I’m not a dessert cook, so when I make sweets they need to be relatively quick and easy. It is nice to end a meal with a simple dessert or to produce something delicious to serve with a cup of coffee when friends drop by. Sweet treats make great gifts too. Here are some of my favourite easy sweet recipes.
Pinolate (Ligurian Pine Nut Cookies) Pinolate are simple Ligurian pine nut cookies with a wonderfully chewy soft centre, a crisp outer and delicious nutty flavour. Also called pignoli or amaretti con pignoli, they’re traditionally made with a mix of bitter and sweet almonds. As bitter almonds can be hard to find, I use marzipan mixed […]
Benne Wafers (Sesame Cookies) Benne (pronounced benny) is the heirloom ancestor to modern day sesame seeds. Morgan McGlone, who worked with renowned Southern chef Sean Brock at Husk in Charleston (South Carolina), tells me that even raw they have the rich, nutty flavour of toasted sesame seeds. Slaves brought benne seeds with them from Africa, […]
Beignets (New Orleans Doughnuts) Beignets (pronounced bay-nyay) are close cousins to French boules de Berlin and were brought to New Orleans by the Acadians, French settlers exiled from Canada who relocated to Louisiana in the late 1700s. Beignets are traditionally served for breakfast with bitter chicory coffee but are delicious at any time of day. […]
Sticky Rice with Mango I find any dish with sticky rice addictively comforting, especially a dessert. So I adore khao neow mamuang, sticky rice with mango, which is one of Thailand’s most popular desserts. Glutinous (or sticky) rice is the staple grain of north-eastern Thailand and, despite the name, doesn’t contain any gluten, making it […]
Fresh Fruit with Spicy Thai Salt I was reminded of this classic Thai dish at Viand, when Annita Potter served a simple pre-dessert of pomelo segments alongside a little mound of ground salt, sugar, chilli and kaffir lime. I’ve bought sliced pineapple from Asian grocery stores with a little pod of the salt-sugar-chilli combo, but […]
Portuguese Rice Pudding Rice pudding is one of the most typical Portuguese desserts. It always makes an appearance at celebrations, from birthdays to weddings, and is usually decorated with a relevant motif sprinkled on top in cinnamon; initials or numbers are popular for birthdays, while hearts, flowers and simple lattices are also common – so […]
Bacon from Heaven There seem to be as many recipes for this cake as there are cooks; my simple version is inspired by the one Edite Vieira gives in her wonderful book The Taste of Portugal. She says that it originated in the Middle Ages in a convent (as so many Portuguese desserts did) and […]
Chocolate Mousse Chocolate mousse has never gone out of fashion because it simply tastes so good (and is so easy to make). The trick to good mousse is keeping it as light as possible, so when adding the egg white and cream gently fold it in without stirring more than necessary, better to have a […]
Fruit Leather Walnut Rolls Fruit leather, pestil in Turkish, is popular all over the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It’s fruit juice or pulp that’s been dried into chewy strips, originally to preserve excess summer fruit for winter. It’s pastel in Armenian, pastilos in Greek and is also known as bastik in some parts of […]
Japanese Cheesecake Pancake The Japanese are masters at taking something from another culture and making it their own – their super-light and springy cheesecake is a great example. It’s sometimes called cotton cake, jiggly cake or soufflé cake because it’s so light and fluffy. I’d heard it’s tricky to master, but thought I’d give it […]
