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.
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 […]
Miso Sesame Cookies Like these miso sesame cookies? You’ll love my online Japanese cooking class Inspired by Hideo Dekura! Japanese sweets often have an intriguing blend of sweet and savoury, like these miso sesame cookies. I like mild white miso in these simple biscuits that are also known as miso butter cookies. But you can […]
Zabaglione Join my food & wine tour to Italy to discover more Italian regional specialties! Zabaglione is a deliciously frothy combination of egg, sugar and wine that’s best eaten as soon as it’s made. It originated in Italy hundreds of years ago and migrated to France where it became known as sabayon. Sicily’s famous fortified […]
Date & Almond Ladies Fingers Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Middle Eastern cooking class inspired by Michael Rantissi! The inspiration for this delicious sweet ladies fingers recipe comes from my friend Janni, who uses the same technique to make simple savoury snacks filled with anchovy, feta or olives. These crisp baked filo ladies […]
Orange & Date Salad Like this orange and date salad? You’ll love my online Middle Eastern cooking class inspired by Michael Rantissi! Once you discover how easy it is to segment an orange, you’ll be making this simple salad all the time. I like the crunch of toasted almonds or vivid Persian pistachio slivers, but […]
Chinese Walnut Cookies (hup toh soh) Like Hong Kong Walnut Cookies? You’ll love my online Chinese cooking class! Lard is traditional in these old fashioned Chinese walnut cookies but I use butter in my hup toh soh recipe – to give them their Cantonese name – as I prefer the flavour. These deliciously crumbly biscuits […]
Crema Catalana Join my food & wine tour to Italy to discover more Italian regional specialties! One of my favourite Sardinian sweets is bianchini, moreish little meringues studded with toasted almonds and lemon zest. Making them (or any meringue) means leftover egg yolks and a perfect excuse to make crema Catalana. This classic Spanish dessert […]