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) Join one of my food & wine tours to Italy to discover more Italian regional specialties! 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 […]
Benne Wafers (Sesame Cookies) Like this recipe? You’ll love my online cooking class featuring the food of America’s Deep South! 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 […]
Beignets(New Orleans Doughnuts) Like this recipe? You’ll love my online cooking class featuring the food of America’s Deep South! 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 […]
Sticky Rice with Mango Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Thai cooking class inspired by David Thompson! I find any dish with sticky rice addictively comforting, especially a dessert. So I adore khao niao mamuang, Thai sticky rice with mango, one of Thailand’s most popular desserts. Glutinous rice (also called sticky rice) is the […]
Fresh Fruit with Spicy Thai Salt Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Thai cooking class inspired by David Thompson! I was reminded of this classic Thai dish at Sydney restaurant Viand, where Annita Potter served a simple pre-dessert of pomelo segments alongside a little mound of ground salt, sugar, chilli and kaffir lime. I’ve […]
Portuguese Rice Pudding Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Portuguese cooking class! 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 […]
Bacon from Heaven Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Portuguese cooking class! There seem to be as many recipes for toucinho de céu 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 […]
Chocolate Mousse Like this recipe? You’ll love my online French cooking class Inspired by Damien Pignolet! 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 […]
Fruit Leather Walnut Rolls Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Turkish cooking class inspired by Somer Sivrioglu! Fruit leather – qamar al deen in Arabic, pestil or bastik in Turkish, lavashak in Farsi, pastel in Armenian and pastilos in Greek – is popular all over the wider Middle East and Eastern Europe. It’s fruit […]
Japanese Cheesecake Pancake Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Japanese cooking class Inspired by Hideo Dekura! 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 […]
