These delicious recipes all feature ingredients from trees, such as cinnamon, dates, pine nuts, pecans and chocolate. Tree Aid is a charity which helps people in Africa's drylands to become self-sufficient by growing and looking after trees. This Christmas, they are asking people to help raise money by baking and selling tree-inspired cakes.
Fig and ricotta cake by Antony Worrall Thompson
For the cake
vegetable oil
unsalted butter - 250g
caster sugar - 250g
8 eggs
zest of 2 oranges
zest of 3 lemons
roasted pine nuts - 125g
chopped dried dates - 200g
chopped dried figs - 200 g
ricotta - 275g
plain flour - 75g
For the syrup
caster sugar - 125g
water - 125ml
pinenuts - 25g
dried fig
fresh rosemary
Preheat the oven to 180ºC/356ºF/gas 4. Grease a 30cm x 5cm springform cake tin sparingly with vegetable oil.
Place the butter and caster sugar in a large mixing bowl and use a wooden spoon to cream until pale and fluffy. Separate the egg yolks into the mixture, one by one, beating well between each addition. Place the orange and lemon zest into a separate mixing bowl and add the pine nuts, dates, figs and ricotta and mix well together. Fold the butter and egg mix into the ricotta mixture and sift the plain flour in and combine.

In a large bowl beat two egg whites into soft peaks. Fold in one large spoonful of the egg whites into the ricotta mix. Once this is well mixed, carefully fold in the remainder, ensuring that you do not lose too much of the air.

Pour the mixture into the greased cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until the tip of a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.

While the cake is cooling, put the sugar and water into a small saucepan over a medium heat and reduce. Add two sprigs of fresh rosemary and infuse.
Spike the cooled cake all over with a fork and dribble with the rosemary syrup. Garnish with toasted pine nuts, thin slices of a dried fig (fresh if you can get it) and sprigs of rosemary.