dessert

Baklava

Turkish baklava – a rich dessert of filo pastry, nuts and sugar syrup.

Leanne Kitchen’s Turkey has a piece in it about baklava, but no recipe. Kitchen declined to include one, because baklava is one of those things that’s best done professionally, by people who make it all the time, using those generations-old recipes and techniques that will live forever. Reading that did give me pause for thought, but [...]

Food & drink

Fresh ginger cake

A spicy ginger cake made with fresh shredded ginger instead of the usual dried, powdered stuff. From a recipe by David Lebovitz.

Ginger is a common flavour in lots of cakes and biscuits, but the way it gets there is usually through the use of dried and ground ginger. Fresh ginger is more normally used as one of the first things in the pan at the bottom of an Asian or Chinese dish. In its dried form, [...]

Food & drink

M’hanncha, or the Moroccan snake

Jamie Oliver’s M’hanncha, or the Moroccan Snake

There are times when I hit a blogging brick wall, where there’s nothing left to say, or where the ideas and half-posts won’t form themselves properly. That happened this weekend, and after binning the third draft of something attempting to articulate what I think of minimum alcohol pricing (short answer: probably good, some reservations, could [...]

Food & drink

Maple syrup, walnut and pear cake

Maple, walnut and pear cake by David Lebovitz

This last week or so have been quite tough, and the coming ones aren’t shaping up particularly well, either. What to do? Well, baking a cake often helps. So, that’s what I did today, cashing in half a day’s holiday tucked away for a rainy day and heading off home in the wind and through [...]

Food & drink

Ready for Dessert, by David Lebovitz

David Lebovitz Ready for Dessert

Baking is one of the most difficult forms of cookery, at least in my opinion. It’s more a branch of science than a culinary endeavour, one that needs precision and technique, both of which are some way beyond me. I’m also not an habitual eater of dessert.  I like the odd cake every now and [...]

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