Good morning, friends- care to take a little trip with me? One that starts with butter and flour, and meanders through strawberry fields bordered by chocolate woods, perhaps dusted with a little sugared snow? Come along then, we’ll be travelling photojournalist-style.

Wonderful, yes? Well, you’d think. Though I hate to admit it, every now and then my culinary instincts can lead me astray. I get so excited about an idea or recipe that I’m snapping photos and writing blog posts in my head before said dish is even out of the oven, so convinced am I of its imminent success.

These mini galettes sure tasted wonderful, though. The strawberry and ricotta filling was perfectly moist and not too sweet, and the touch of cocoa added a certain warmth and depth. It was the texture of the pastry which was off; adapted from this Smitten Kitchen recipe, the promised soft and flaky dough turned out more limp and soggy. It was heartbreaking to have these beauties fall apart in my hands, especially since pastry is usually one of my kitchen strengths.

Still, I believe this journey deserves a do-over, which is why I’m offering you an adapted recipe here. A bit more chocolate flavour, a lot less moisture and some tweaked instructions and I believe these galettes could be a winner. But a disclaimer: if they don’t work for you, forgive me. I’m still an amateur tour guide, after all.

• Chocolate, Strawberry and Ricotta Galettes
• crust adapted from Smitten Kitchen
• makes 4 x 5″ galettes
• For the pastry:
  1 1/4 cups flour
  3 Tbs. cocoa powder
  2 Tbs. sugar
  1/8 tsp. salt
  113g (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1cm cubes
  1/4 cup sour cream
  2 tsp. lemon juice
  2 Tbs. ice water
  
  For the filling:
  1/2 cup ricotta
  1 egg, divided
  1 Tbs. sugar
  zest of half a lemon
  2 cups washed, hulled and roughly chopped strawberries
  1 tsp. water
  icing sugar, for dusting
• 1. To make the pastry, mix together the flour, cocoa, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add in the cubed butter and work together with a pastry cutter or your fingers, until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
  
  2. Whisk together the sour cream, lemon juice and ice water in a small bowl and pour 3/4 of it over the flour mixture. Mix together with a fork or wooden spoon until the mixture begins to come together; you may need to add more of the liquid, but do so drop by drop. Gather the pastry into a ball and wrap tightly in clingfilm; refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
  
  3. After an hour, remove the pastry from the fridge and divide it (using a scale, if you want to be exact) into four equal pieces. Wrap these individually in clingfilm and return to the fridge for another 30 minutes.
  
  4. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F. To make the filling, mix together the ricotta, egg yolk, sugar and lemon zest in a small bowl.
  
  5. When they’ve re-chilled and the oven is hot, remove one of the pastry balls from the fridge. Roll out on a well-floured piece of parchment to a 7″ round and top with 1/4 of the ricotta mixture and 1/4 of the strawberries, leaving a 1″ border. Carefully pull up and fold the pastry around the top of the galette, then transfer the galette to a lined baking sheet. (If this is too difficult, you could trim down the parchment paper and move the whole thing to the tray.) Repeat with the other 3 pastry pieces.
  
  6. Mix the egg white with 1 tsp. of water and brush over the top of the pastry. Bake the galettes for about 30 minutes until the pastry is dry to the touch and the filling is bubbly. Cool completely on a wire rack before dusting with icing sugar and serving.

Sometimes, only chocolate will do.

Though I’ve never been as enamoured of chocolate as some, this was my thinking last Friday. Andrew and I were going away for the weekend to visit his newly-relocated parents, and I was having some difficulty coming up with a train-friendly meal for us. The nearly four hour trip up north, combined with the time frame (after work) and horrible train food made a gourmet, mobile picnic necessary.

The savoury items were easy: a Thai noodle salad, some Italian beans and a squash, feta and olive dish. But what to nibble on after, with our boiling hot and obscenely large train teas? I needed something substantial, portable and delicious.

Enter these cookies. From my much-loved Nigella Express, they deliver a triple chocolate hit: melted chocolate, cocoa powder and oodles of chocolate chips. The recipe make 12 giant cookies with an intense chocolate flavour. If that much chocolate seems a bit much for you, you can even freeze the unbaked blobs of dough to bake at a later date.

I don’t often post recipes as-written here, preferring instead to adapt or create my own. But I didn’t think these cookies need much tweaking, so this here is Nigella’s recipe, almost completely straight-up. The dough would also be delicious with white chocolate chips or nuts.

