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.
Glutinous Red Rice with Lychees Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Vietnamese cooking class inspired by Mark Jensen! I love glutinous rice desserts and have always wanted to experiment with them so, inspired by a dish that chef Mark Jensen served me several years ago, I came up with this easy glutinous red rice […]
Coppa di Mascarpone Join my food & wine tour to Italy to discover more Italian regional specialties! This simple dessert was a fixture on Italian restaurant menus in the ‘70s and ‘80s but seems to have fallen from favour now, replaced I suspect by the more complex tiramisu. While tiramisu is an excellent dessert (see […]
Coconut Jelly Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Malaysian cooking class! This light, fluffy, slightly sweet coconut jelly, often seen on yum cha trolleys, is also a popular finish to a spicy meal in Malaysia where it’s known as agar-agar kelapa. When I don’t have time to make my own coconut milk, I use […]
Baked Tapioca Cake Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Malaysian cooking class! This moist, springy cake, called kuih bingka ubi kayu in Malay, is a Nyonya favourite – and it’s super easy. You could grate fresh cassava, but the frozen packets sold in Asian grocery stores are very handy. This version, based on the […]
Ricotta Walnuts & Honey Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Italian cooking class featuring the food of Sardinia! Ricotta walnuts and honey is a great way to end a meal when you feel like something slightly sweet to nibble on but don’t want dessert. It’s inspired by a recipe in Lucio Galletto’s book Coastline. […]
Pink Grapefruit & Passionfruit Ice Cream Like this recipe?Master more frozen desserts here! This pink grapefruit and passionfruit ice cream is a variation on a sherbet recipe I make with all sorts of different fruits. I like the tang of grapefruit with the sweetness of passionfruit – a combination I came up with to try […]
Lemon Shortbread Cookies Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Australian cooking class inspired by Matt Moran! I created these lemon shortbread cookies by accident. I started thinking about classic Aussie melting moments – but I didn’t have any cornflour so substituted rice flour, which gave my cookies more of a shortbread texture. I still […]
Deep-Fried Ice Cream Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Chinese cooking class! Like most Anglo-Celtic Aussies growing up in the 1970s, Chinese was the first foreign food I ever tasted and, at the time, frying ice cream was about as exotic a thing as I could imagine. Thankfully Chinese food in Australia has come […]
Cranachan Like this recipe? You’ll love my online British cooking class! Cranachan, a combination of oats, raspberries, whisky and honey (ideally heather honey, available online), is the most typical Scottish dessert. A bit like a Scottish Eton mess, these days it’s usually made with whipped cream, though traditionally Scotland’s cottage cheese, crowdie, was used, giving […]
Raspberry Lime Sherbet Like this recipe? You’ll love my online French cooking class Inspired by Damien Pignolet! I love the way good basic recipes can be rejigged to suit different occasions and ingredients. I originally made a mango and lime sorbet (more accurately called a sherbet, see FAQ below for details); then when I needed […]
