“This fudge brownie is definitely for the adults, as it’s filled with rum-soaked raisins, prunes, dried figs and warming spices. It’s delicious any time of year but it does make for a classy Christmas treat. I like to keep it in the fridge so it’s chewy.” - Olivia Galletly

“I came up with this recipe when I was dreaming about Christmas ham one day. The glaze is sweet, sticky and ever so slightly bitter. Chicken legs, which comprise the thigh and drumstick, are the most flavourful part of the bird, and are made even better with a sweet glazed crispy skin.” - Olivia Galletly

"I first met Melanie Russo when she attended kinder with my daughter Pam, so I have known her a long time. Melanie’s big, bold cooking smacks you in the mouth. My father started working for the Russo brothers, Joe and Jack (distant cousins to Mel’s family), in the early 1950s. Joe, Jack and Diego bought a farm in Tyabb called Cumbrae…"

We used blueberries for this Blueberry, polenta and orange cake but you don’t have to; there are so many other ways to skin this particular cat. Depending on what’s in season, you could use rhubarb, for instance, with a little more sugar scattered over given that rhubarb is tart. Later in the summer, you could use slices of peaches, apricots or nectarines; pitted cherries would be good too.

“This tart-ified version of a carrot cake might not be an obvious classic, but it belongs in this chapter as a great foundational recipe for the tarts in our ‘Not Your Average Tarts’ chapter. The cream cheese glaze is what makes this one special – it’s designed to taste the same as a typical cream cheese frosting and to sit perfectly flat across the top of the tart…”

“There’s an excellent Sicilian pasticceria in my neighborhood in Brooklyn called Monteleone, owned by a man who was born and raised in Sicily. His pastries taste as authentic as any you’ll find in Sicily and, lucky for all of us, he makes cuccidati year-round, not just at Christmas time. (That’s when he makes a larger, ring-shaped version called buccellati, or bracelets.)…”

Succulent butterflied chicken… but make it flat! That’s what happens when you cook chicken under weights and no, you don't literally have to use bricks, although you could. We busted out cans of food from our pantry, totalling 3-4 kg in all. Cooking chicken under weights is a technique that gives you gorgeously juicy, crispy-skinned bird…

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…

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…

We were looking for a way to not just feature delicious hot smoked salmon, but blood oranges too, so a salad seemed logical. Throwing in a few beetroot, roasted to fully accentuate their sweet earthy notes, made sense, as did using some some avo because well, why not…

Uugghh. Cooking. If you’re thinking nope, nope and ABSOLUTELY nope, we feel you. There’s cricket to watch, there are lawns to neglect and there are beaches calling your name. Stuff the kitchen. In this golden week between Christmas and New Year…

Yeah. It’s actually Christmas time. So no need to panic or anything. How is it here already? What happened to 2024? Who pushed the accelerator button on the year? WDK. But one thing we do know is it’s not too late to make these sweet, citrus pickles to go with your…

Love jaffa vibes? Then get on this cake. It’s seriously delicious, with sour cream adding to the overall choc-orange-butter-eggs richness. And, as if 275g of sugar in the batter wasn’t enough, there’s a whole heap more lurking in the syrup plus in the glazed orange situation…

It’s a mystery to us how this favourite pudding even works; you make a batter, scatter the top with sugar and cocoa, pour boiling water over, bake, then the oozy stuff somehow ends up on the bottom, creating a gooey, thick sauce for the springy, cakey top…