Jamie's Christmas with Bells On

Griddle-pan waffles

Jamie: I'm a little bit in love with this. I was experimenting with different types of waffles, trying lots of ways of cooking them and looked at a griddle pan and thought... YES! And you know what, it works like a charm - beautifully golden, crisp waffles every time.

Serves 4 - 6

Prep 10 mins + 30 mins resting time
Cook 20 mins

• 2 large free-range eggs
• 300ml semi-skimmed milk
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 225g self-raising flour
• 2½ level tablespoons baking powder
• 100g unsalted butter, plus an extra knob

1. Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk with the milk. Add the salt, sift in the flour and baking powder then whisk together until fully combined. Melt the butter, allow it to cool slightly, then gradually stir it through the mixture. After this point, it's important not to stir the mixture any more and to leave it to rest for at least 30 minutes before cooking.

2. Pop your griddle pan on a high heat so it's screaming hot, add a small knob of butter, jiggle it all around the bars and as soon as it's melted scoop in your batter and spread it around to fill the pan. You can make smaller waffles, if you prefer, by dotting the mixture into the pan.

3. Lower the heat to medium, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until lightly golden on the bottom. Now, this bit's quite tricky so you need to be confident - flip the waffle over and continue to cook for another 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden and cooked through. Give the waffle an extra couple of minutes on each side to crisp up, then serve.

4. I've served mine on a board, drizzled with maple syrup and some delicious, molten hot chocolate, but you can serve your waffle with whatever you like from bacon, egg and maple syrup to berries and yoghurt, spinach and a poached egg, or just simply sprinkled with a little ground cinnamon.

Epic hot chocolate

Jamie: "This hot chocolate is off the scale. It's so simple to make and is much better than that shop-bought stuff you get, which is often full of rubbish and probably hasn't got much chocolate in it anyway. I don't want you to feel cheated, I want you to have the real thing... life's too short not to."

Serves 8 - 10

Prep 5 mins
Cook 10 mins

• 2 pints semi-skimmed milk

For the epic hot chocolate mix

• 2 tablespoons Horlicks
• 2 tablespoons cornflour
• 3 tablespoons icing sugar
• 4 tablespoons quality organic cocoa
• 100g quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely grated
• a pinch of ground cinnamon
• a pinch of sea salt

1. Pour the milk into a large pan, and bring almost to the boil over a medium heat.

2. Meanwhile, add all the chocolate mix ingredients to a large jar and give it a good shake to combine. You need around 10 heaped tablespoons of the chocolate mix for this amount of milk. Simply spoon the chocolate mix into the hot milk, give it a good whisk and leave to bubble away for a few minutes before serving. You're looking for that gorgeous, thick, almost claggy, knockout texture.