at home, where they're immens…

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Vanilla Fudge

For some reason this is known in the Antipodes (and I got this recipe from a Kiwi) as Russian Fudge and, although I like this name better, I feel that it perhaps leads the rest of us to expect somethi…

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Linzer Cookies

In its wildest dreams, a jammy dodger could never aspire to the melting tenderness and celestial lightness of the Linzer cookie. The idea is the same: two biscuits, sandwiched together with jam, a hol…

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Luscious Vegan Gingerbread

I am preposterously proud of this squidgy gingerbread, and I don't mind who knows it. It's everything you want out of a gingerbread — sticky, spicy, deeply aromatic — and you would never miss the butt…

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Cheese Stars

This is a new variant of an old and easy party favourite. The dough is mixed up in the processor and rolls out easily. It may crack a bit for the first roll-out, but just resquidge together and roll o…

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Chocolate Chestnut Refrigerator Cake

This is another of my maternal grandmother's recipes. I've changed it a bit, not least substituting dark rum for her juice and zest of an orange and a slug or two of Grand Marnier. It's not that I did…

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Christmas Creme Brulee

I don’t need to tell you how beautiful this is: you can see. It’s extravagant, certainly, but it’s meant to be. And it feels like a treat, breaking through that gilt-tortoiseshell crust to the voluptu…

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Christmas Rocky Road

It’s not that I felt my usual Rocky Road Crunch Bars needed any improvement (though fiddling with recipes is one of life’s pleasures) but I thought they would benefit from some seasonal adjustment. So…

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Egg and Bacon Pie

This recipe (which started off as Boxing Day Pie) comes from Beryl Scoffield, the mother of one of my oldest friends, and a woman with a reputation for her pies. It’s wonderfully old-fashioned and com…

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Forgotten Pudding

There is a wonderful poetry to the name of this pudding which, thankfully, once eaten could never be forgotten. It's an old, old recipe rediscovered — I believe — by the late, great Richard Sax. Think…

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Girdlebuster Pie

I confess: it was the title that lured me. Tell me you don’t feel the same. I came across this in a recipe by Elinor Klivans, whom I often turn to for chocolatey solace, in her The Essential Chocolate…

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I made this and I busted my girdle.

Irish Cream Tiramisu

I've long been tinkering about with a bottle of Bailey's, seeing how it could best be called upon in the kitchen, and I think, with this, I've found it. An Italian friend of mine, who makes a killer t…

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Once you try this recipe you’ll never make tiramisu any other way. It is the best ever! People talk about it for years and years. Thank you.

Italian Christmas Pudding Cake

This recipe is my own but at the same time a conflation of a couple of Italian Christmas must-haves: the glorious, fruit-studded panettone and crema di mascarpone, which is best described as tiramisu…

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My Brandy Alexander Pie

This dessert has mixed parentage: I put a recipe for a Brandy Alexander cocktail into the Cookbook Corner section of the old website and almost immediately was tweeted about the wonderful creation tha…

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Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake

This is, for me, the quintessential chocolate cake: melting, luscious and mood-enhancingly good. A food technologist would explain this in terms of "mouthfeel" but I don't know quite how that makes me…

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I've made this cake many times and never a crumb has been left ! Everyone I made it for has said how lovely it is and is become my go to cake for all occasions ! Thank you Nigella for all your lovely recipes x

Panettone Stuffing Squares

I have written a recipe for panettone stuffing before: the sweet seasonal fruit bread was cubed, toasted and mixed with Italian sausage; this is very different, not least because I see it not as an ac…

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Parmesan Shortbreads

This is an Italian-inspired recipe that comes to me from Australia via Brazil. To explain: a Brazilian friend, and the best cook I know, Helio Fenerich made it for me, and I had to keep (rudely) askin…

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Sticky Toffee Pudding

There is very little that can compare with the glory of a sticky toffee pudding. My STP is altogether deeper and darker than the original version: it is still sweet, but the muscovado sugar and black…

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Sticky. Toffee. Pudding. Three of the greatest words in the English language. This is rich, indulgent and so comforting. The recipe makes a large amount of sauce but the leftovers were fantastic on my morning porridge!

Summer Pudding

It's true, I admit, that a dessert of compacted berries encased in bread is not an appealing proposition for those who haven't grown up on this seasonal treat, but all it takes is a mouthful to convin…

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Vanilla Layer Cake with Ermine Icing

This is the sort of cake you’d find in an old-fashioned diner of your dreams: a majestic creation, frosted with fluffy, super-sweet buttercream, just made to stand aloft and enticingly on the counter.…

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White Tiramisu

This pudding is always a success: it always works, and everyone always loves it. And I have the great Anna del Conte to thank for it. It is also the recipe that converted me to Tiramisu in the first p…

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No-Knead Black Bread

I love proper Eastern European black bread, but I must confess that this loaf, although it tastes the part, is hardly traditional, let alone authentic. For one thing, it’s made following the no-knead…

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