Miso brings a lovely rich, salty vibe to this apple crumble; it’s subtle though, so if you’re thinking ‘uh-oh, this sounds weird’, don’t fret. It actually works fabulously and we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how good this spin on a Kiwi classic tastes. Use white miso, as it’s the mildest of the whole bunch...

First up it’s the turn of Toulouse, France native Leslie Hottiaux, chef and owner of Auckland’s Apero Restaurant. Packed with hazelnuts and slathered in chocolate, her sensational Florentines are surprisingly simple to make…

We’re always looking for ways to level up our breakfast routine because it’s easy to get bored with toast and jam, no matter how artisanal and generally amazing they both are. In our quest for a More Exciting Breakfast, we came across a recipe for Morning Glory Muffins, invented in…

Lemon tart… but make it easy, we say! No tricky pastry to roll out and potentially shrink in the oven because you’ve over-handled it… no filling that requires culinary wizardry to get just right. As a bonus, the base here is gluten free, if that’s important to you, although any health-related claims stop well and truly there. No one is pretending…

OK, kids, let’s make choux pastry. It’s a weird beast for sure; you heat water and butter in a smallish saucepan JUST until it simmers and the butter has melted. Next, you dump in sifted flour, then stir like crazy over the heat until the mixture forms a cooked, smooth, floury ball that leaves the side of the pan…

When life gives you rum, you make a cake, no? Well, we do. We don’t touch rum ordinarily as it conjures unfortunate memories of scooping Dark ’n’ Stormies from a plastic bucketful (true story) in our Uni days. Which was not an occasion that crowned anyone with glory, and it’s a miracle we can still face anything flavoured ginger…

Did you know that when chefs in NZ discovered filo pastry, sometime in the 1980s, they kind of lost their minds? It was the newest shiny thing in town and they used it in all kinds of ways, many of them completely strange. For example, there was a dish involving…

If you’re on the prowl for a weekend cooking project, how about making a pie? From scratch? Including pastry? And not just any old pie but a Canadian Christmas one. Meet tourtière, a trad dish from Quebec, whose name comes from the type of deep dish used to bake it…

This easy bread is a delish way to use up packet-ends and other odds and sods in your fridge. You know, the ones that are teetering on the cusp of their BBD but that you can’t bear to chuck out. And yes, we deliberately used the word ‘easy’ here; if you’ve read our…

Did we mention how it’s World Chocolate Day this month? There’s quite a bit happening in July actually, including Bastille Day, World Snake Day, World Emoji Day, etc. July 1st is International Joke Day, the 2nd is World UFO Day and the 3rd is International Drop A Rock Day. We don’t even know what that is…

Bonus recipe, people! As you can see, we really got into semolina this week. There are tons of version of this Middle Eastern/Turkish/Greek-style cake, some use coarse semolina, some a finer one or even a mixture of the two; others include some wheat flour in the mix…

Is it a cake? Is it a cheesecake? It’s both! Because, why not? Lemony, rich and creamy on top, and all buttery-cakeyness in the nether regions, this is where you get to have your cake and eat your cheesecake too. Delicious. And it’s pretty straightforward to make as well…

Yes, we know. Yeast. Y’all are terrified of it. No matter; we will keep rolling out the yeast-y recipes, to the tired tune of “working with yeast is not that hard.” Modern instant dried yeasts are foolproof, unless you throw boiling water over them in which case you’re totally cooked…

These sweets are fashioned after a popular Indian sweet called laddoo, also spelled laddu; associated with festivals and celebrations that are made from a variety of things. Including wheat flour, rice flour, besan (chickpea flour) , semolina and even puffed rice. They’re typically sweetened with jaggery, enriched with plenty of ghee…

It’s not terribly instagrammable. It doesn’t have sexy layers, frosting swirls, or drips of syrupy gorgeousness. It’s a bit plain. It's a seed cake and in decades past it was a favourite on the afternoon tea trolley; we find it darned delicious, in that rich, plain, buttery cake kind-of-a-way…

“The Turkish love pumpkin in desserts (either baked in its own juice with sugar or poached in syrup) and baklava are a legacy of the Ottoman palace kitchens. Baked in a round tray and sliced into wedges, havuç dilimi is one of our traditional baklava shapes and traditionally walnuts…

If our soup this week is virtuous and ‘everything good for you’, Berliners are virtually everything not good for you. White flour. Refined sugar. Jam. The cholesterol-y parts of an egg. Deep-fry oil. But we say ‘what EV-er’ to the nutrition police…

Rise and shine, breakfast freaks. We love our carbs and caffeine in the morning, and when it’s time to flip the script on the usual toast and jam, fluffy pancakes are pretty hard to beat. We like to kid ourselves these ones are a bit healthier than regular pancakes…

What if you could make a cake without the hassle of finding the exact right cake tin?? 'Spring form’ this… ‘bundt tin’ that… ‘square pan’ the other… pfftt. Sometimes it’s all too hard. At least it is in SOMEONE’S house, where the corner kitchen cupboard is the dark…

What’s cuter than a cupcake? A cupcake with a great gob of frosting piped on the top, that’s what. Anything with piping looks bougie, don’t you think? We love letting loose with a piping bag; it’s our happy place. And it’s arguably the most extra thing you can do because…