• Triple Threat Chocolate Cookies
• adapted from Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson
• makes 12 large cookies
• 125g dark chocolate, chopped
  150g plain flour
  30g cocoa
  1 tsp. baking soda
  1/2 tsp. salt
  125g unsalted butter, softened
  65g dark brown sugar
  50g castor or white sugar
  1 tsp. vanilla extract
  1 large egg
  300g dark chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate
• 1. Preheat the oven to 170°C/335°F. Prepare two baking sheets by lining with parchment paper.
  
  2. In a small saucepan over low heat (or in the microwave, on in a double boiler), melt the chocolate until smooth. Set aside to cool slightly. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a small bowl. Set aside.
  
  3. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and two sugars with a hand mixer (or use a stand mixer). When light and fluffy, add the melted chocolate, and beat until just combined. Add the vanilla and the egg and beat until smooth. Mix in the dry ingredients in two additions, then finally fold in the chocolate chips.
  
  4. Using an ice cream scoop or large spoon, spoon large dollops of dough (about 1/4 cup each) onto the lined baking sheets. Be sure to leave about 3″ between each cookie, as they will spread. Don’t flatten the cookies.
  
  5. Bake for 9-11 minutes until cookies have just darkened at the edges and feel slightly soft on top. Let cool completely before eating.

In my experience, there are two kinds of people: the shedders and the hoarders. Shedders like to live simply and modestly. Too many possessions weigh them down, and spring cleaning is like Christmas come early to them. Hoarders, on the other hand like to be prepared, and can often be heard uttering the phrase “But I might need this some day”.

For the most part, I’m a shedder. I might keep boxes of old journals for sentimental reasons, but I still love a good life edit. My closet, bookcase and flat all get a good once-over several times a year, and anything no longer useful or attractive (to me) goes. Seriously, the Oxfam around the corner has done well by me.

But my kitchen is a whole ‘nother story. Rather than adopting the European practice of shopping daily, living in London has only made it clear to me how North American my shopping habits are. At any given time, my cupboards are home to four to six kinds of nuts, three varieties of seeds, three types of lentils, four kinds of beans, three different flours, three sugars and seven different pasta shapes. I love the freedom of knowing that it’s in there, ready to be made into dinner/granola/cookies/ what have you at a moment’s notice.

But every now and then my core personality takes over, and I begin to cook in what I call “cupboard-clearing mode”. This economical setting can result in the delicious, the inedible, or the bizarre. The most recent bout (thankfully) leant to the former, with these Brown Sugar Biscuits. Made in an attempt to use up the Chipits Skor Toffee Bits I found in my stocking last Christmas, these cookies feature one of my favourite flavour combos: chocolate, caramel and salt. A posher version of my Salted Caramel Brownie Cookies, they were inspired by the photo of this recipe from The Kitchn.

The biscuit base, adapted from a Nigella recipe, is neither too sweet not too rich, just a perfect base for the trio of flavours on top. Use good quality chocolate and flaky Maldon sea salt and the toffee bits become more than a novelty baking item. Of course now I’ll probably have to go out and buy more of them, completely working against my original intention. Oh well, at least I can’t hoard these cookies- they don’t last long enough!

• Brown Sugar Biscuits with Chocolate, Toffee and Sea Salt
• adapted from How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson
• makes about 6 dozen 1 3/4″ cookies; more or less depending on size
• For the biscuits:
  175g unsalted butter, softened
  100g brown sugar
  100g caster sugar
  2 large eggs
  1 tsp. vanilla
  400g flour
  1 tsp. baking powder
  1 tsp. salt
  
  For the tops:
  150g dark chocolate
  1-2 tsp. heavy cream (optional)
  toffee pieces, for sprinkling (about 1/2 cup)
  sea salt, for sprinkling (about 1 Tbs.)
• 1. To make the biscuit dough, cream together the butter and sugars in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla, beating for 30 seconds or so after each additon.
  
  2. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt in a smaller bowl, and add to the wet ingredients in three additions. Gently beat or stir to combine.
  
  3. Separate the dough into two discs, wrap each tightly in clingfilm and put in the fridge for at least one hour. (At this point you can also choose to freeze one, which works well.)
  
  4. After an hour, preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Take one disc out of fridge and roll it out to a thickness of 1/2 cm on a generously floured surface. (Leave the other in the fridge until you need to use it.) Cut out any shapes you like and place them, 1/2″ apart, on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes until barely golden on the edges. Cool completely before decorating.
  
  5. Melt the chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat, with the cream if using. (It’s not strictly necessary, but I find that it guards against seizing and makes me less nervous.) Using the back of a small spoon, spread a little chocolate on the top of each cookie before sprinkling with the toffee pieces and a little sea salt. Allow chocolate to harden completely before eating.

