Courses & dish types
Desserts recipes
The reason to finish your vegetables.
Dessert is the course where technique is least forgiving and most rewarding: a custard splits at a temperature a few degrees above where it thickens, a meringue depends on the complete absence of fat, and a set is either right or it is a sauce. What all of it shares is that sugar is doing structural work as well as sweetening — it affects freezing point, setting temperature, browning and texture, so cutting it changes more than the taste. The recipes here span the fast and the long, and they give the temperatures and the visual cues that decide the outcome.
30 recipes
Vanilla Panna Cotta
Cream set with just enough gelatine to hold its shape for a moment on the plate and then slump under the first spoon.
Vanilla Custard
A pouring custard of egg yolks, milk and cream thickened over low heat until it coats the back of a spoon.
Tarta de Santiago
A flourless almond cake with nothing in it but almonds, sugar, eggs and lemon, stencilled with the cross of Saint James.
Swiss Roll
A fatless whisked sponge baked in ten minutes and rolled while it is still hot, which is the only way it curls without cracking.
Sticky Toffee Pudding
A dark date sponge skewered and soaked with hot toffee sauce the moment it leaves the oven, then served with the rest of the sauce.
Smetannik
Soft honey-scented sponge layers stacked with a whipped soured cream filling and left overnight to soften.
Raspberry Sorbet
Sieved raspberry puree frozen with a measured sugar syrup and beaten every forty-five minutes, which is what keeps it scoopable.
Ptichye Moloko
An agar-set soufflé of whipped egg white, sugar syrup and butter on thin sponge, sealed under dark chocolate.
Pavlova
A meringue dried for two hours in a cool oven so the shell stays crisp and the centre collapses to marshmallow under the cream.
Paskha
Sweetened curd cheese beaten with butter, egg yolks and candied fruit, then drained overnight in a pyramid mould.
Medovik
Honey layer cake of thin baked discs, filled with soured cream and left overnight until the layers soften into cake.
Lemon Tart
A sharp lemon cream baked low and slow in a blind-baked sweet pastry case, so it sets to a smooth cut rather than curdling.
Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake
A creamed-method lemon loaf finished with a granular sugar and juice drizzle poured on hot, which sets into a crunchy crust.
Kissel
Fruit cooked with sugar and thickened with potato starch, served thin enough to drink or thick enough to eat with a spoon.
Guryev Kasha
Semolina baked in layers between the skins lifted from scalded cream, with nuts, preserved fruit and caramel.
Dark Chocolate Mousse
Dark chocolate lightened with whisked egg whites and set by nothing but cocoa butter, which is why it needs no cream and no gelatine.
Dark Chocolate Brownies
Fudgy brownies built on melted dark chocolate and eggs whisked to a foam, which is what gives them their paper-thin crackled top.
Crème Caramel
A baked custard turned out under its own caramel, cooked in a water bath at a low temperature so it sets smooth rather than pitted.
Cherries Jubilee
Cherries in a light syrup flamed with kirsch and spooned burning over vanilla ice cream, which is a dish and a performance at once.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies made with browned butter and a long overnight rest, which deepens the flavour and stops them spreading thin.
Baked Vanilla Cheesecake
A dense baked cheesecake on a biscuit base, cooled slowly in the switched-off oven and chilled overnight so the top does not crack.
Baked Rice Pudding
Pudding rice baked in whole milk for two hours without stirring, until the grains collapse to cream under a browned nutmeg skin.
Baked Alaska
Ice cream on a sponge base sealed under meringue and browned in a fierce oven, which works because whipped egg white barely conducts heat.
Apple and Almond Tart
A shortcrust case blind baked, filled with almond frangipane and fanned apple, so the base stays crisp under a wet filling.
Grilled Pineapple with Rum Syrup
Pineapple wedges charred over high heat and spooned with a dark rum, lime and brown sugar syrup reduced until it just coats.
Sharlotka
Apple sponge with far more fruit than batter, the eggs whisked to a foam that just holds the apples in place as it bakes.
Pryaniki
Spiced honey biscuits with a soft crumb and a thin white sugar glaze that dries to a matt shell as they cool.
Double-Crust Apple Pie
Two kinds of apple under a vented pastry lid, thickened with cornflour so the filling holds together when the pie is cut.
Classic Scones
Plain scones brought together in under a minute and cut straight down with a floured cutter, so they rise tall and split cleanly.
Apple and Blackberry Crumble
Tart Bramley apples and blackberries under a rubbed-in oat crumble, mixed by hand in one bowl with no mixer needed.