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Lebkuchen - soft, honeyed cookies, similar to gingerbreads. Lebkuchen are of German provenance, invented by Franciscan monks in the 13th century.
Lemon and almond teacakes from Ottolenghi are really mini ring cakes or individual doughnut cakes but so delicious you can call them anything you like, it won’t matter.
Lemon and blueberry flapjacks, easy to make and much healthier than off-the-shelf bars, naturally flavoured with lemon juice and zest, with freeze-dried blueberries.
Andalusia, lemon and chocolate torte is the ultimate chocolate experience. A challenging, but possible to replicate Parisian confection from La Maison Du Chocolat.
Lemon and poppy seed biscuits, zesty and crunchy and not too sweet, are super easy to make without rolling out the dough. And most importantly, they are perfectly dunkable.
Lemon drizzle cake with poppy seeds. The kind of cake that can make you hum when eating it. It’s the one-slice-is-never-enough cake. It’s the how-come-there’s-none-left? kind of cake. And it’s easy, easy-peasy, even my nephew could whip it up.
Lemon whoopie pies with vanilla buttercream – the classic whoopie pies invented in New England, remade in old England with a recipe from an Aussie. Those cookies travel, eh?
Lemon butter cake, soft and spongy, made with condensed milk and flavoured with lemon zest. I love this recipe: it calls for 125g condensed milk which is about two thirds of a tin. And what with the remaining milk, you don’t want to waste it, do you? And the cake is quite nice too.
Lemon cream cheese cookies, soft and chewy, delicate and sweet, with a touch of lemon icing. Cream cheese is a wonderful baking ingredient.
Pound cake with lemon syrup drizzle and light icing glaze. This was a super-disappearing cake – only a few crumbs were left by Sunday afternoon.
Lemon polenta cake, tender and not too sweet; wonderfully crunchy on the bite. It’s gluten free, easy to whip up and it looks like a round of delicious sunshine on the plate.
Lemon posset, the easiest and the loveliest dessert, served with crunchy biscuits. Posset in medieval times was a spiced, rich milky-wine concoction, served probably more often as a remedy than a dessert. They did mix their drinks in the olden days didn’t they?
Lemon ricotta cake Italian style. This is a very good baked cheesecake, not overly cheesy and not too sweet. I’ll say whack in even more lemon – it doesn’t come through that much.
Condensed milk cake with vibrant lime flavour: easy, tender and buttery like a good pound cake. You can put that tin from the back of the cupboard to good use!
Lime marble cake with lime syrup drizzle. Limes both smell and taste gorgeous. The best bit in making this cake was grating the lime zest. Well – almost the best bit. Eating it isn’t bad either.
Lime yoghurt pistachio cake with lime and rosewater syrup drizzled all over it: I swear there isn't a better cake made with yoghurt. Or lime. Or pistachios.
Linzer torte, hazelnut shortcrust tart with raspberry filling. Linzer torte is the flagship Austrian tart/pie: my grandmother was brought up near Linz so it’s close to my heart. Hazelnuts are obligatory; toasting them isn’t, so if you can get hold of ready-ground nuts, I’ll forgive you.
Lumberjack date and apple cake with caramelised coconut topping. Try as I might, I can’t trace the origin of lumberjack cake or why it is called thus.
Mouchous, traditional macarons basques, easier to make than the Parisian variety but just as delicious though presented individually and quite rustic compared to Paris macarons.
Authentic French almond macarons are very expensive, but you can make them at home. With dark chocolate ganache and lemon curd filling, they will be the most exquisite dessert you can possibly make.
Classic French madeleines, buttery and melting. The cookie is lovely – and don’t listen to the evil people who tell you it’s all right to make madeleines with whole eggs.
Malva pudding is a South African baked dessert, traditionally served at Christmas. It’s a soft cake flavoured with apricot jam and drenched in vanilla cream sauce.
Smooth mango ice cream without eggs, churned in an ice cream maker. Make sure the fruit is as ripe as it can be; apart from the insufficient sweetness, unripe mango smells a bit off-putting.
Maple and pecan sticky buns, baked upside down, flavoured with cinnamon and cardamom. It's a rich and sticky, sweet and spicy bliss, best enjoyed warm!
