Your top recipes of 2025, from Ouma innie air fryer to a Christmas cake you can make this weekend | Daily Maverick

Tony Jackman 2025-12-12T12:30:00.000Z

Six of our readers’ top 10 choices of the year were air fryer recipes, proof, if it were needed, that these kitchen countertop ovens are here to stay, and not the passing fad many predicted they would be.

You loved our air fryer recipes, and our Lekker Brekker Monday recipes make a good showing too. Readers also went mad for our Christmas cake, which, though it was best made in October and “fed” brandy once a week until Christmas, can be made now by those who missed that boat.

There are still just short of three weeks to go before the day, and your cake will be perfectly fine, if not quite as happy as those that have already been fed once a week since late October.

So, plan to make yours this weekend, and also try one of the popular potato recipes in our top 10 – because spuds are always a big feature in our readers’ cooking lives.

This recipe takes an old-fashioned chicken and vegetable bake out of the oven and puts it in the air fryer. It’s a satisfying family meal.

Oven-roasting a butternut has always been a good option, but any honest cook will admit that there have been times when it’s been left in the oven for too long and has dried up like an unloved old shoe.

So I decided to find a way to roast a large butternut in an air fryer and ensure that it is succulent, cooked all the way through, but still moist and caramelised.

Hang on to your rolling pin, tannie. The beloved comfort supper known as “ouma onder die kombers” (granny under the blanket) is adapted for an air fryer in this AirFryday recipe. Skande!

Fruit, nuts, spices and strong liquor – that’s the recipe for the kind of traditional Christmas cake that is often made two months in advance. But there’s no reason you can’t make it this weekend. It’s best to make a family occasion of it, creating memories along with a cake to look forward to.

This thrills me – one of my leg of lamb recipes as a readers’ favourite. A roast leg of lamb holds a special place in my family kitchen, very often redolent of garlic and a single herb. Often that herb was rosemary, but on a recent visit to my family in Cape Town, Grandad Tones made it with oregano instead.

This was a Lekker Brekker Monday recipe in January. Cheese, onion and bacon – that’s the perfect breakfast for me. The cheese and onion are inside, while the bacon is served on top.

When I wrote this recipe, I thought it was too simple – yes, here it is, one of our most popular recipes of the year. Shows how much I know.

As time moves on and the more I experiment in my air fryers, the more I learn. I don’t even think about a recipe any more, generally. I don’t measure anything. I don’t use much oil at all. Read on to find out what I’ve learnt about roasting spuds in that strange machine in your kitchen.

Yes, another potato recipe, and another air fryer recipe. Bacon makes everything seem better. Potatoes have that effect too. In this recipe we put them together and turn out what may be the most satisfying air fryer potato dish of them all.

The chicken schnitzel has defied fads and food crazes for decades, a hardy survivor of human whims and foibles. Now it has arrived in the age of the air fryer. DM