Browse recipes

Two crumbling cornstarch cookies with caramel between them, edges rolled in coconut. They dissolve rather than crumble.

Pineapple cut into rings, dried, dusted and dropped through a thin sparkling batter into hot oil, so the outside shatters and the fruit inside turns hot, syrupy and startlingly sharp against the sugar.

Crisp at the edge, soft in the middle, with seams of melted dark chocolate. Chopping a bar instead of using chips is what gives you the puddles.

Thin, snapping Syrian cookies, sesame-crusted on one face and pistachio on the other. They crisp entirely as they cool.

Sharp apples baked under a thick, buttery oat rubble until the juices bubble up the sides. The one everybody actually wants.

Layers of phyllo and chopped nuts baked until shattering, then flooded with lemon syrup while still hot. The sound when you cut it is the point.

Fudgy, properly dark brownies with ribbons of tahini swirled through the top. The sesame cuts the sweetness and makes them taste grown-up.

A dense, damp semolina cake soaked in lemon syrup, cut into diamonds with an almond on each. Sweet and grainy in the best way.

Chia seeds left to swell in vanilla-sweetened plant milk until thick and spoonable, layered with crushed berries. Five minutes of work the night before.

Chunks of fresh coconut boiled in ginger sugar until the syrup thickens, then dropped in spoonfuls and left to set hard. Chewy, sticky and very Jamaican.

Chewy, dense squares of glutinous rice flour and coconut milk, baked rather than pounded, with a clean bitter edge from good matcha.

Carrots grated fine and cooked down slowly in sweetened plant milk until the whole pan turns glossy and orange, with chopped cashews and raisins folded all the way through. Deeply sweet, faintly floral, and better the next day.

Choux-style dough piped straight into hot oil, rolled in cinnamon sugar and dipped in thick drinking chocolate. Crisp ridges, soft middle.

Very ripe bananas mashed into a spiced batter and fried into soft, craggy rounds. Ten minutes, and the blacker the bananas the better.

Short-grain rice simmered slowly in coconut milk until it collapses into something thick, creamy and barely sweet, scented with cinnamon and vanilla.

Chickpea flour toasted in butter until it smells like biscuits, then rolled into sweet cardamom balls. No baking, no setting. Just patience at the pan.

Whole pears simmered in spiced red wine until stained crimson to the core, then served in their own reduced syrup. Almost no work and looks like a great deal of it.

Coffee-soaked sponge layered with whipped cashew cream and a heavy dusting of cocoa. Assembled in twenty minutes, transformed by a night in the fridge.

Glutinous rice dough wrapped around sweet red bean paste, rolled in sesame and fried until they puff hollow and crackle.

Indian cardamom shortbread, sandy and crumbling from chickpea flour and semolina, split across the top and studded with pistachio.

Greek yeast puffs fried until hollow and crisp, then rolled in syrup, cinnamon and walnuts. Best eaten standing at the stove.

Dense, short and deeply peanutty, marked with the traditional fork crosshatch. The fastest cookie here: there is no butter to cream.

Soft-centered, crisp-edged and rolled in sugar rather than iced, with lemon zest cutting the sweetness. Pale is the point.

A plain sponge drenched in three milks until it is barely holding together, topped with whipped cream. Soaked, not soggy. The distinction is everything.

Milk-powder dumplings fried dark and drowned in cardamom-rose syrup, served warm so they are still drinking it in. Sticky, floral and completely over the top.

A dark, spongy apricot-jam pudding that has hot cream sauce poured over it the moment it leaves the oven and drinks the lot.

A plain, damp cake carried by good olive oil and a lot of orange zest. Keeps for days and is better with coffee than with cream.

Warm coconut-sweetened glutinous rice with cold ripe mango and a salty coconut sauce poured over. The salt is what makes it.

Sesame paste and hot sugar syrup worked together until it sets into a dense, flaky slab that melts on the tongue. Three ingredients, one critical temperature.

Plant milk cooked down with cardamom and pistachio, then frozen hard in molds. Denser and slower-melting than ice cream because it is never churned.

Bananas simmered in coconut milk with palm sugar and pandan until the syrup goes thick and caramel-brown. A bowlful of warm comfort.

Grated sweet potato baked slowly with coconut milk and warm spice into a dense, sliceable pudding with a dark, sticky top.

Plaited dough fried gold and plunged straight into ice-cold syrup, so the outside stays crisp while the inside floods sweet.

Chewy, hearty and heavily cinnamoned, with the oats left whole so they keep their bite. Better on the second day.

Buttery semolina shortbread stuffed with spiced date paste. Traditionally pressed in carved wooden molds; a fork and a steady hand do fine.

Split mung beans simmered soft, then finished with coconut milk and a little sugar until the whole pot turns creamy. A sweet, gentle breakfast eaten across Southeast Asia, warm or at room temperature.