Lemon pavlova

I make this with a jar of shop-bought lemon curd, but obviously I wouldn’t stop you from making your own. Should you want, proceed as follows: whisk together 2 large eggs, the yolks from 2 further large eggs and 150g caster sugar in a heavy-based saucepan (off the heat). Add the finely grated zest and juice of 2 unwaxed lemons and 100g soft unsalted butter, cut into 1cm cubes or teaspooned out into similar-sized blobs, and put the pan over a medium heat, stirring constantly with a little flat whisk, until thickened. This will take around 5-7 minutes, but keep taking it off the heat – stirring or whisking all the while – at regular intervals during this time. When thickened, pour and scrape into a cold bowl and let it cool, stirring occasionally.

Serves 8–12
egg whites 6 (feel free to use egg whites from a carton, such as Two Chicks, if wished)
caster sugar 375g
cornflour 2½ tsp
unwaxed lemons 2
flaked almonds 50g
double cream 300ml
lemon curd 1 x 325g jar

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4 and line a baking tray with parchment.

Beat the egg whites until satiny peaks form, then beat in the sugar a spoonful at a time till the meringue is stiff and shiny.

Sprinkle the cornflour over the meringue, then grate in the zest – a fine microplane is best for this – of 1 lemon and add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice.

Gently fold until everything is thoroughly mixed in. Mound onto the lined baking tray in a fat circle approximately 23cm in diameter, smoothing the sides and the top with a knife or spatula.

Place in the oven, then immediately turn the temperature down to 150C/gas mark 2, and cook for 1 hour.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool, but don’t leave it anywhere cold as this will make it crack too quickly. If you think your kitchen is too cool, then leave the pavlova inside the oven with the door completely open. When you’re ready to eat, turn the pavlova onto a large flat plate or board with the underside uppermost – I do this before I sit down to the meal in question and let it stand till pudding time. This is so the tender marshmallow belly of the pav melds with the soft topping.

Toast the flaked almonds, by frying them in a dry pan over a medium to high heat until they have started to colour. Shake the pan at regular intervals and don’t let them burn. This doesn’t take more than a minute or so. When they’re done, remove to a cold plate so that they don’t carry on cooking.

Whip the cream until thick and airy but still with a soft voluptuousness about it, and set it aside for a mo.

Put the lemon curd into a bowl and beat it with a wooden spoon or spatula to loosen it a little. Taste the lemon curd (if it’s shop-bought) and add some lemon zest and a spritz of juice if it’s too sweet.

With a light hand, a glad heart and a spatula, spread the lemon curd on top of the meringue base. Now top with the whipped cream, peaking it rather as if it were a meringue topping. Sprinkle with the zest of the remaining lemon – you can grate this finely or coarsely as you wish – followed by the flaked almonds, and serve triumphantly.
From Simply Nigella (Chatto & Windus, £26). To order a copy for £20, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99

Chocolate Guinness cake

This cake is magnificent in its damp blackness. I can’t say that you can absolutely taste the stout in it, but there is certainly a resonant, ferrous tang which I happen to love. The best way of describing it is to say that it’s like gingerbread without the spices. There is enough sugar – a certain understatement here – to counter any potential bitterness of the Guinness, and although I’ve eaten versions of this made up like a chocolate sandwich cake, stuffed and slathered in a rich chocolate icing, I think that can take away from its dark majesty. Besides, I wanted to make a cream cheese frosting to echo the pale head that sits on top of a glass of stout. It’s unconventional to add cream but it makes it frothier and lighter which I regard as aesthetically and gastronomically desirable. But it is perfectly acceptable to leave the cake un-iced: in fact, it tastes gorgeous plain.

Makes about 12 slices
For the cake
Guinness 250ml
unsalted butter 250g
cocoa 75g
caster sugar 400g
sour cream 1 x 142ml pot
eggs 2
real vanilla extract 1 x 15ml tbsp
plain flour 275g
bicarbonate of soda 2½ tsp

For the topping
Philadelphia cream cheese 300g
icing sugar 150g
double or whipping cream 125ml

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.

Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter – in spoons or slices – and heat until the butter’s melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.

Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake. When the cake’s cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat them both together. Or do this in a processor, putting the unsieved icing sugar in first and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.

Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency (you may not need all the cream). Ice the top of the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.
From Feast (Chatto & Windus, £20). To order a copy for £20, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99

Brownies

I don’t understand why people don’t make brownies all the time – they’re so easy and so wonderful. Brownies are much quicker to make than a cake, and they look so beautiful piled up in a rough-and-tumble pyramid spiked with birthday candles. And I’d much rather eat a brownie than a piece of birthday cake any day; I think most people would.

Makes a maximum of 48
soft unsalted butter 375g
best-quality dark chocolate 375g
eggs 6 large
vanilla extract 1 x 15ml tbsp
caster sugar 500g
plain flour 225g
salt 1 tsp
chopped walnuts 300g
tin measuring approx 33 x 23 x 5½cm
birthday candles and holders if appropriate

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Line your brownie pan – I think it’s worth lining the sides as well as the base – with foil, parchment or Bake-O-Glide.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a large heavy-based pan. In a bowl or large wide-mouthed measuring jug, beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla. Measure the flour into another bowl and add the salt.

When the chocolate mixture has melted, let it cool a bit before beating in the eggs and sugar, and then the nuts and flour. Beat to combine smoothly and then scrape out of the saucepan into the lined pan.

Bake for about 25 minutes. When it’s ready, the top should be dried to a paler brown speckle, but the middle still dark and dense and gooey. And even with such a big batch you do need to keep alert, keep checking: the difference between gungy brownies and dry brownies is only a few minutes; remember that they will continue to cook as they cool.
From How to be a Domestic Goddess (Chatto & Windus, £22). To order a copy for £18.70, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99

London cheesecake

My paternal grandmother instructed me in the art of adding the final layer of sour cream, sugar and vanilla: and it’s true, it does complete it.

I cannot tell you how much the velvety smoothness is enhanced by cooking the cheesecake in the water bath. It’s not hard, though you really must wrap the tin twice in extra-strength tin foil. Once you’ve tried it this way, you won’t even consider cooking it any other.

Serves 8
For the base
digestive biscuits 150g
unsalted butter 75g, melted or very soft
cream cheese 600g
caster sugar 150g
eggs 3 large
egg yolks 3 large
vanilla extract 1½ x 15ml tbsp
lemon juice 1½ x 15ml tbsp
20cm springform tin
extra-strength tin foil

For the topping
sour cream 145ml tub
caster sugar 1 x 15ml tbsp
vanilla extract ½ tsp

Process the biscuits until they are like crumbs, then add the butter and pulse again. Line the bottom of the springform tin, pressing the biscuits in with your hands or the back of a spoon. Put the tin in the fridge to set, and preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.

Beat the cream cheese gently until it’s smooth, then add the sugar. Beat in the eggs and egg yolks, then finally the vanilla and lemon juice. Put the kettle on.

Line the outside of the chilled tin with strong foil so that it covers the bottom and sides in one large piece, and then do the same again and put it into a roasting dish. This will protect the cheesecake from the water as it is cooked in its water bath.

Pour the cream-cheese filling into the chilled biscuit base, and then pour hot water from the recently boiled kettle into the roasting tin around the cheesecake. It should come about halfway up; don’t overfill as it will be difficult to lift up the tin. Put it into the oven and cook for 50 minutes. It should feel set, but not rigidly so: you just need to feel confident that when you pour the sour cream over, it will sit on the surface and not sink in. Whisk together the sour cream, sugar and vanilla for the topping and pour over the cheesecake. Put it back in the oven for a further 10 minutes.

Take the roasting tin out of the oven, then gingerly remove the springform, unwrap it and stand it on a rack to cool. When it’s cooled down completely, put it in the fridge, removing it 20 minutes before eating to take the chill off. Unmould and when you cut into it, plunge a knife in hot water first.
From How to be a Domestic Goddess

Custard tart

I adore custard tart: I love its barely-vanilla-scented, nutmeggy softness, the silky texture of that buttermilk-coloured eggy cream, solidified just enough to be carved into trembling wedges on the plate. It isn’t hard to make, but I botch it often out of sheer clumsiness. But now I have learnt my lessons, and pass them on to you. One: pour the custard into the pastry case while the pastry case is in the oven, so that you don’t end up leaving a trail from kitchen counter to cooker, soaking the pastry case in the process. And two: don’t be so keen to use up every last scrap of that custard, filling the case right to the very brim so that it’s bound – as you knew it was – to spill, making it soggy and ruining the contrast between crisp crust and tender filling. If you can manage not to do both those things, then you can make a perfect custard pie. I won’t promise it’s an easy exercise, though.

