Desserts
What you take home from the kitchens we cover. Few ingredients, one balance to get right.
Dark chocolate mousse recipe: the no-cream Belgian way
Just chocolate, eggs and a little sugar, whipped and folded the classic way, the week Belgium hosted the World Chocolate Masters and an Italian chocolatier took the title.
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Linzer torte recipe: Austria's oldest named cake
Austria's oldest recorded cake recipe: a hazelnut pastry ring with redcurrant jam, traced to a 1653 manuscript at Admont Abbey, rebuilt with today's proportions and a reason for every step.
Canelé recipe: Bordeaux's caramelized custard pastry
A fluted French pastry with a bitter-dark crust and a wobbling custard center, built on a 24-hour batter rest and a two-stage oven heat that bakers in Bordeaux never skip.
Lagan nu custard recipe: the Parsi wedding dessert
Reduced milk, cardamom and nutmeg, baked low and slow in a water bath: the dessert Parsi weddings close on, as Cyrus Todiwala's Café Spice Namasté pauses.
Panforte recipe: Siena's dense spiced nut and fruit cake
A medieval Tuscan recipe that is more honeyed nut brittle than cake: toasted almonds and hazelnuts, candied peel and warm spice, set hard and sliced thin.
Pan de muerto recipe: Mexico's orange-blossom bread of the dead
The sweet, sugar-coated loaf Mexican families bake before Día de Muertos: an egg-rich dough scented with orange blossom and anise, crossed with dough bones and crowned with a small skull.
Castagnaccio recipe: Tuscany's chestnut flour cake, Artusi's way
Chestnut flour, water, olive oil, pine nuts and rosemary: the Tuscan autumn cake Artusi listed as recipe 240, baked thin so the top cracks and the centre stays soft.
Tres leches cake recipe: the milk-soaked Latin American sponge
A sponge raised only by whipped eggs, soaked in condensed, evaporated and whole milk and chilled overnight: the Latin American cake, after chef Pati Jinich's method.
Æblekage recipe: Denmark's apple trifle without an oven
Denmark's layered apple dessert pairs stewed fruit with butter-toasted rye crumbs and whipped cream, built cold in a glass with no cake tin in sight.
Pumpkin pie recipe: the 1796 American custard pie
A spiced pumpkin custard in a blind-baked crust, set at a gentle heat so it slices clean. The method follows Amelia Simmons' 1796 American Cookery; the quantities are ours.
Tarte Tatin recipe: the Sologne upside-down apple tart
Apples cooked to amber in butter and sugar, a pastry lid, one quick flip: the method from the Hôtel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, explained step by step.
Lamington recipe: the sponge that survives the chocolate dip
A hot-milk sponge baked the day before, frozen for an hour, dipped in thin cocoa icing and rolled in coconut. Fifteen squares of Queensland’s best-known cake, with the reason for each step.
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