This month's Daring Bakers challenge comes to you in stereo on Syrup&Tang. My Parisian correspondent, Harry, has taken up the Daring Bakers cause and baked his little heart out. Alas, he lacks a blog, so he's posting here alongside me. What did we make? Caramel Cake with Caramelised Butter Icing. If your favourite bloggers have mysteriously gone offline, it might be due to the sugar-induced coma of following the recipe to the letter.

Although most of the food I cook is quite definitely suitable for guests, there are one or two dishes which fall into a sort of 'private comfort' zone. People I've lived with have eaten them by force of commune, but I don't feel comfortable sharing these dishes with guests. I reveal one here and ask you to do the same…

It's pizza time in the Daring Bakers' Challenge. I love pizza. Too many think of it as a fundamentally unhealthy food to be banished from kitchen. Codswallop. Anyway, as I make pizza regularly, to do something novel required a little creativity… so I decided a 1980s flashback was in order.

I've been following the monthly Paper Chef event for quite a while now. You are given four primary ingredients with which to create a dish. This month's ingredients involved some bold flavours which could go in both savoury and sweet directions. In the preparation of my dish, I think I consumed enough beetroot to change my complexion!

At some point I'm going to have to stop saying oh-my-god another-month-has-passed! But it seems only days ago that I was munching on éclairs. Lo! today it's time for lavash crackers, thanks to the Daring Bakers. No buttercream. No ganache. No calories (almost).

Another month has flown by and it's time for the August Daring Bakers' Challenge. Pierre Hermé's chocolate éclairs were flavour of the month (from his Chocolate Desserts book with Dorie Greenspan). I love éclairs but rarely eat them. Often they're a bit rubbery after sitting too long in a cakeshop display, so the encouragement to do them at home was welcome! Making choux pastry isn't without its problems, however…

Although I bake a lot (and not just small almond meringue things), I was finding I wasn't trying enough new things from my piles of cookbooks. So I joined the Daring Bakers. Each month there's a new challenge which remains secret until the end of the month. Then, around the world, crazy bakers post pictures, text, recipes. So here's my first go at a layered cake.