I love a cake that feels a little bit special without needing to shout about it. This cardamom and vanilla sponge is exactly that sort of cake: fragrant, beautifully soft and delicately spiced, with the warmth of cardamom working alongside sweet vanilla to create a sponge that feels both comforting and a little bit sophisticated.

There’s something rather lovely about a frittata. It’s one of those dishes that feels equally at home on a kitchen table for a lazy weekend lunch as it does sliced up and served at a dinner party with a few good salads and a glass of something chilled. Simple, generous cooking that doesn’t need to shout about itself to be delicious.

There are few things better than a really good coffee, and in our house, a good coffee is almost always finished with a little dusting of chocolate powder. It’s a small thing, but somehow it makes the whole experience feel that bit more decadent.

It is one of my favourite breads to make for friends, dinner parties and clients because it feels a little bit special, but really it is one of the easier breads to make and bake. There is no complicated shaping, no fancy scoring and certainly no need to panic if it looks a little rustic. In fact, the more rustic it looks, the better.

This rosemary salt is one of my favourite ways to preserve that flavour. It takes minutes to make, needs just two ingredients and fills the kitchen with the most incredible smell as the rosemary is blitzed with the salt. The salt draws out all that lovely piney, herby flavour, while the food processor chops everything into a beautifully fine, aromatic seasoning.

At its heart, it’s a classic pound cake — a beautifully simple vanilla sponge, soft and buttery with that lovely close crumb that makes pound cake so wonderfully old-fashioned. But then things get a little more interesting. A generous layer of tart blackcurrant jam cuts through the sweetness, followed by a silky buttercream flavoured with rose water, earthy beetroot powder and my homemade rosemary salt.

For when you’ve got guests coming and absolutely no intention of standing over a bain-marie making zabaglione

Carrot and coriander soup is one of those things that makes an ordinary lunchtime feel like a proper little occasion. Here’s how to make it at home, using just a handful of simple ingredients.

Someone’s coming over for coffee? Make a cake. Sunday afternoon and there’s nothing particularly exciting happening? Make a cake. You’ve spotted a jar of raspberry jam in the cupboard and suddenly feel inspired? Definitely make a cake.

My Mum was always the Queen of cakes and she would make the most outrageous flavours, but Chocolate was something that became of interest later in life.

Pizza dough is one of those things that people seem to put on a pedestal, like it’s some sort of mystical, complicated craft that only works in a roaring wood-fired oven somewhere in Naples… but really, it’s just flour, water and a bit of patience.

Since I started my career in the culinary world, I found it baffling the amount of people that would refuse to make bread at home due to their perception of how long it takes to make a simple loaf. Let me show you the magic!

The dependable sort you can dress up with whatever you’ve got knocking about in the cupboard

This is one of those cakes that exists purely because bananas have a habit of getting forgotten.