My Top 20 Recipes of 2025

My Top 20 Recipes of 2025 – A virtual cookbook of my top recipes, as visited by you, during 2025. There’s something for everyone here.

Here we are in the last two days of 2025, which I may add, seemed to fly by towards the end of the year. I’ve delved into my dashboard statistics, and I am sharing my TOP TWENTY RECIPES, as chosen by you, all my readers.

We have pies, sandwiches, cakes, school dinner favourites, preserves and no-cook lunches – it’s a very eclectic mixture of recipes and recipe ideas, which I hope you will enjoy and feel inspired to make some of them.

Here’s to 2026, and a NEW YEAR which I hope will be happy, peaceful, healthy and kind to ALL of us, Cheers, Karen

My Top 20 Recipes of 2025 – The First 10 Recipes

1. School Dinner Cheese Flan

My School Dinner recipes have been very popular lately, and here’s the recipe for School Dinner Cheese Flan, which I promised to share. Also called Cheese & Egg Flan, or Cheese Pie, it has JUST four ingredients in it. Namely cheese, eggs, milk and pastry. I remember it well from my school days, when it was always served warm with chips and baked beans.

2. School Dinners Chocolate Concrete (Chocolate Crunch)

Yes, it’s the old school dinners pudding favourite, served with pink custard, which is actually pink blancmange. The recipe is from a friend’s mother, who used to be a school cook. However, I have had to reduce the quantities, as the original recipe was for 30 portions! I’ve adapted the recipe for School Dinners Chocolate Concrete (Chocolate Crunch) so it yields 12 slices, or squares.

3. The Queen’s Chocolate Biscuit Cake

My recipe today for The Queen’s Chocolate Biscuit Cake is a variation on one I have been making for years, without realising that it was Her Majesty the Queen’s favourite cake. It was a favourite for birthday parties and the cake tin, with my daughter taking a small square to school in her lunch box sometimes.

Apparently, Her Majesty is so fond of this recipe for The Queen’s Chocolate Biscuit Cake, that she has it daily in the afternoon with a cuppa, and will enjoy a slice every day until it is all gone. I love this idea that The Queen is a bit of a chocoholic, and enjoys a simple no-bake cake above other more complex cakes.

4. Traditional Homemade Pickled Onions

The recipe I am sharing today is very poignant, as it was my mum’s recipe for Traditional Homemade Pickled Onions, and she made a few jars every November for the Christmas tea table. Why only make these in November? Well, in the UK you start to see small “pickling onions” in the greengrocers and supermarkets from October onwards, and with a view to the Christmas buffet table, and that ubiquitous cheese board, now is the time to make these pickled onions so they have time to “mature” for 6 weeks. If you make them in the first week of November, they will be wonderfully mellow but still crisp and crunchy by the time the festive period starts in earnest.

5. Traditional British Ploughman’s Lunch

What can be more quintessentially British, than a Traditional British Ploughman’s Lunch. Beloved of Pubs across the nation, it’s one of my favourite lunches. A traditional Ploughman’s Lunch is more an assembly job than a recipe. It’s main components are cheese, crusty bread and butter, pickles, chutney and salad vegetables. It really is the most famous of pub lunches – simple and yet so satisfying, especially if taken with a pint of real ale or cider.

6. School Chocolate Sponge & Chocolate Custard

My recipe for School Chocolate Sponge & Chocolate Custard is a real blast from the past! It’s my version of a favourite school dinner’s pudding. Big squares of chocolate sponge cake, always baked in a big roasting tin, were served with lashings of chocolate custard. It was the best pudding ever on a wet, windy or cold school day, and the portions were always very generous too.

I’ve not shared a recipe for 24 portions (or more!) of School Chocolate Sponge & Chocolate Custard today, just 9 large squares for your dining pleasure! This is a delightfully rich and light chocolate cake and it reheats well in the microwave. You can serve it with Pink Custard if you like, but we prefer a double chocolate whammy.

