Sometimes we have days – may there be as few as possible – when nothing works out. I can even burn the water for tea. I have two ways of dealing with such days. The first is to sit in a corner and wait it out – maybe it will sort itself out. I can only do this when I'm alone. When I have a hungry family I have to look for another way. My second way is to use only well-known recipes and stick to them irregardless of how well I know them. Any experiments in this situation will end in failure.

Last weekend was just difficult. My husband helped me prepare dinner, but the dessert was my problem alone. Following the rules, I used a recipe for napoleon that is so simple there is no way you could fail. I recommend it to anyone struggling with creative impotence or who likes glamourous results after not too much effort in the kitchen.

Ingredients (for 9 napoleons)
1 pack of chilled French pastry
500ml of milk
6 tablespoons of sugar
1 packet of powdered blancmange
50g of butter
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
1 tablespoons of potato flour
2 tablespoons of flour
caster sugar

The worst thing about my cranberry-apple cake is the way it looks. It didn't look impressive, but it was so yummy it disappeared from the baking pan before it had completely cooled down. My children said that it was a colourful apple pie, and it really was something like that. Apples with cinnamon are the basis of apple pie – one of my favourite cakes. However, the sour cranberries make it more fresh and interesting. The crumble topping was, for my son, the most important part of the cake. I had to drive him away, because otherwise the cake would have been deprived of its crunchy top.

Ingredients (18×26cm cake tin ):
dough
200g of flour
150g of butter
3 eggs
1 packet of powdered vanilla blancmange
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
200g of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
pinch of salt
fruit
250g of fresh cranberries
1 apple
3 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

Today when we think about breakfast with milk we can choose different kinds of flakes, granolas, muesli and milk which has sometimes never been anywhere near a cow. When I was a child, only semolina rolled oats and rice were on the menu. Semolina with milk – our hated everyday breakfast – means that I don't fancy using it in my kitchen. But, as they say, time is a great healer and semolina was on our table last weekend for dessert. The dessert had two colours: the first layer was vanilla, and the second was with cocoa. On the top I put some mousse with blueberries. The dessert was very grand and really very tasty.

Ingredients (for 4 people)
vanilla layer
50g of semolina
400ml of milk
3 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
cocoa layer
50g of semolina
400ml of milk
3 tablespoons of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of cocoa

One of our friends said recently that he doesn't cook for himself. He eats what his wife prepares: sometimes it is something healthy and other times something yummy. It was a joke, of course, because his wife cooks really well, but this sentence is now in our friendly canon of jokes.

Inspired by our talk about groats, flakes and healthy food, I prepared a dessert which combines excellent taste and healthy ingredients. The original recipe comes from the Lidl cookery book. I would like to share with you my version of this dish. I recommend Crème brûlée with millet groats to everybody who counts calories. It is mild, not too sweet, wonderfully creamy inside and with an incredible crunchy crust on top. That's why we love crème brûlée, don't we? I prepared a cranberry-orange preserve to offset the sweetness of the dessert. The whole dessert looked beautiful and tasted perfect.

Ingredients (for 4 people)
crème brûlée
100g of dry millet groats
350ml of almond milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
2-3 tablespoons of brown sugar (3 additional tablespoons for the sugar crust)
juice and skin from one orange

I feel cheated by the weather. I am still waiting for the golden Polish autumn, which is my favourite season, and I have misgivings that this year I will not get it at all. A few faint sunny moments can't replace the powerful autumn high, which warms the air and paints the trees golden and red. Instead we have a depressing, rainy low, changing the beautiful, rustling leaves into not so beautiful mud.

If the weather doesn't help us, we need to find another way. Good, fragrant coffee, meeting friends, a shopping spree – choose something for yourself. I have an offer for people who need good, sweet food to make their day. I invite you to enjoy a very chocolaty oreo cake. The recipe comes from www.kulinarnamaniusia.pl.

Ingredients (15cm cake tin):
dough
100 g of flour
1 egg
60g of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of natural yoghurt
40ml of oil
40ml of milk
80g of dark chocolate
1 teaspoon of baking powder
6 oreo cookies