Turkish semolina halva (irmik halvasi)
Semolina! And listen; hear us out. We know that kids of a certain era were traumatised by bland, milky semolina ‘pudding’ but it’s lucky that other cultures do way more inspiring things with it than reduce it to pallidness. Like the Turks, for example, who make this. A delicious, classic dessert, irmik halvasi…
Semolina syrup cake
Bonus recipe, people! As you can see, we really got into semolina this week. There are tons of version of this Middle Eastern/Turkish/Greek-style cake, some use coarse semolina, some a finer one or even a mixture of the two; others include some wheat flour in the mix…
Condensed milk and coconut laddoos
These sweets are fashioned after a popular Indian sweet called laddoo, also spelled laddu; associated with festivals and celebrations that are made from a variety of things. Including wheat flour, rice flour, besan (chickpea flour) , semolina and even puffed rice. They’re typically sweetened with jaggery, enriched with plenty of ghee…
Chocolate pistachio meringues
“Experts Resoundingly Say a No-Sugar Diet is No Good” ** declared an article headline we read over breakfast the other day, as we shoveled jam-mounded refined carbs and syrupy coffee down our throats with abandon…
Yoghurt creams with tomato compote
Calm your farm if you’re up in arms over the thought of syrupy, sweet tomatoes. They’re a fruit, doh! If rhubarb can be a vegetable that masquerades as a fruit, then tomatoes can reclaim their fruitiness and appear in dessert situations. So there…
Apricot and almond pie with burnt honey
Apricots. We wait all darned year for the things yet, despite their cheery appearance and promise of juicy, sun-shiny flavour, they’re often incredibly disappointing. And it’s not their fault. Unless you live in a stone-fruit orchard, or have access to one…
Is it spring yet strawberry cake
We don’t much go for those multi-layered, super-rich, cake extravaganzas. They have their place but we prefer more wholesome, humble cakes; the sort that may not look like much, but have that delicious, straightforward, home-baked flavour that knocks you off your perch…
Mum’s Weet-Bix/custard pie thingo
We have no idea of the genesis of this pie-type arrangement, with its buttery crushed Weet-Bix base, blubbery custard filling, jam, whipped cream and coconut topping, but we thought it was the height of yumness when we were kids…
Creamy rice pudding
This might be divisive, but we make rice pudding simmered on the stove and not baked in the oven. We know the skin on baked rice pudding is a thing and some households fully go to war claiming the biggest bit of that thin, caramelised layer, but we don’t go for it…
Banana-toffee bread and butter pudding
This is the pudding to end all puddings; a version of bread and butter pudding that even avowed haters will love. Baked with banana and slathered in a buttery, rich, toffee-flavoured sauce, it’s easy to make and totally delish to eat…
Marmalade roly poly
We dig the name ‘roly poly’ because it sounds as much a weight-gain alert as it does the description of a lovely rolled-up baked pudding. This old fashioned fave really is bloody delicious, straight-forward to conjure and is something everyone totally loves…
Chocolate self saucing pudding
It’s a mystery to us how this favourite pudding even works; you make a batter, scatter the top with sugar and cocoa, pour boiling water over, bake, then the oozy stuff somehow ends up on the bottom, creating a gooey, thick sauce for the springy, cakey top…
Lemon sago
Here’s an old fashioned dessert that’s totally worth resurrecting. It’s the kind of thing popular in a previous epoch, when food options were more limited, everyone had a lemon tree, and people didn’t respond to the concept of sago with a screwed-up unhappy face…
Steamed caramel coconut pudding
There’s a piece floating around the interwebs where someone cooks, then rates the puddings from Edmond's cookbook and the puddings don’t come off so well. There is snark and derision. Plenty of it. While we’re not suggesting that some of the original Edmonds puddings…
Easy jam tart
The shortcake base here is like the LIttle Black Dress for dessert making; it’s no-brainer easy, is deliciously indestructible and is perfect for people who might be challenged in the pastry department (patisserie is a black art, weswear). There’s not much you can do to mess it up and because it’s more cakey than a classic pastry…
Peaches in rosé-thyme syrup with creme fraîche
Nab the last of the peaches now (sob); we mean, how much of a bugger is it when they march out of season? Not. Particularly. Peachy. As a parting shot to stone fruit lusciousness, whaddabout making this super-simple peach number, where the fruit is cooked in rosé and thyme syrup, then served with creme fraiche…