Words Billie Brand
Photography Ellen Christina Hancock

When pastry chef Ravneet Gill was younger, she would have Maryland Cookies for breakfast. Her parents owned a corner shop in Southampton, where she would cherry-pick confectionery from its shelves. “I was always allowed chocolate. It was never a no,” she says. “I just loved sweet things.” Another favourite was black forest gateaux from a local cake store. “I would always beg my mum to take me there. She was an excellent cook – she’d make lots of spicy Indian food – but she couldn’t bake. I would just think, ‘I wish I could make dessert.’” Ravneet’s childhood craving was no phase: by adulthood, she was whipping up saccharine delights for St. John, Llewelyn’s and Wild by Tart. And today, her fingers are in many pies: she’s a judge on Junior Bake Off, an author of two pastry books, and the founder of food-community platform, Countertalk.

At Ravneet’s apartment in Chingford, east London, a warm sugary smell fills the air and an envy-inducing collection of cookbooks lines the shelves (read on to discover her most cherished titles). “We make desserts for the people we love” reads a poster framed on the wall of her pistachio-green kitchen. It’s taken from her sophomore book Sugar, I Love You (her first was The Pastry Chef’s Guide) and it’s aptly placed. Ravneet’s home is most alive, she says, when she’s feeding her closest friends and fellow foodies at lively dinner parties, with as much dancing as there is dining. If our afternoon is anything to go by, we bet they’re a riot. Over a slice of freshly baked cherry and ricotta cake, for which you can find the recipe below, Ravneet talks toothsome treats and tells us about her latest venture with Countertalk, called Spaces.

Ravneet: “This kitchen is designed for cooking for friends. I love to host here. I used to live in a tiny box room in Dalston and then in Brixton, where I never cooked because I was always working down the road at Llewelyn’s. It’s so nice to now have a place where I can have my friends round so they can eat my food. I have been here for nearly two years now. The kitchen is the same as it was when I moved in, except I painted the cupboards green. It was blue before, and I had to get rid of it. It was unbearable! I didn’t plan the green at all, I just liked the colour. I thought that it was a nice way to break up the open-plan room.

“From a functional viewpoint, my kitchen isn’t the best. I brought in the trolleys to provide extra space, but I still don’t feel like there is enough storage. I have tried to make it work as well as I can, but things are crammed into cupboards. I have to keep lots of baking moulds and tins in my parents shed, which is 15 minutes down the road. I actually have enough equipment to fill an entire restaurant kitchen. My dream kitchen would be 10 times as big as this. In fact, I would love to have two: one at home, which would be really basic but beautiful; then I would have one in an outhouse for work, with a pastry sheeter, massive mixers and a beautiful big oven.

“At the moment, I have tools here purely for recipe testing that I wouldn’t use for day-to-day cooking. Cooking and baking for pleasure is very different from doing it for work. Professional recipes, for instance, are a lot more regimented – you must have a scale. Plus, the disappointment when it doesn’t work… Oh my goodness! It’s twice as bad. In my recent book, it took me 44 times to get the chocolate cake right. And the cookies were more like 65. And so, while love my job, I find it more enjoyable cooking for friends. I like making something fun with the ingredients I have in the cupboards.

“My most cherished kitchen tools are my KitchenAid and my coffee machine. I have had my Kitchen Aid since I was 20 and I love it. With it, I learned to bake properly, having given things a go as a teenager. I bought it was the help of a friend, who worked at John Lewis – I begged him to let me use his discount so I could afford it. I remember making things like sabayon or pate à bombe, which you need a machine for. I studied at Le Cordon Bleu and you’re not allowed to use a machine there – you could look, but not touch. You’d have to whisk a génoise sponge by hand. I remember thinking, “I can’t wait to do this back home with my KitchenAid.”

“I’ve also completely fallen in love with my coffee machine. I couldn’t live without it and I miss it when I’m not with it. My order is an americano with a splash of milk.

“The cookbooks I refer to the most are ones about things I don’t know too much about. Currently, I love Rambutan by Cynthia Shanmugalingam. It’s an education on Sri Lanka: the food, the politics, the landscape – and it’s so thorough. I recommend it to anyone that wants to learn more about Sri Lanka. It’s an incredible place. I also love Mezcla by Ixtra Belfrage – it’s fantastic. She’s a very good cook.

“In general, desserts are not given enough credit in the food-writing world. It’s hard to get publishers to press go when you write a pastry book because desserts are difficult to get right at home. However, Last Bite by pastry chef Anna Higham is one of the best I have ever laid my eyes on. It’s stunning. People think pastry cheffing is just pastry-based dishes, but it’s not – it’s everything dessert-related. It’s also a lesson on things like British fruit and what you can make with them, for instance. Anna was a pastry chef at Lyle’s and The River Cafe, and when she tried to pitch her book, a lot of them said that it was too elevated. Actually, it’s a celebration of British produce. We should be shouting about things like this more.

