This cake is a showstopper, and a perfect ice cream treat to serve around the holidays. There is much room for interpretation, however, and any of the No-Churn Ice Cream flavors (below) can be swapped in for everyday afternoon ice cream cake snacking. (I particularly like replacing the pumpkin with the coffee-flavored ice cream.)
Parkin is a form of oatmeal gingerbread common to Yorkshire and other parts of England where oats were grown in abundance. Dark and treacly, parkin makes the perfect accompaniment to mid-autumn holidays like Bonfire Night – an occasion for which it is often made. Once baked, cover well and allow to mature and soften up for a few days before serving.
A fruit galette is the workhorse of the sweet kitchen. Freeing yourself from the confines of a pie plate is so liberating. Somehow, no matter how a galette slumps, breaks, or browns, it’s always beautiful. Glory lies in irregularity. Unlike a deep fruit pie, which tends to harbor too much liquid, galettes always leak a little bit. Rest easy. That’s a good thing! It seems to me that exactly the right amount of liquid creeps out so that what’s left inside is a nicely thickened fruit filling with sweet, concentrated flavor, and a crisp bottom crust. The secret is to remove it from the parchment paper while it’s still warm and the leaked juices haven’t solidified. A bonus is that galettes cool much faster than pies. You are closer to dessert bliss than you think.
A proper tart shell should be golden brown, uniformly thin, crispy, and have smooth, clean edges. When you bite into it, it should melt in your mouth as you chew. I’m practical when it comes to tart shells. To me, a tart shell must serve a purpose: it should carry as much fresh fruit as possible. During the summer in France, this means a punnet of ripe woodland strawberries—they taste so sweet, they could be candy—arranged on top of a layer of whipped vanilla ganache. I add as many as I can, so there’s not a sliver of ganache visible. A little strawberry jam piped on top deepens the tart’s flavor.
There’s something about a pastry cream that no mousse or ganache can ever replicate. It’s smooth and custardy—the perfect texture. You can eat it on its own by the spoonful almost like pudding, but it’s terrific in tarts and on cakes. It’s sturdy enough not to collapse under the weight of fresh berries, and subtle in flavor, so it highlights even the most delicate fruits.
These scones are the perfect breakfast when you’re rich in overripe bananas but don’t have the time or patience for banana bread. They bake up fast and don’t need to cool before being eaten. Some of the butter might ooze out a little while they bake, but don’t worry. That just helps get the bottom extra crunchy.
Golden, crunchy, and covered in a salty, frico-like layer of baked Parmesan, this is sort of like a giant gougère-style cheese puff meets Yorkshire pudding, with a crisp outer crust and a soft, cheesy, custardy interior. If you’re not shy (or not serving this to a shy group), feel free to tear this apart with your hands to eat, licking the salty bits of cheese and herbs off your fingers when you’re done (if this is too tactile for you, use a large spoon for serving). You can serve this for dinner with a big salad or with some kind of roasted meat, or try it for brunch in place of the usual sweet and fruity Dutch babies that people expect. Or, for something completely out of the box, this also happens to make a fantastic cocktail nosh—serve it right out of the oven, still in the pan, to your guests and let them tear off pieces. It’s quite delicious with a gin martini.
Honey enhances the earthy sweetness of carrots and makes for a dense, moist cake. Serve this flavorful cake unadorned or gild it with cream cheese frosting—or simply drizzle with honey and top with chopped nuts.
Pomegranates never fail to delight me; their crimson juices and sweet and tart arils provided such joy for me throughout my childhood that they are forever etched in my memory and on my heart. Palestinians also hold this mighty fruit in high esteem, and here I’ve paired it with a dense and sticky almond cake, topped with a light and creamy mascarpone topping, which I love, and which I hope will enliven your passion for this magical fruit, too. You will need an 8 in./20 cm cake pan.
We wanted a good, solid sandwich bread recipe that could be done in two hours, start to finish, including baking time. We found that sandwich bread improved markedly when kneaded with a standing mixer or food processor, which helped us resist the temptation to add extra flour. We also were surprised to find that we preferred rapid-rise yeast over active dry yeast for our sandwich bread recipe. Not only did it greatly reduce rising times, but it also made for better-tasting bread.