40g brown sugar

salt

3 tbsp cocoa powder

3 tbsp cornstarch

420ml milk

80g sour cream

100g dark chocolate

Homemade puddings and pudding powder puddings are a million miles away. This one is the best version I’ve had. I hope that you agree!

Mix the brown sugar, salt, cocoa powder, and cornstarch in a deep pan. Then, add 120ml of milk and stir well until there are no more lumps. Pour the remaining milk and mix in the sour cream.

Start heating the mix on low heat. Stir from time to time. After boiling, add the chocolate (chips or cut into pieces); stir until it is incorporated.

Remove from heat and place the pudding into the serving dishes. Let the pudding cool; place the serving dishes into the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Enjoy it!

I’ve been thinking... what cake should I make for the kittens on their birthday? They love whipped cream. And I had one butternut squash left. Wait a minute, this can actually work!

Ingredients used:

130-150g butternut squash

30g butter

5 tbsp brown sugar

50g biscuits

20g walnuts

150g whipping cream

20g sugar

Marcel cleaned the butternut squash, cut it into slices, and let it sit in the oven for about one hour in a baking pan lined with baking parchment, at 180-200⁰C.

Then, add three butternut squash slices to a pan (about 130-150g), together with the butter and the brown sugar, stirring until you get a homogenised mix.

Separately, crush 50g of biscuits in a blender, grind the walnuts, and whip the whipping cream and the sugar.

Use a big bowl (and 2 smaller ones) to set up your dessert: the butternut squash mix as your base, a ground walnut layer, a whipped cream layer, a crushed biscuit layer, another whipped cream layer, and the final crushed biscuit layer.

Who, in your opinion, licked the bowl where I whipped the cream? :D

One of my all-time favourite desserts. And Marcel's. :-)

We first discovered it in a Lebanese restaurant in our hometown and I tried several recipes, but this one's delivering the real experience—

(makes 3)

240ml whipping cream

120ml milk

15g flour

15g cornstarch

5 teaspoons sugar

a drop of rose water

a drop of orange blossom water

+ 1 large banana

+ 9 tbsp honey

Bring the cream/milk/flour/cornstarch/sugar mix to a boil.

Add the rose water and orange blossom water.

Let the ashta cool for 1 hour in the fridge.

Divide into 3. Cut a banana into slices and add them to the small bowls of ashta.

Serve with honey.

It’s still summer in the southern hemisphere and we’ve had some springish days, so what about some no-bake mini-cheesecakes?

What did I use (made 2)? [multiply the amounts if you’re making this dessert for more people]

35g Oreo crumbs + 2 tbsp melted butter for the base

200g urdă or cottage cheese mixed with            

25g powdered sugar

65g double cream

a generous amount of organic orange zest

a drop of vanilla extract

15g dark chocolate chips [or 2 tbsp Nutella]

Let everything set in round 8cm shapes; freeze the mini-cheesecake for 1 hour, take it out, let it warm, and decorate it with Nutella or melt the chocolate on a steam bath and pour it over it.

It's a fabulous dessert!

(dish: 15x22 cm)

300ml coffee

3 eggs

3 tbsp sugar (shaved)

a pinch of salt

250g mascarpone

7-8 ladyfingers

+cocoa powder

I’ve had tiramisù in many places. The best one, in my view, was however not in Sardinia, continental Italy, or even Sicily, but at home, made by Marcel. So I asked him to give me the recipe, to publish on my blog and let you enjoy it, too.

Make the coffee – about 300ml.

Separate the egg whites and the yolks. Beat the egg whites stiff with the sugar.

Mix the yolks with the salt and the mascarpone.

Add the yolk mixture to the egg white mixture, using a wooden spoon.

Take the dish, add a layer of cream. Soak the ladyfingers in coffee and place them on top of the cream layer and then cover them up with another layer of the cream.

Leave the dish in the fridge to rest overnight and sprinkle cocoa – as much as you’d like – over the tiramisù in the morning. And then, savour it.

In our opinion, tiramisù is one of the best breakfasts. We wake up with so much ease whenever we know we’d have it in the morning. Marcel divides the tiramisù into 4, powders half of it and... in the afternoon (it kept happening over last year), he comes into our living room, with the same line— ’I’m craving something sweet’... so this scrumptious dessert doesn’t last long. J