There’s a particular cookbook that has an extra special place in my kitchen and my heart.

It was unwrapped on Christmas morning a few years back and I instantly fell in love with its delectable cover and spiral bound pages of sweet treats. I’m a madly enthusiastic cook, but it had been a rough year in my kitchen. I was moving into the world of gluten free cooking after a Coeliac diagnosis and that resulted in a few spectacular baking disasters and quite a few tears of frustration.

At that stage, I had one American gluten free cookbook but was yet to successfully create anything from it; which was a strange experience for someone who could generally follow a recipe with some degree of edible outcome. I’m thinking of my earlier attempts at bread-making resulting in my mostly encouraging sister saying ‘Don’t you feed that to me, and don’t you dare give it to my dog!’ before the bread in question fell off the bench and practically shattered the floorboards.

When my sister Kate bought me that Christmas gift of Pamela Moriarty’s Sharing Sweet Secrets, Gluten and Wheat Free, I’m sure she didn’t realise at the time that it wasn’t just a beautiful cookbook that she was sharing – it gave me back my confidence in the kitchen.

I think I’ve now made nearly every recipe in this book and, because it consistently works, it’s the first thing I recommend as a gift for newly-diagnosed Coeliac and gluten free cooks. In my house, it has helped create joyously-received caramelised apple crepes for birthday breakfasts, emergency biscotti for afternoon tea, a triple choc brownie worthy of the best comfort food title and countless other desserts and cakes to make me smile.

And there’s something else I’m smiling about – I asked Kate why she’d bought it for me and she said it didn’t look scary and wasn’t covered with a title that screamed ‘special needs’ eating. She knows I struggle with publications that combine food images with a list of restrictions, aversions and conditions on the same page. I’ve always been about the food, first, and creating something that everyone can share, without highlighting the dietary restrictions.

Kate said I’d stopped baking that year and that, for her, was a travesty. She then confessed she actually bought the book because of all the treats she wanted me to make for her, a non-Coeliac.

Her secret’s out. Lucky for her, I’m now happily baking gluten free and it’s hard to taste the difference. Yes, I still have the occasional disaster, but that one book introduced me to the possibilities of good gluten free food, explained some of the baking principles and offered tips to survive this brave new gluten free recipe world. I’m eternally grateful she shared that gift.