“My approach to home cooking is not to follow recipes at all – unless I’m trying something from one of my cookbooks. But even then, I like to play around with it. I usually just make things based on what I’ve brought. I always buy ingredients based on what’s growing at the time. Cook seasonally is best the advice I can give to home cooks. I find that it’s less daunting to make things when you do, because seasonal ingredients tend to taste better. That’s something I only learned a few years ago, but when it clicked it made a big difference to my food.

“I cook cakes for pleasure whenever I have time. When I don’t do it for a while, I feel out of touch with who I am. With baking, my tip would be to buy some scales, follow the recipe, learn the basics – and then you can go wild.

“I do get a lot of takeaways because I don’t often have time to cook or clean – especially if I’m recipe testing. And I love eating out at restaurants. Brawn is one of my favourites and I love Maison Francois too. I’m obsessed with the service there and it’s just gorgeous to sit in. The dessert trolley is so good. I also like Quo Vadis – chef Jeremy Lee does the best puddings. He serves them with ice cream, custard and cream. Oklava, which is run by Selin Kiazim, is another good spot –it’s great for flatbreads. Selin is a phenomenal cook and she doesn’t get enough credit.

“Restaurants and the food industry are really important to me. My latest project, Countertalk Spaces, is all about connecting empty restaurant sites with people who want to host supper clubs or pop-up events. The aim is to bring revenue to empty restauants on the days they’re closed, but it also allows for more collaborations in the food industry. When I was running events back in my early days, I found it difficult to find all the right information about a venue – whether it had parking, fridge space or wifi, for example. Countertalk Spaces will make that all clear, so that communication is smoother and relationships can form more easily.

“At the weekend I like to spend time with my friends and family. On Fridays, I often host a night at home called Fight Club. It was called Friday Club, but my friends changed the name because of how much we argue. My door is always open and any of them can come. A lot of us have known each other since we were at school, but I don’t see them very often as my schedule is all over the place. So we made a rule that we try to keep Friday nights clear to hang out with each other.

“I’ll make a roast chicken with lots of different sides, or a big steak – usually something meaty, because I don’t eat a lot of it day to day. Fight Club is always a mess, in a good way. My friends love to come here and be outrageous. We usually play a lot of reggaeton or Afrobeat. The balcony doors will be open and the neighbours will tell us to turn the music down – it’s that type of Friday.

“Then on Sundays, I like to go and see my grandma, who lives with my parents in Gants Hill. She usually cooks us a vegetarian Indian dish. She’s messy in the kitchen. There will be dough on the door handles and stuff all over the floor… One of my favourite things she serves is paratha, which is an incredible, buttery and flaky flatbread she makes by mixing leftover dal and fenurgreek into dough. We have it with yoghurt.

“My favourite memories here are of throwing dinner parties. I have recently been hosting potlucks, which I love. I’ll invite a different group of foodies and everyone brings a dish. I did one with Lily Vanilli, Missy Flynn from Rita’s, Terri Mercieca from Happy Endings and Gurd Loyal, who is a cookery writer. It was so silly – completely mad. I made a massive roast chicken and some crispy potatoes dressed in shallots and parsley. Missy brought drinks and a Colin the Caterpillar, Lily brought a two-tier cake and Gurd came with dips. None of it worked together, but it was great.

“I did a really good one with Georgina Hayden, Melek Erdal and Meliz Berg. Georgina makes Cypriot food, Melek makes Kurdish and Meliz makes Turkish. Quite often, people bring something that’s special to them and their background. It’s a lot of fun.”

Ravneet’s recipe for cherry and ricotta cake

Makes a 20cm cake

140g unsalted butter
220g caster sugar
Zest of 1 unwaxed lemon or orange, finely grated
3 eggs
A pinch of fine salt
165g plain flour, plus ½ tbsp
2tsp baking powder
250g ricotta
2 tsp amaretto (optional)
300g pitted cherries
A handful of demerara sugar
½ orange, juiced (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line a 20cm cake tin with baking paper.

Beat the butter and sugar together with the zest until pale and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs one at a time, beating well between additions.

In another bowl, stir together the salt, flour and baking powder and add the mix to the batter. Scrape down the bowl once more and make sure it’s evenly mixed.

Add the ricotta and gently mix, then finally stir through the amaretto, if using. Pour into the prepared tin. Toss the cherries in the ½tbsp flour and dot them over the cake batter evenly.

Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. After 45 minutes, sprinkle over the demerara sugar to give it a nice crunch on top. At the end of the cooking time, check the cake is baked by inserting a skewer and making sure it comes out clean. Return it to the oven if not, until it does.

When the cake has cooled, warm the orange juice, if using, in a small pan and brush it over the give it a slight sheen. Enjoy!

This cake keeps for three days at room temperature in a sealed container.