Dessert

SUMPTUOUS SHORTCUT

SUMPTUOUS SHORTCUT

Recipes come from everywhere – from new ingredients sometimes, new ways of doing things, new combinations or new twists on classics. While we do like to develop our own ideas every now and then someone else’s recipe is just too hard to resist, particularly when it includes a damn good shortcut ....

SUMMER FRUIT IN KIR JELLY

SUMMER FRUIT IN KIR JELLY

Here in the southern hemisphere, summer fruit is everywhere and we’re loving it.  And just to ease ourselves out of our celebratory holiday mode and back into the working year, we’ve combined a refreshing summer tipple with the abundance of berry fruit to make a simple, delicious and pretty healthy dessert to kick off our blogging year ....

RHUBARB, RHUBARB, RHUBARB

RHUBARB, RHUBARB, RHUBARB

Funny how one thing leads to another. I recently needed only a couple of stalks of rhubarb, to pickle, to top some delicious sticky rice cakes for a pre-dinner nibble. As our rhubarb pickle loses its vibrant colour after a week or two, I only pickle what I need. What to do with the rest?  A bit of poaching with some star anise, orange juice and zest produced a cup full of delicious pulpy sweet rhubarb.

What to do with that ...

JENNY'S FROZEN LEMON MERINGUE CAKE

JENNY'S FROZEN LEMON MERINGUE CAKE

My beautiful grandmother, Dot, had a lovely tradition of always noting the name of the person who passed a recipe on to her. I still have her old hand written recipe book with its solid wooden cover. It is full of recipes with lovely names like Chocolate Cake Rene and Aunty Nellie Lambert’s Rock Cakes, Muriel’s Caramel Marlow and Elsie T’s Coffee Crystal Biscuits as well as many of Dot’s own recipes ....

SEMI FREDDO

SEMI FREDDO

Semi freddo (the Italian for half cold) is considered a half frozen dessert and is made from egg yolks, cream, sugar and any flavouring you fancy. It is a good alternative to home made ice cream, if you don’t have an ice cream machine, as you don’t have to churn the semi freddo mixture. You can freeze it in individual moulds or in one piece as we’ve done here to serve as a birthday cake ....

NIPPLES OF VENUS

NIPPLES OF VENUS

Ever since seeing the movie ‘Amadeus’ many years ago, I have lusted after the large and rather provocative looking chocolates which were offerred to Mozart’s wife by the composer, Salieri.  My memory is that he tells her in a rather seductive way that these delicious looking morsels are called Nipples of Venus and that she promptly wraps her plump lips around one of these generously proportioned items, wide eyed and giggly ....

A REVEALING TART

A REVEALING TART

As our seasons here in Sydney are not absolutely defined, we segue from cool to warm to hot and back again before a new season is in full swing.  To be able to declare the change we take our cue from the appearance of new season’s fruit and vegetables in the market. We now know that spring has sprung and summer’s nearly here because our markets and shops are filling up with delicious stone and berry fruits ....