How does domestic goddess and cookbook writer Nigella Lawson entertain over Easter? She shares 10 simple festive suggestions.

1. Fish on Good Friday

Lawson says she doesn't strictly subscribe to the fish on Good Friday tradition, however she has been known to serve a kedgeree-inspired fish risotto scattered with halved, boiled quail's eggs.

• Jill Dupleix's kedgeree recipe
• Recipes: Adam Liaw's five ways with fish

2. Easy-carve lamb roast

A butterflied leg of lamb is her pick for an Easter roast.

"I butterfly a leg of lamb, or I get the butcher to butterfly a leg of lamb, and I cook it with garlic, and anchovy and thyme."

Lawson says she prefers to roasts the lamb flat, rather than stuffing and rolling, as the meat is "incredibly easy" to carve and it doesn't take long to cook.

3. Make-ahead mash

Lawson recommends preparing a casserole dish of her make-ahead mash if you're having people over.

"It's mashed potato which has got some parmesan and sour cream in it… And then you make a sort of crumb with breadcrumbs and butter and more cheese and put that on top and then it goes all wonderful and golden [in the oven]. And it's certainly wonderful with those salty-sweet meat juices."

4. Simple side dish

Lawson unashamedly loves a frozen pea – fellow cookery writer Nigel Slater calls her the "Queen of the Frozen Pea". Bring a touch of the British spring to your table with a bowl of peas, perhaps flavoured with mustard, vermouth and bay leaf, a Lawson favourite.

5. Hot cross buns

If you're looking for something other than lamb this year, try poultry. Lawson has adapted her gingerbread stuffing recipe to use up hot cross bun crumbs, which she used to stuff a roast turkey. "Hot cross buns, when they get stale, they do make a really great stuffing."

As for her homemade buns, Lawson goes hard on the cardamom, "I love the spice-scentedness of them." Lawson skips the candied peel, and doesn't mind a "wholemeal-y" bun – "I don't like a hot cross bun to taste like a cake," she says.

Don't despair if your buns look ramshackle. "They don't have to look shop-bought – shop-bought ones often are too sweet, and they go too big and blousy, and they should be rather tightly woven and a small size." Lawson says that the denser the bun, the better it is for toasting.

Do newfangled Nutella-filled or choc-chip dotted buns get the Lawson tick of approval? "I see a place for the chocolate chip hot cross bun … actually when you toast [them], they do go quite nice and melty."

• Step-by-step: How to make hot cross buns
• Jeremy and Jane Strode's apricot and cardamom hot cross buns

6. Pastel eggs

"What I'm going to do as a little joke for Easter, I'm going to do my pink-pickled eggs [with beetroot], I think I have to, it's the time for eggs after all."

Tip: When dyeing hard-boiled eggs, Lawson recommends using a food colouring paste not liquid, for a more "intense" colour.

7. Easter egg nests

Lawson's Easter egg nest cake always makes an appearance.

"It's like a fallen chocolate cake, so those wonderful damp, flourless cakes. It has an almost dense, mousse-like quality, and then in the hollow – all those cakes, they rise and then as they cool they get a dip – I lightly whip some cream and I fold in some melted chocolate."

To finish, Lawson decorates the cake with pastel sugar-coated chocolate eggs. Bonus: It's gluten-free.

• Try Stephanie Alexander's flourless chocolate cake recipe
• Decorating inspiration: Adam Liaw's chocolate and almond Easter cake

For the children: "I used to make nests out of [shredded wheat], but in chocolate. Like those rice crispies things [chocolate crackles], but I used to make little baby nests with eggs on for them."

• Recipe: Nest cupcakes
• Recipe: Chocolate crackles

8. Lemon pavlova

"There's nothing wrong in having a choice of two desserts," Lawson says.

"It doesn't matter if it's autumn because it doesn't need any fruit – a lemon pavlova for pudding would be nice."

Other seasonal desserts could include Lawson's festive cider and five-spice, or pumpkin bundt cakes.

• Try Karen Martini's lemon curd pavlova recipe (pictured above)

9. Choc-chip cookie dough pots

"I know they're not eggs, but the one recipe that could really make an appearance over Easter would be my chocolate chip cookie dough pots.

"In a sense you're making chocolate chip cookies, but you cook them in little ramekins or cups, so that you don't have to cook them enough to hold their shape and they're all gooey in the middle."

• Try EARL Canteen's choc chip cookie recipe

10. Traditional English cake

"I also like a simnel cake - that's very old fashioned.

"It's slightly lighter than a Christmas fruit cake, but really it is essentially a fruit cake, you've just got marzipan on top with the 11 marzipan balls around it [representing the apostles]. I quite like getting a blowtorch out and scorching it."

If you don't want to go to the trouble of icing the fruit cake, Lawson suggests serving a slice alongside a sharp Australian cheese.

• Traditional simnel cake recipe
• Dan Lepard's stone fruit simnel cake (video above)

Nigella Lawson's latest cookbook Simply Nigella is published by Chatto & Windus, $59.99.