Desserts
What you take home from the kitchens we cover. Few ingredients, one balance to get right.
Latest
Pastel de nata recipe: Lisbon's custard tarts at home
Twelve blistered Portuguese custard tarts from a rolled puff pastry shell, a custard sweetened with 106-108 °C syrup and the hottest oven you have.
Treacle tart recipe: James Martin's golden syrup classic
This treacle tart recipe follows James Martin's method, a shortcrust case packed with a breadcrumb-thickened golden syrup filling that sets glossy and sliceable, not runny.
Sachertorte recipe: Vienna’s chocolate cake with apricot jam
A butter and chocolate sponge with no raising agent, a coat of apricot jam and a poured glaze that sets hard and glossy: the cake a 16-year-old apprentice made for Metternich in 1832.
Apple crumble recipe with Armagh Bramley apples
A kilo of sharp cooking apples, a cold-rubbed topping of flour, oats and butter, 40 minutes at 190 °C: the British pudding, timed for the Armagh Bramley harvest that runs to late October.
Pastel de nata recipe: Lisbon’s blistered custard tart
Spiralled puff pastry, a syrup-based custard and an oven at full blast: how to bake the Belém tart at home, from the 1837 monastery recipe to the charred top.
Baklava recipe: Gaziantep's pistachio pastry at home
Buttered filo, a thick layer of green pistachios and cold syrup poured over the tray straight from the oven: the Gaziantep way with baklava, adapted for a home kitchen.
Apple strudel recipe: Vienna's hand-stretched Apfelstrudel
Paper-thin pulled dough, tart apples, rum-soaked raisins and buttery breadcrumbs: the Viennese Apfelstrudel explained step by step, with the reason behind each move.
Quince tart recipe, the slow-poached way
Amuse Kitchen poaches quince slowly until it turns rose-pink, then bakes it into a French-style almond tart for the last hard fruit of the autumn.
Seadas recipe: Sardinia's fried cheese pastry with honey
Semolina pastry shortened with lard, a disc of young sheep's cheese and lemon zest, fried at 170°C and finished with bitter honey. A shepherds' dish from central Sardinia that became a dessert.
Mont Blanc recipe: Paris chestnut dessert, step by step
A meringue disc, a dome of barely sweetened cream and a mountain of chestnut threads: the tea-room classic, timed for the first chestnuts of the year.
Lemon olive oil cake recipe for new-season oil
A two-bowl Mediterranean cake built to show off the first green oil of the year, with lemon to carry the bitterness rather than hide it.
Torta di nocciole recipe: Cortemilia's Piedmont hazelnut cake
Toasted hazelnuts make up 40 per cent of this Alta Langa farmhouse cake, so the nuts decide everything: how they are roasted, skinned and ground.
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