If you want to eat it cold, this makes life easier as you can arrange to have free play with the oven the day before. But, at its best, the custard should still have a memory of heat about it.

If you can’t be bothered to make the pastry yourself you have a choice: either you can use bought shortcrust or don’t bother with a crust at all and make a baked custard. For a baked custard, make double quantities of custard, then pour it into a pie dish (with a capacity of just over 1 litre), stand the pie dish in a roasting tin filled with hot water and bake in a 150C/gas mark 2 oven for about 1 hour.

If you don’t keep vanilla sugar – although I do recommend it – then just add a few drops of real vanilla extract to the mixture. Of course you can always add an actual vanilla pod to the milk and cream when you warm them, but actually I don’t like baked custard with too much vanilla: I like the merest musky suggestion of it.

Serves 6
For the pastry – enough to line a deep flan or quiche case 20cm in diameter
plain flour, preferably Italian 00 120g
icing sugar 30g
butter 80g
egg yolk 1
pure vanilla extract ½ tsp
egg white 1 (leftover from yolk for custard) to seal

For the custard
eggs 3
egg yolk 1
vanilla sugar 2 x 15ml tbsp
single cream 300ml
milk 150ml
ground mace a pinch
freshly grated nutmeg

To make the pastry, sift the flour and icing sugar into a dish and add the cold butter, cut into small cubes. Put this dish, just as it is, in the deep-freeze for 10 minutes. In a small bowl beat the egg yolk with the vanilla extract, a tablespoon of iced water and a pinch of salt. Put this bowl in the fridge. When the 10 minutes are up, put the flour and butter in a processor with the double blade fitted or in a mixer with the flat paddle on slow and turn on. After barely a minute, the mixture will begin to resemble oatmeal or flattened breadcrumbs, and this is when you add the yolk mixture. Be prepared to add more iced water, drop by cautious drop, until you have a nearly coherent dough. Then scoop it out, still just crumbly, push it into a fat disc, cover with clingfilm and stick in the fridge for 20 minutes.

If you’re going to fill the pastry case with anything creamy or liquid (as you are here), you should blind-bake first. This simply means covering the pastry with greaseproof paper or foil, covering that with beans and baking it. The beans can be ceramic, especially bought for the purpose, or you can use any old pulses as long as you remember not to cook them later to eat by mistake.

I like to bake blind at a slightly higher temperature than many people. The drawback is that the pastry sides can burn, so I keep the edges covered with foil strips for the final bit of baking.

Take the pastry disc out of the fridge and unwrap it. Flour a work surface, put the pastry on it and sprinkle the pastry and the rolling pin with flour. An ordinary wooden rolling pin will do; those beautiful stainless steel ones sold in modish kitchen shops are not a good idea except for rolling out fondant icing, which needs heavy battering.

Roll out the pastry fairly thinly. I can’t see the point of giving measurements here since you are hardly going to get your ruler out to check, are you?

You can lift the pastry over to the flan tin by carrying it on the rolling pin or you can fold it in quarters and carry the pastry over, placing the corner of the dough in the centre of the ring and opening it out to cover. Or just lift it up. One of the benefits of pastry made by the blitz-freezing method is that it travels, as it handles, well.Now you have a choice. You can either line the tin with the pastry, letting it hang slightly over at the rim – use a metal flan ring with a removable bottom, not one of the ceramic flan dishes that make the soggiest pastry – and then roll the pin over the edges to cut off the pastry at the top, which looks neat and clean and smart. Or you can keep the overhang so that if it shrinks (which it can) as it cooks, you won’t find you’ve got a truncated and filling-leaking pastry case. (I never prick the base, as I think it just makes holes for the filling to seep through later.) Whichever you decide – and I veer towards the latter – put the pastry-lined tin back in the fridge for 20 minutes or longer indeed: you can make the pastry and line the flan ring the day before you bake it; if so, keep it covered with clingfilm.

When you want to bake, preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6, put in a baking sheet and line the pastry case with either crumpled greaseproof paper or tinfoil. Then fill with the beans of your choice and bake on the hot sheet for 15 minutes. Take out of the oven and remove the beans and paper or foil. Beat the egg white lightly, brush the bottom and sides of the cooked pastry case with it (the idea being to seal the pastry so the custard won’t make it soggy later on). Cut out a long strip or a couple of strips of foil and fold over the edges so they don’t burn, and put back in the oven for 5 minutes. Turn down the oven to 160C/gas mark 3.

