Here is a brilliant recipe for a delicious sort of crackery thing you can use as a base for any kind of canapé topping you like, but which can also be used as a healthy snack for the kids. Flora is rather keen on them. The honey makes them a little sweet so they can pass as a treat - bonus! It's gluten and dairy and egg free, and very quick and easy to make, too. Win, win, win, win. This is adapted from a recipe from the Waitrose Magazine, and it's perfect topped with a bit o

This cake is inspired (make that heavily inspired) by Nigella, Rick Stein and all the other chefs who offer a version of it. It's simple and pleasing so it appears often in baking books. This cake naturally uses olive oil and ground almonds where butter and flour would be. Mediterranean and middle eastern sweet dishes often work on this basis. I am always delighted when something is unintentionally free-from - no dodgy, contrived substitutes. It's very easy to make, and reall

I’m a big fan of Christmas, not least for the opportunity it affords me to bake for no other reason than it being a perfect time for baking, and while the shops are full of ridiculously tempting sweets and biscuits and chocolates (I’m looking at you, M&S ) I get a lot of satisfaction from making my own, and giving them as gifts, or reducing my junk food guilt by eating home-made junk. I confess, though, I do use supermarket own-brand, cheapo chocolate for these, because the f

I can’t understand why this dish isn’t ubiquitous. It’s so simple and so satisfying, and yet I have never come across it anywhere ever, except in a Nigella recipe book, but hers is stuffed with meat – the unhealthiest kind, so I’ve not been tempted to try it. Pizza Rustica is what a lot of my friends think of as my signature dish, because I used to make it very often – less so now because of the whole gluten and tentative dairy embargo, but it is no problem to make it gluten

I am always looking for ways to indulge my sweet tooth without eating unhealthy food - largely a thankless quest, so when I find something good I do tend to become rather zealous about it, and I would like to spread my recent zeal for making home-made chocolate and various treats. I was given this book for my birthday or Christmas last year, and I can’t remember who gave it to me, but I think it was my mum, or my sister, but neither of them can remember giving it to me. When