With much of the UK spending the year at home, many turned to cooking and baking, with recipes for fluffy American pancakes, banana bread and Mary Berry’s scones the top three most popular BBC Food recipes of 2020.

Despite pancakes usually being associated with Shrove Tuesday, it wasn’t just in February that people were looking to get their pancake fix. With 3.5 million total UK unique browsers, the fluffy American pancakes recipe beat others to the top spot in nine months of last year. The only other recipes to hit the top spot were lockdown favourite - banana bread - in April, Mary Berry’s scones for VE Day in May and gingerbread men in December.

Baking proved a particularly popular activity during the various lockdowns across the nations, with banana bread, scones, shortbread, Victoria sandwich, chocolate chip cookies and banana cake all making the top ten most popular recipes in 2020.

Top ten most popular recipes in 2020

Fluffy American pancakes
Banana bread
Mary Berry’s scones
Shortbread
Pizza dough
Mary Berry’s easy Victoria sandwich
Yorkshire pudding
Basic buttercream icing
Easy chocolate chip cookies
Easiest ever banana cake

With 6.4 million unique UK browsers, Easter week was BBC Food’s busiest week. Christmas Eve marked the biggest day of the year, with 1.5 million unique UK browsers heading to the site for help with Christmas dinner recipes and advice. The Hairy Bikers’ honey-glazed gammon recipe was the most viewed across Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, with BBC Food’s roast calculator the second most-viewed page on the site.

Top five most popular recipes across Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2020

Honey-glazed gammon
Perfect roast turkey
Yorkshire pudding
Roast turkey crown
Roast potatoes

Emily Angle, editor at BBC Food says: “BBC Food has been helping people learn to cook and bake for two decades and while 2020 was really tough for everyone, it was great to see more people than ever enjoying the amazing recipes and the useful advice we have to offer.”