Recipes — The Boy Who Bakes (2024)

If you are reading this out of season and you cant find blood oranges, fear not you can happily whip this up with regular oranges but obviously the colour will be different. Regular oranges just don’t have the vibrance to create as dramatic a design so you might want to help the orange glaze a little with some colouring or if you want to replicate the pink hue, a little splash of pomegranate juice will give a very similar look.

Blood Orange White Chocolate Pound Cake
Serves 10

215g caster sugar
100g unsalted butter, room temperature
Zest of two blood oranges
2 large eggs
150g plain flour
65g ground almonds
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
65g white chocolate, melted and cooled
125ml double cream

Syrup
120ml blood orange juice
120g caster sugar

Glaze
2 tbsp blood orange juice
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
400-500g icing sugar

Lightly grease, and line with parchment, a deep 9-inch round cake pan. Preheat the oven to 180C / 160C Fan.

Place the butter, sugar and zest into a large bowl and using an electric mixer beat together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating in until fully combined before adding more. Mix in the cooled white chocolate until evenly combined. In another bowl mix together the flour, almonds, baking powder and salt. Starting and finishing with the flour mixture, add in three additions, alternating with the cream.

Scrape the finished batter into the prepared cake pan and gently smooth into an even layer. Bake in the preheated oven for about 45-50 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Pop the pan on a wire rack and allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto the rack to cool completely.

Whilst the cake is still warm make a syrup by heating the blood orange juice and sugar together in a small pan until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture just comes to a simmer. Brush the syrup all over the cake, doing so whilst the cake is still warm allows it to full soak into the cake.

Once the cake is fully cooled make the glaze. In one bowl mix together the blood orange juice and half the sugar mixing to form a thick but just pourable glaze. Do the same with the milk, vanilla and remaining sugar. You want the glazes to be thick enough that they will hold some definition when piped but loose enough that will spread together to form a uniform glaze. If you need a visual guide check out the video of the recipe on my Youtube channel.

Place each glaze into a piping bag and snip off the ends with a pair of scissors. Pipe alternate stripes of the glaze over the cake, allowing a little excess to drip down the sides. Set the cake aside for a couple hours to allow the glaze to set before serving.

There are few things with more inherent comfort for me than a cookie, be that a chocolate chip, an oatmeal raisin, a gingersnap, I don’t discriminate, all cookies are welcome in my kitchen. Maybe it’s a nostalgic thing, a throw back to childhood. Maybe it’s simply because they’re sweet. Or maybe it’s just because I love them so much that each one is a little bit of joy. I’m a fan of tricky recipes, I like the challenge, but sometimes simpler is better and with this recipe I cant think how you could dial it back any further, it really is a ridiculously easy recipe and it delivers way more in terms of flavour and texture than it should considering its merger ingredients and distinct lack of technique.

The recipe for these salted peanut butter cookies comes from the Brooklyn based bakery Ovenly, which I am sad to say I haven’t actually haven’t managed to visit yet. But these cookies have a life outside the bakery. On one of my recent trips to NYC, randomly filming an advert for Yahoo which somehow involved me talking to a cgi flamingo, I was wandering through the West Village and popped into Toby’s Estate for a coffee. At the counter they had this domed, crackly looking peanut butter cookie and in the moment it seemed like the exact thing I was craving without even realising it. It turned out to be the version from Ovenly and it was good, so good I bought a second and nibbled on it as I walked around the village in a jet lagged haze. When I looked into the recipe I found it hard to believe it was based on the classic three ingredient peanut butter cookie, made with just peanut butter, egg and sugar. That classic recipe is fine if a little boring and to be quite honest im not a complete lover of the texture.

Note about the salt. I posted a picture of some cookies recently and someone complained that they were sick of seeing cookies sprinkled with a little sea salt, calling it pretentious and without merit. Let me say this. Do Not Skip The Salt. Peanuts and salt are made to be together and the salt makes a big difference in the flavour. Think of eating blanched peanuts versus roasted salted ones. We all know which is better, so just add the salt.

Ovenly Salted Peanut Butter Cookies
Ever so slightly adapted from the ‘Ovenly’, by Agatha Kulaga & Erin Patinkin

Makes 12

335g (1 3/4 packed cup) light brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
450g (1 3/4 cups) smooth peanut butter
Flaked sea salt, for garnish

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

In a bowl vigorously whisk together the sugar and eggs until incorporated. Add the vanilla and whisk to combine. Switch to a wooden spoon and mix in the peanut butter until no streaks are visible. At this point I divert from the recipe in the book just a little. They suggest chilling the dough in the freezer after forming to help the cookie hold its shape. I find doing this step before scooping the cookies is better, because the dough firms up a little when cold and you’ll get that distinct look of the Ovenly cookie much easier when the dough is firmer. I tend to leave the dough in the fridge for an hour but I know Deb from Smitten Kitchen says a rest in the freezer for 15 mins works fine too (my freezer is tiny so the fridge is just more convenient for me). I have also made this dough and left in the fridge for a couple days and this works great too if you want to prepare ahead but bake the cookies fresh.

Use an ice cream scoop of spoons to form the dough into roughly 2 inch balls (using the scoop is how I do it and how you replicate the look of the bakery versions, you want a 2 ounce scoop) and place the cookies onto the prepared baking tray, about an inch or so apart from one another. They spread but just a little so they can be closer than regular cookies. Sprinkle each cookie with a little flaked sea salt.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20-22 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown around the edges but still a teensy bit paler in the centre. Transfer to a wire rack rack to cool completely before serving.