7. Traditional Oxtail Stew

This recipe for Traditional Oxtail Stew is as old as the hills, as my mum and grandmother used to say. It’s a traditional British stew using a very cheap cut of beef, namely oxtail. Oxtail has become very popular again recently, after languishing for a while at the bottom of the butcher’s list. Both my mum and both grandmother’s used to use it a lot, as it was a cheap and cheerful cut of meat, although classed as offal.

Oxtail needs a little care when preparing and takes a long time to cook, in order to render it tender, but this is more than made up for in it’s flavour, which is wonderfully rich and beefy. Today’s recipe for Traditional Oxtail Stew uses wine as the main cooking liquor, but beer is also great, especially dark beers, stouts and porters such as Guinness.

8. Ninja Pressure Cooker Ham (Gammon)

My recipe for Ninja Pressure Cooker Ham (Gammon) is a fabulous way to cook a large joint of ham, or gammon, in just 1 hour. Still meltingly tender and infused with aromatics, this method is not just quick, but it saves on energy costs too. You can cook this in a standard pressure cooker, as well as a Ninja Multi Cooker, or an Instant Pot Multi Cooker.

9. Old-Fashioned Tinned Salmon Sandwiches

My recipe today for Old-Fashioned Tinned Salmon Sandwiches is a family favourite, and one that my late parents and both sets of grandparents loved. These Old-Fashioned Tinned Salmon Sandwiches were made most Sundays for afternoon tea, or for the Sunday Tea Tray. They were special enough to grace the table at other occasions too, such as birthday parties, Christmas, Easter and when we had guests for Sunday tea.

10. Egg in a Cup

My recipe today for Egg in a Cup is a very poignant one, as my late mother used to cook this for me before I used to go to school. It would have been her 89th birthday on the 22nd October, and I have been thinking about her more than usual over the last week. Not that we knew this simple egg recipe as Egg in a Cup! It was always known as Buttered Boiled Eggs.

The Next 10 Recipes

11. Mums Two Ingredient Strawberry Mousse

This recipe for Mum’s Two Ingredient Strawberry Mousse is one of my favourite “frugal” retro recipes. Mum used to make this regularly for Sunday Tea, as well as for special occasions, such as Birthdays, Easter, Christmas and just because! Made with just two main ingredients, Evaporated Milk and Jelly, you can add lemon juice if you like a sharper flavour, and mum always added lemon juice to hers. If you don’t have any fresh lemons, then bottled lemon juice works just fine, and those little lemon shaped bottles of Jif Lemon Juice.

12. Easy Mincemeat Cake

Easy Mincemeat Cake is one I have been baking for many years, and my mum before me – it was my late father’s favourite cake. It also makes a fabulous last minute Christmas cake, and is quite frugal in costs too. You can still add marzipan and icing if you wish, and even “feed” it with brandy. Made with just mincemeat, flour, eggs, butter, mixed spice and freshly zested orange peel, it’s delightfully fruity and very moist.

I recommend using a good quality mincemeat, or even better, a homemade mincemeat for a better tasting cake. I have several mincemeat recipes on Lavender & Lovage, and I made this cake (as shown in the photos) with this recipe: BOOZY FAT-FREE MINCEMEAT.

13. Home away from Home: Betty’s Fat Rascals Recipe

My take on the famous Betty’s Fat Rascals; Fat Rascals are a cross between a bun and a scone, more like a rock cake, and are delicious when enjoyed with an afternoon cuppa. The origin of the name is unknown, but they are thought to have been made since the mid-19th Century under the name of Fat Rascals, although the original recipe is thought to be Elizabethan.

14. Sourdough Bread in the Ninja Foodi

This Sourdough Bread in the Ninja Foodi is baked in a multi-cooker; multi-cookers are known more generally as Instant Pots, Air Fryers, Crockpot or as in the case of mine, a Ninja Foodi. My model is the Ninja Foodi MAX 14-in-1 SmartLid Multi-Cooker 7.5L, and it has 14 amazing functions, as it’s name suggests. In an attempt to cut back on expensive energy costs, as usually this loaf takes 1 hour to bake in a very hot oven. I have exprimented with baking my usual Classic Sourdough Bread made Easy, but in my Ninja Foodi.