For the custard, put the eggs, egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and whisk together. Warm the cream and milk in a pan with the mace and pour into the egg and sugar mixture. Stir to mix and then strain into the pastry case, as it sits in the pulled-out rack in the oven. Grate over some nutmeg. Push the shelf back in carefully but confidently (tense hesitation can be disastrous: far too jerky), shut the door and leave the custard pie in the oven to bake for about 45 minutes. Take a look though, after about 35 minutes. The custard, when it’s ready, should look more or less solid but still with a tremble at its centre.

Take out of the oven, grate some more nutmeg over and leave until it reaches tepid heaven.
From How to Eat (Chatto & Windus, £20). To order a copy for £15.19, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99

The boozy British trifle

I think this really says it all. I have written so many recipes for trifle, I scarcely dare reiterate my love for it, but this, perhaps the most traditional of my offerings, shows the sensational, time-honoured pud at its glorious, many-layered best: the jam-slashed and sherry-sodden sponge, the sharp fruity layer of flavour-oozing berries, the eggy custard and the whipped cream. On top, my favourite colour combination: the Victorian pink of crystallised rose petals with the tender green of chopped pistachios. Perfection.

Enough for 20 portions easily
For the custard
double cream 1 litre
egg yolks 8 (you could freeze the whites in an airtight freezer bag for up to 6 months)
eggs 2 whole
caster sugar 50g
vanilla extract 1 tsp

For the base
trifle sponges 2 packets (8 sponges in each packet)
strawberry or blackberry jam 1 x 340g jar
cream sherry 500ml
frozen summer fruits 2 x 380g packets, thawed
orange zest of 1
caster sugar 25g (not needed if using fresh fruits)

For the topping
double cream 500ml
pistachios 50g
crystallised rose petals (or crystallised violet petals) 1 x 15ml tbsp

Crystallised rose petals or violet petals are easy to find at specialist cake decoration stores or online.

To make the custard, heat the cream in a large, wide, heavy-based pan and while it’s heating, whisk the egg yolks, whole eggs and caster sugar in a bowl.

When the cream’s at boiling point – though don’t actually let it boil – take it off the heat and pour it over the eggs and sugar, whisking as you go.

Wash out the pan (boring but it does have to be done), then pour the uncooked custard back into it and return to the heat.

Cook over a medium heat (people will tell you it should be low heat but that is just too tedious for words), stirring all the time, until it has thickened. It must never boil!

After 10-15 minutes, it should be thick enough, so straightaway pour it into a cold, clean bowl, add the vanilla extract, and whisk a bit to help bring the temperature down.

Cover the very top of the custard, as well as the bowl, with clingfilm and leave to cool, while you start assembling your trifle.

Split the 16 trifle sponges in half and make into sandwiches with the jam. Squidge these into the base of your trifle bowl. A trifle bowl should, I feel, be glass so you can see the layers from the outside. The proportions vary and, since the point of a trifle is the layers, the dimensions of your bowl will deter- mine how these build up and the amount of sponge etc you will need.

Pour the sherry over the sponge sandwiches and let it soak in.

Now tumble in the thawed summer fruits, with a little of their liquid. (It might seem unseasonal to use “summer” fruits, but I love their tartness against the sweetness of the custard that will drape over them.) Then grate the zest of the orange over the fruit and sprinkle with the caster sugar; if you’re not using frozen fruit (which tends to be sour), don’t bother with the sugar.

When the custard’s cool, remove the clingfilm. Pour and scrape the custard on top of the berries. It will be soft-set: thickened but far from solid. Cover the bowl (not the custard this time) with some fresh clingfilm and refrigerate for at least half a day or up to 2 days – it’s this standing time that makes the difference.

When you are ready to serve, take the trifle out of the fridge to stand for about 1 hour. Whisk the cream until softly whipped. You don’t want it to merge with the custard, but nor do you want it stiffly peaking.

Remove the clingfilm from the trifle bowl and spread the cream on top of the custard with a rubber spatula.

Finely chop the pistachios, sprinkle over the top of the trifle and adorn with a few, beautiful crystallised rose petals (or crystallised violet petals, if you prefer).
From Nigella Christmas (Chatto & Windus, £20). To order a copy for £17, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99