These cookies also keep incredibly well, I have had them up to five days after baking and they were still great.

Todays recipe is inspired by a classic Austrian dessert, the Linzer Torte. Traditionally made with a nut rich dough and a redcurrant jam this is a cookie based version using hazelnuts and raspberry jam. Whilst I associate this with Christmas they really do suit any time of year. As it is nearing valentines day I thought the cutout would be nice as a heart, a slight nod to romance. Obviously if your heart is black, or your just making them at some other time of year you can use any shape of small cookie cutter instead.

To assemble the cookies place a teaspoon of raspberry jam onto each base cookie and spread slightly towards the edge. Dust all the top cookies with icing sugar then place one on top of each bottom cookie, sandwiching together. Once assembled the cookies are best on that day as the jam will eventually soften the cookies.

I hope you’ll indulge me in a little story before I get to the recipe, its a story of how the recipe came to be and why it means so much more to me than any other. I often talk about the way a recipe can help remind you of a time or a place and can connect you to people you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s why I think food is more than the sum of its simple parts. I make this recipe a lot, more than any other and each and every time I open the tin of golden syrup, every time I smell the cake coming out of the oven, I am taken back to when I am still a toddler, just 3 years old. I’m in my Uncles house, in my Nanna’s room and my twin brother and I are sat on the bed, eating grapes with my Nanna. This memory probably isn’t real, just a fabrication built from stories I have heard my entire life but to me, it is as clear as any picture. This recipe was my Nannas, Jenny’s Gingerbread, and even though I never got to know her properly I have a connection with her through this cake.

Whilst my memories of her are few, I have in their place a lifetime of stories my family like to tell every time we are together. My mum seems to be the family keeper of stories and she loves nothing more that telling us stories of her life when she was younger, about her twin bothers when they were little, so many stories about her aunts and uncles and of course lots of stories about her mum, my Nanna. Because she passed away when I was very young, those stories have always allowed me to feel close to her and to feel a bond that might not exist otherwise. As a baker and someone whose life is remembered through a series of dishes the handwritten recipes she left behind are precious. She was the baker in our family and as the mother to three children she had a lot of mouths to feed. The story goes that every week this gingerbread would be baked and it would slowly be eaten as the week went by, with another ready to take its place as the week came to a close.

It’s a cake that all her children and grandchildren associate closely with her, so much so that during a discussion about what makes a good nanna, a good grandmother, the only rule was this cake should make frequent appearances. This thought was taken further when it became part of my sisters pregnancy announcement. When the time came to tell our mum that she was going to become a grandmother for the first time, she didn’t simply tell her, she gave her a tin of this gingerbread and told her she’d be needing this soon. It may have taken my mum a minute or two to understand what she meant but that obviously joyous occasion has managed to put even more importance onto this recipe for us as a family.

For me personally it is a connection to my wonderful mum and to a Nanna I didn’t really get to know, and I think of it as a way honouring her memory. Every time I make it I hope she would have been proud that I have taken her recipe and put it in the hands of people all over the world and that she would be happy that they enjoy it as much as we do.

A quick note about the recipe, this a slightly tweaked version from the one that was originally printed in my book The Boy Who Bakes, I have adapted it for a bundt pan, obviously something my Nanna never did but something that looks as special as this cake is to me.

My Nanna’s Gingerbread
340g plain flour
3 heaped tsp ground ginger
1 heaped tsp mixed spice (if making in the US pumpkin pie spice mix will work)
1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 large pinch cayenne pepper (I tend to go with about 1/2 tsp)
170g unsalted butter, diced
115g caster sugar
2 tbsp fine cut orange marmalade
340g golden syrup
2 tbsp chopped stem ginger
2 large eggs
210ml whole milk

Place all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and whisk together to combine. Place the butter, sugar, marmalade, golden syrup and stem ginger into a saucepan and cook over medium heat until everything has melted together and you have a smooth mixture. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before mixing in the milk, followed by the eggs. When combining the wet and dry ingredients do this for as short a time as possible, you’re not aiming for a completely smooth batter, the odd lump is fine. If you whisk the batter too much it can become a little tough, so ere on the side of caution. Pour the finished batter into the prepared bundt pan and place the pan onto a baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for about 45-50 minutes or until the cake springs back to a light touch or a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

When the cake comes out of the oven set the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning the bundt out onto the rack to cool. With bundt cakes I find the 10 minutes to be the sweet spot, if you try to turn the cake out any earlier it might break, as the structure of cakes aren’t fully set fresh from the oven. If you try to turn it out much later the sugars in the cake make the outside of the cake a little sticker mean the cake may stubbornly stick to the pan.

The next stage is totally optional and not something my family do when making this recipe, the cake is delicious as it is. If however you want to a little more you can add this simple lemon glaze. The recipe is a simple icing sugar glaze but by heating the lemon juice and icing sugar together, just until the mixture starts to bubble, when brushed on the cake it forms a thin fondant like glaze that crackles as its cut and creates a nice added level of texture as well as flavour. Brush the glaze onto the cake whilst still warm from the oven and once fully coated pop the cake back into the oven for a couple minutes. This will make the glaze set and turn slightly translucent.

As with all gingerbread cakes this bundt will be even better if you can resist cutting into it for a couple days, the flavours improve and the cake becomes a little sticker (this is more pronounced without the glaze) so hold back from trying it if you can. I wont blame you if the smell out of the oven is too much to resist though.