Easy recipes for any cook: from cheat's meals to cooking from scratch

Rusk recipes

All-bran rusks

55 minutes plus 8 hours or overnight drying out time

Apple recipes

Beetroot soup with burrata and apple-and-radish salsa

40 minutes

Citrus recipes

Pappardelle with duck ragu and green beans in a brown butter sauce

3 hours

Tomato-and-honey-glazed meatloaf

1 hour

Pasta with creamy pumpkin sauce and olives

20 minutes

Roast pumpkin with caper, garlic and green olive butter

40 minutes

Gnocchi recipes

Nutmeg and pumpkin gnocchi with Gorgonzola cream

1 14 hours

Cheese puff

45 minutes

Eclairs with lemon custard and caramelised white chocolate

Serves Makes 30 eclairs

Difficulty Easy

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cooking Time 1 hour 20 minutes

Ingredients

Lemon custard

250 ml milk
250 ml cream
1 t vanilla extract
6 free-range egg yolks
100 g caster sugar
30 g cornflour
1 lemon, zested

White chocolate

300 g good-quality white chocolate

Method

Make the éclairs according to this recipe.

To make the lemon custard, place the milk and cream in a saucepan and bring to the boil over a medium heat.

Place the vanilla extract, egg yolks, sugar, cornflour and lemon juice into a separate bowl and mix. Slowly add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring vigorously. Return to the heat and bring to a gentle boil, stirring until smooth and thick. Remove from the heat.

Cover the surface of the custard with clingwrap and allow to cool before placing into a piping bag.

To make the caramelised white chocolate, preheat the oven to 120°C. Break the chocolate into pieces, place on a baking tray and into the oven.

Stir the chocolate every 5 minutes until melted. Once melted, stir every 10 minutes until the chocolate begins to caramelise and darken in colour. Continue this process until the white chocolate is the colour of caramel. This should take 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Remove from the heat and reserve for topping the éclairs. If the chocolate sets before use, place the tray in the oven for 5 minutes.

To assemble, slice the éclairs in half, fill with lemon custard and top with the remaining halves. Spoon the caramelised white chocolate over each éclair and allow to set.

Cook’s note: If you like, make profiteroles rather than éclairs and fill with the lemon custard, omitting the caramelised white chocolate topping.

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Cheese puff

Eclairs with lemon custard and caramelised white chocolate

Eclairs with lemon custard and caramelised white chocolate

Ingredients

Method