LYDIA GERRATT

The taste and baking aromas of apple strudel is my childhood. My mother, who originated from Montenegro, makes apple strudel in the Balkan style, we add walnuts and lemon zest, and she pairs it with sour English Bramley apples from her garden. Her apple strudel is a thing of beauty to look at and eat. As the Austro-Hungarian empire took over and settled into parts of the Balkans for hundreds of years, so too did many of their recipes. Strudel is a favourite across the forme

Gooey, chewy meringue, piled high with whipped cream and summer berries is the best sort of pudding to eat in the garden after a barbecue or picnic. You can use any summer berries or fruit you love. I used strawberries and raspberries because they are in season, super ripe and cheap. And blackberries because they grow for free in my garden, they're fat, juicy and tart. It’s nice to have a bit of sourness to counteract the sweet meringue. You can add some icing sugar (a sie

My mum has a Bramley apple tree in her garden, which means I get bags and bags of them. You can make this pie with any sort of cooking apple, like a Granny Smith, but I love the sourness of Bramley apples particularly when you drown them in sweet custard. You can use shop bought pastry, but if you have a bit of spare time one weekend, try making this pastry, I can’t tell you how much difference it makes to the finished pie, it really does taste a million times better. A fab

Rhubarb is the one vegetable that tells me spring is truly here. I have a crown growing in the back garden and every year, without fail, it sprouts out its long stems and I get a crop of fresh rhubarb. I make the crumble in a small pie dish, 20cms, so it all gets eaten in one go. I don’t like having lots of left over pudding sitting on the kitchen counter – it just means that I’m the one that can’t resist finishing it off and that’s another few pounds on my backside. A litt

I have a passion for walnut cakes. Not the ordinary ones, but the flourless, moist kind that taste overwhelming of walnuts and if they have a splash of rum, even better. I grew up eating walnut cake when I would go on holiday every summer to the former Yugoslavia with my sisters and brother to stay with my mum’s family. It didn’t matter if we were with our cousins in Zagreb, my grandfather on the Croatian coast or with my aunt in Montenegro there was always a little cake sh