The most popular recipe we served up this year

A traditional Christmas cake “with a lovely golden crumb” is RNZ’s most-viewed recipe for 2025.

Sophie Gray’s Really Good Christmas Cake beat a 21-year-old Alison Holst recipe and one for curried sausages to the top spot among more than 3000 recipes on rnz.co.nz

Gray, the ‘Destitute Gourmet’ foodwriter who is also operations manager for the Good Works Trust Food Bank, discussed the recipe and the history of Christmas cake on RNZ’s Sunday Morning show with Stacey Morrison in late November.

She says the recipe was given to her by a friend and that she has used it for “years”.

“I don't know where this recipe actually even originated. And everybody makes their own little adjustments and adaptations. But I like this one because it's really easy to assemble and keeps really well.”

Gray’s cake is made to a “melt and mix” recipe and she says it’s sweet enough to not require icing, though she does include instructions on how to make a nutty toffee crust.

“Particularly for gifting or if you want a Christmas cake that really looks like a showstopper, the toffee nut crust looks amazing. It will break into toffee encrusted shards when you try and cut it, but that also is part of the joy.”

Dame Alison Holst’s Lemon Yoghurt Cake was the second most-viewed recipe. Holst shared this recipe during a regular on-air chat with Kim Hill in 2004, and it has been a favourite with RNZ audiences ever since.

That’s not surprising to son Simon, who worked with his mother on many cookbooks. “I’ve had lots of people tell me how much they love it [the lemon yoghurt cake], which is interesting because it’s not often that people specifically remember a recipe.”

The version on rnz.co.nz contains a cup of canola oil, but Holst says his mother also made it with half the amount of oil.

“Halving the oil doesn’t make that much difference to the cake at all,” he says. “I don’t think it keeps as long, but it’s not the sort of cake that you’d expect to keep anyway.”

Another Holst recipe, for Apple and Cinnamon Cake, also made the top 10.

A hearty winter recipe for Curried Sausages by Auckland foodwriter Kelly Gibney is the third-most viewed recipe.

Gibney says that initially she wasn't sure whether to share the recipe.

“It’s not the coolest or most innovative of dishes, but it is one I personally really love. It's so comforting and yum.”

Two of her other recipes – Red Lentil, Spinach and Tomato Dhal, and Creamy Leeks with Mushrooms and Butter Beans, took fourth and fifth place respectively.