Category: Desserts
-
French recipe: Raspberry and Hazelnut Crème Brûlées
A crème brûlée is one of those delicate French desserts which we Brits adore and worship from afar but probably never attempt to make. Add it to the collection along with soufflé, mille-feuille and croquembouche. Even the name ‘crème brûlée’ doesn’t help (does it really need this many accents?!). I’ve started taking French lessons. I…
-
Peanut Butter Fudge Sauce
In a week of Valentine’s Day and Pancake Day, here I am offering you peanut butter fudge sauce. It’s a poor replacement, I know. But I hope it counts, dear reader. During these ceaseless months of lockdown, I have become very attached to my food. I’m sure we all have. Instead of kissing the person…
-
Blood Oranges with Spiced Caramel
Every season, there is a fickle, flighty fruit or vegetable which, as soon as I get my grubby mitts on it, takes all my energy and forces me to neglect other foods. They are allusive creatures. Here today then they disappear in a wisp of fragrance, leaving us mournful in their wake, wondering what we…
-
Blackberry and Bay Brownies
During these endless days of lockdown it’s good to find the little joys. In the last few days I’ve been carrying vases of tulips around the house so I can see them wherever I go, it snowed and as I write this the garden is still topped in what looks like a blanket of fondant…
-
Christmas Baking: Mincemeat and Apple Jalousie
And so, it’s the countdown to a Covid Christmas! Does that sound cynical? Nowadays, Christmas requires returning home two weeks early for the obligatory quarantine. Never mind that France and the UK were both in respective lockdowns. Ok, yes, I’m cynical. Upon touching down in London, it was like Christmas exploded. Christmas appears to be…
-
Citrus and Ginger No-Bake Cheesecake
Allegedly, cheesecake was a favourite dessert of Henry VIII. Unrecognisable to the cheesecake we know and love today, the cheese was diced and softened with milk before straining. To this, the chef would mix butter, eggs and sugar and pop it in the 16th century oven, and, as it was so popular, the recipe was…
-
Nectarine and Blackberry Croissant Cake
If a positive start to the year is an increase in productivity then mine is going badly. So far I have eaten three chocolate chip cookies straight off the baking tray and dozed in my bed, bundled under the covers like a hibernating bear, even though the sky is a perfect shade of periwinkle blue.…
-
Jam doughnut muffins
I want to introduce you to some new friends of mine. We haven’t known each other long but we’ve had a few short, intense moments in the last week. These friends are known as duffins, or in other words, jam doughnut muffins, and I like to think these will be friends for life. As with…
-
Homemade custard
Finally, Easter weekend has come and gone, and with it so has Lent, hooray! Back I joyously skip into the arms of temptation and bury my face in the next cream tea or jar of jam I see. Although, I have to confess, my absconding from sugar took a dramatic nose dive these final few…
-
Swedish chocolate cake
When I first moved in with Calum and two of his friends three years ago I would waste a lot of time pottering around their kitchen, whiling the time away between my two badly paid part-time jobs. Although one of these jobs was as a baker, the baking didn’t fulfil me as I would find…