Maple shortbread bars with almonds and pistachios. I like nuts but pecans and walnuts are probably my least favourites so I replaced them with what I like best: almonds and pistachios.
Marshmallow brownie is a fudgy and gooey brownie from Salt & Straw ice cream makers, with marshmallow made from scratch or, more sensibly, shop-bought Marshmallow Fluff.
Marzipan buns flavoured with cinnamon and cardamom. Homemade marzipan fills these soft sweet buns baked in a muffin tin. These are perfect breakfast buns!
Marzipan and shortbread biscuit chocolate coated bars, made from scratch. Like Twix, only better; like Ritter Sport’s all best bars combined into one.
Danish marzipan kringle, the perfect cake for festive times is easier to bake than most Christmas breads and it is insanely delicious. Especially with homemade marzipan remonce (filling).
Marzipan loaf cake based on Nigella Lawson’s recipe, using homemade marzipan. That’s a simple plain cake with marzipan in the mix but there’s nothing plain about the way it tastes.
Marzipan truffles, chocolate covered balls of homemade marzipan, and the chocolate is also homemade! Vegan, easy and utterly delicious.
Mascarpone blueberry cake, rich and velvety with a tangy flavour from the blueberries. Adding mascarpone to the cake mix makes it rich, moist and tender and no, it doesn't taste like a cheesecake!
Mascarpone sorbet with lemon flavour inspired by a River Café recipe is smooth, creamy and unbelievably refreshing. This is a no-churn recipe.
Matcha (green tea) sponge cake with lemon and bay leaf scented whipped cream frosting. It’s a beautiful dessert, beautifully simple to make (but nobody will believe you how easy it is).
Green tea (matcha) and white chocolate flavoured ice cream, inspired by base ice cream mix recipe by Heston Blumenthal. No egg custard in the base but only double cream and milk, it's a simple recipe for the softest, creamiest ice cream churned in and ice cream maker.
Mini meringue kisses with chocolate ganache filling. Pretty pink coloured meringue drops, filled with the nicest white and dark chocolate ganache.
Metre-long cake, Polish metrowiec, is a two-tone plain and chocolate cake puzzle: sliced and then put together again! With jam! And chocolate glaze! Even though it’s a bit shorter than one metre.
Samin Nosrat’s midnight cake is one of the easiest and the nicest chocolate cakes in the world. I finish it with a dried mixed fruit salad topping for a citrusy tang.
Milk chocolate digestive biscuits, just like McVities, only better. Can you make the ultimate dunking biscuits at home? Here’s how, and it’s easy.
My recipe for mince pies has the best shortcrust pastry and the nicest mincemeat filling - easy to make too. They go back to the times of crusades and the Middle Eastern approach to sweet and savoury, mixing meat with spices, fruit and nuts.
Mini gateaux bretons, individual breton butter cakes with jam filling. Breton butter cakes are the wonderfully buttery, shortbread-like cakes from Brittany.
Mini cranberry pies, shortcrust pastry made from scratch filled with cranberry butter instead of mincemeat. Mince pies? Make mine a cranberry this Christmas!
Mini pavlovas, homemade meringue nests with whipped cream and fruit toppings: passion fruit, pomegranate and raspberry. Simple and gorgeous, individual meringues are easier to bake than a big pavlova.
Mohnstollen is a stollen log with poppy seeds, traditionally baked in Germany, Poland (makowiec) and Austria for Christmas. Brioche-like Stollen dough is filled with sweet and spiced poppy seeds and rolled into a log.
Mokonuts’ cranberry, chocolate and rye cookies are a revelation. If you thought you knew all there was to know about cookies – you were wrong.
The best, darkest, gooey-est chocolate cake ever – so I’ve called it Morticia’s cake. A bit of effort involved, separating eggs and folding the batter carefully but the end product is pure Addams Family.
Muffins with orange curd and chocolate ganache filling. Muffin mix is dead simple, I’ve made this mix with blueberries, raspberries, chocolate, orange zest and it works. Orange curd was organic and not too sweet – what could go wrong?
Norwegian apple cake, eplekake, is plenty of apple slices on sponge batter enriched with milk. This recipe is from NY Times but cross-referenced with Norway!