Gail's Artisan Bakery Cookbook: the stunningly beautiful cookbook from the ever-popular neighbourhood bakery

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Stir in, then strain in the milk and stir together to make a soft dough which comes away from the edge of the bowl. Stir carefully until melted and combined, remove the bowl from the pan and beat in the cocoa powder. I might be an expert in making a baker’s dozen of loaves, but when I went to bake just one it was a total failure. Scatter the pecan halves generously across the surface, and bake for anything between 15 and 30 minutes.

Stir the eggs into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the flour, ensuring it’s completely combined to give a smooth, glossy batter. Sweet buns are best eaten warm from the oven, which means that, unless you're lucky enough to live near a Nordic bakery, they're definitely worth a go at home.

As the milk should be scalded before use, not just to activate the yeast but to give, as Johansen explains, a softer result, this seems a wise move to give greater depth of flavour. It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times. Prince uses a flour-thickened vanilla custard, which is decadently rich, but not traditional enough for my purpose. It turns out there’s nothing like a mediocre oven and a broken spatula to check that a recipe really works. Our cookbook isn’t about following a recipe for the perfect loaf or cake, it’s about unleashing the creativity within each of us as a home baker, in the comfort of our own homes and in the company of good friends and family.

They're easy to pull apart too, although if you find it difficult, you could always just eat the whole thing yourself.However, I bite the bullet and get on with it (a process which takes most of the morning, and involves rolling out some recalcitrantly springy dough until it's a metre long, doing some fancy folding, pressing an enormous slab of butter into it, then repeating several times until my arms ache with the effort). Lepard uses a lot more liquid than the others for a very soft dough – his rolls are wonderfully fluffy and handsomely risen, but too light inside, despite the chewy crust; they almost melt in my mouth. Then, once we’d got our recipes right, we insisted on testing them all with the most commonplace equipment we could get hold of. Half-Norwegian and all-round Scandinavian food expert Signe Johansen uses spelt flour in the recipe in her Scandilicious Baking book, explaining elsewhere that she finds this ancient grain "more digestible" than wheat. It's a bit leftfield though; Johansen's salt gives almost the same effect, though I don't think you need the vanilla-infused stuff she uses.

Tip on to a lightly oiled work surface (you don't want to add more flour to the mixture) and knead for five minutes – it will be very soft at first, but persevere.Leave the brownie to cool in its tin, then wrap the tin in cling film and chill overnight before cutting and devouring.

Using half plain spelt and half wholemeal spelt gives her buns a lovely nutty flavour, but my testers find them "much too heavy". Only Prince and Lepard add anything else – vanilla and lemon zest respectively – but I don't want anything to distract from that gorgeous aromatic flavour. Sprinkling it on top of the butter, as Lepard and Gail's suggest, rather than mixing it all together, means that the filling seems to stay put better during baking. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. I am tempted by Lepard's clever Ryvita crumb mixture which, despite my scepticism, adds a lovely savoury tang to contrast with all that rich sugar.Waking up early, going to say hello to my doughs and sourdough starters, firing up the ovens before other people’s days have even begun… This is my idea of heaven.