15. Old-Fashioned Malt Loaf

Old-Fashioned Malt Loaf is a huge favourite of mine. It’s based on an old BeRo recipe for sultana malt loaf, and this gorgeous, sticky, rich and fruity loaf gets better the longer you leave it.

I made a loaf at the weekend, and left it sitting in the pantry ready to receive copious amounts of butter for our “Clocks Back Sunday Tea Tray” supper, by the fireside.

16. Traditional Stottie Cake

Today’s recipe is for Traditional Stottie Cake. A rather plain and flat looking disc of bread, and yet to many people in the North East of England the Stottie Cake is an important and potent symbol of their identity and region. Stotties are the bread of my childhood, linked forever in my memory to my grandmother’s old stone cottage and warm, happy days sitting around a big old kitchen table with a flickering fire and the wind howling outside.

Stotties, as they are called in the plural, are born of thrift and frugality; at the end of a long day of baking, as most bread was made at home until fairly recently. I have shared my Nanny’s recipe for Stottie Cake (Stotty Cake) before on Lavender & Lovage, here: A Northumberland Cottage Kitchen Recipe: Stotty Cake (Stottie Cake) Today’s recipe is the same, but I have updated the photos, as well as adding some images of the North East of England, and an enhanced photo of my grandparent’s old cottage, as it was.

17. 1960’s Evaporated Milk Chocolate Cake

960’s Evaporated Milk Chocolate Cake is a much-loved family recipe from an old Be-Ro cookbook. It first appeared in edition 24 which was published in 1961. I have shared the original version of this cake before on Lavender & Lovage here: OLD-FASHIONED MILK CHOCOLATE CAKE.

However, the recipe I’m sharing today has been tweaked to make a larger cake, which serves 12 instead of 8, but still using the essential ingredient of evaporated milk. This 1960’s Evaporated Milk Chocolate Cake is more like a gateau, and is what we call “Your Sunday Best Chocolate Cake” in our household!

18. Cheese and Garlic Sourdough Bread

Cheese and Garlic Sourdough Bread: A delicious cheese and garlic sourdough bread . Makes the most amazing toast as well as sandwiches. This bread is made using my master sourdough bread recipe. I prove my dough (in a banneton) overnight in a cool place, which results in the bread structure having more of those sought after “sourdough holes”, with a chewy and pleasantly sour texture and taste as well as a fabulous crusty crust. Proving the bread overnight means it’s ready for early morning baking too, so there will be a freshly bakes sourdough loaf for breakfast.

19. Manor House Cake

Today’s recipe for Manor House Cake is adapted from a recipe I found in an old notebook, that was in a box of old, vintage books I bought many years ago. It appears the notebook was started in 1919, and the last entry was in 1936. The notes that accompanied the recipe for Manor House Cake suggested that it was a “plain cake” that might have been served for elevenses or high tea in a “house of great standing”.

There is a commercial cake of this name, that was made famous by the British cake company that boasts that it “makes exceedingly good cakes”. But, I often find that it is a bit too dry and very crumbly, and, sadly is has palm oil in it too. A homemade version of the famous Manor House Cake is all together a different matter; the cake IS crumbly, but isn’t dry at all, and has a few more sultanas than the commercial brand.

20. Easy Three Ingredient Sourdough Crumpets

These Easy Three Ingredient Sourdough Crumpets are exactly that, easy to make and even easier to eat! They really do have only three main ingredients in them, namely sourdough starter or sourdough discard, plain (all purpose) flour and baking powder. Add a smidgen of salt and some filtered water, and you have all you need to make soft, springy, chewy and utterly delicious fresh crumpets. 

I have have finally perfected the recipe after many months of tweaking and baking, and I am thrilled with the results, as these crumpets are so much better than commercially made crumpets and, you can make them at home with very little equipment needed, just a large non-stick frying pan and some crumpet rings. You can make these sourdough crumpets with freshly fed and bubbly sourdough starter, as I tend to do, or with any sourdough discard.

My Top Twelve Recipes of 2024

See last year’s TOP recipes HERE There’s not much difference to 2025!

Happy New Year and Happy New Recipes coming Soon

Watch out for lots more new recipes coming soon, as well as exciting travel and gardening posts too.

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