Claire Ptak’s secret ingredient: vanilla vodka

London’s star baker has a thrifty way to add a luxury fragrance and flavour to cakes, cookies, ice-cream – everything!

Hot cross bun cookies, chocolate toasties and cake: Claire Ptak’s Easter baking recipes

From traditional Sicilian cassata to comforting cake and custard, these Easter bakes are full of candied citrus, spices … and chocolate

Chocolate eggs, lamb wellington, broad bean tagliatelle – the 20 best recipes for Easter

From a lunch of Nigel Slater’s roast chicken or Meera Sodha’s lamb curry, to sweet specialities like Claire Ptak’s chocolate and bay tarts or Ben Tish’s citrus sweet bread, we choose our favourite Easter dishes

Milk chocolate and bay leaf tarts recipe by Claire Ptak

A truffle-like filling with a crisp cookie crust, plus bay leaves to add a layer of complexity, results in a special chocolate treat

Banana cocoa cake with whipped ganache and pecan brittle recipe by Helen Goh

Unadorned, this cake is light enough for a lunchbox treat, but the ganache and pecan brittle makes it worthy of a celebration

Ben Tish’s recipe for Sicilian lemon and orange sweet bread

Packed with citrus flavours, nuts and cinnamon, this Sicilian version of a traditional Italian Easter cake will bring rays of sunshine

Cédric Grolet at the Berkeley, London W1: ‘Spiking the blood sugar levels of Europe’ – restaurant review

A Frenchman wading into Britain’s fractious ‘jam or cream first?’ scone debate is either foolhardy or admirable

Anja Dunk’s Christmas cakes, bakes and chocolate recipes

Spiced biscuits, marzipan cake and Flammkuchen – a celebration of festive German baking

Tarunima Sinha’s recipes for cakes, bakes and your new best friands

Sweet, salty, savoury and beautifully balanced recipes, perfect for the start of autumn

Save the last slice for me: four cakes for Easter

Brilliant recipes for passion fruit panna cotta sponge, coconut tres leches, banana-cocoa and pecan brittle – and a chocolate mousse gateau

Benjamina Ebuehi’s luxurious Christmas bakes and cakes

Almond cinnamon cake, sage and onion twists, mulled wine tarte tatin – recipes inspired by the scents of the season

Why biscuits will see us through the good times and the bad

A person’s choice of biscuit can say a lot about character. Pass me another Jammie Dodger…

Nadiya Hussain: ‘I want to blend in. But the truth is, I’m never going to blend in’

Five years after winning Bake Off, she’d love to just talk about baking and cookbooks. But then there’s diversity in TV, mental health, the pandemic…

Family cooking under coronavirus: ‘I’ve become a chef with two grumpy regular customers’

Cooking and clearing up has been relentless – and that’s without adding a special birthday cake to my range of signature dishes

Easter taste test: hot cross buns, dark and milk eggs, and chocolate animals

Baker Dan Lepard tastes and rates high-street buns and chocolates, from traditionally spiced buns to shimmering caramel eggs and an Easter sloth