I was whipping up a batch of these last week (a much-needed treat after a particularly grueling couple days), when I realised that despite all the sweet things I’ve written about here- all the cookies, cakes, tarts and other treats- that I’ve never shared this go-to brownie recipe before. If I’m honest, brownies aren’t my favourite indulgence- Andrew is the chocolate fiend in this household. But if I’m gonna have them, they’ve got to be good.

When it comes to brownies, the word “ultimate” is vastly overused. As are “best”, “superior”, “most delicious”, “incredible” and so on. And no, I’m not about to insist that this brownie recipe really is the ultimate one- everyone has different criteria for judging a brownie’s worth, after all. I will say that if you, like me, enjoy a really dense, fudgey brownie, if you like a double chocolate hit in the form of melted chocolate and cocoa powder, if the idea of a brownie made incredibly moist with the addition of cream cheese sounds good to you, then there’s a good chance that this brownie recipe will become your ultimate one, too.

One thing I especially like about this recipe (besides everything above, obviously) is how adaptable it is. The basic version is delicious, but the possibilities for additions are truly limitless- chocolate chips, nuts, dried cranberries, swirls of various composition. It’s the latter I went for this time- a mix of peanut butter and cream cheese for a sweet but salty cheesecake swirl. And you’ve got to admit- that really does sound like the ultimate indulgence, doesn’t it?

Note: Since I prefer bake in weight (grams), that’s how I’ve shown the recipe below. If you prefer ounces or volume measures, follow the link to the original recipe- Rose includes all three!

• Ele’s Ultimate Brownies (Peanut Butter Cheesecake Swirl optional!)
• adapted from Rose Levy Berenbaum‘s Brownie Puddle Tart
• makes 16 large brownies
• Brownies
  200g unsalted butter
  85g dark baking chocolate (I try to use 70%+ cocoa solids), chopped
  50g cocoa powder
  225g caster sugar
  3 large eggs
  85g cream cheese
  1 tsp. vanilla extract
  70g plain flour
  1/4 tsp. salt
  
  Peanut Butter Cheesecake Swirl
  115g cream cheese
  85g peanut butter
  3 Tbs. caster sugar
  1 egg yolk
  1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1. Preheat the oven to 160°C/325°F. Prepare a 8 x 8″ baking pan by buttering the sides, and lining the bottom and two sides with parchment paper.
  
  2. In a large bowl or medium saucepan, melt together the butter and chocolate. When it’s smooth, remove from the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder, sugar, eggs and cream cheese. Finally, stir in the vanilla, flour and salt. Spread the mixture into the prepared baking tin, and set aside while you prepare the cheesecake swirl (if using).
  
  3. For the peanut butter cheesecake swirl, whisk together all ingredients until smooth. Spread over the top of the brownie batter, and using a spoon or small spatula, swirl the two mixtures together.
  
  4. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until set and springy in the middle. Allow brownies to cool for 10 minutes in the pan, before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Brownies are best after 24 hours, and get even fudgier if kept in the fridge.

When I was 17 or so, I caught whooping cough. There was an outbreak in several of my city’s primary schools, and I caught it from some kids I was babysitting at the time. On the surface, whooping cough isn’t all that bad. You cough a lot, you get a couple weeks off school- as highly contagious diseases go, it’s pretty great. The thing you probably don’t know about whooping cough (unless you’ve had it yourself) is that even after you’re not contagious anymore, even after you feel healthy again and go back to normal life, you keep coughing. For several months.

For me, this slightly annoying fact was complicated by my friend Maya, who thought it was just hilaaaarious that I’d been so inflicted. She took to softly, subtly, with the most innocent of faces, saying “whoop, whoop” whenever I coughed. For the rest of the school year. So not only was I that weird coughing girl (always a great label to have in high school, let me tell you), but I had a constant whooping echo, too. Thank goodness we didn’t have every class together.

I was reminded of Maya’s torturous teasing last month. She moved into a new apartment and emailed me to tell about the breaking in of her new kitchen. Appropriately enough, she’d made a batch of pumpkin whoopie pies. These festive fall treats were all over the food blogs last year with a contagiousness of their own. I remember thinking then that they looked delicious, but it took twelve months and a friendly tip to convince me to make them.

This week, after I’d peeled, cubed, steamed and puréed another pumpkin, I finally had an opportunity to. I opted to use Martha Stewart’s recipe, but added my own little tweak. I didn’t have quite as much pumpkin as the recipe called for (yes, I’ve been using it a lot- more pumpkin recipes are on their way), so I added in some cocoa powder for a bit of extra flavour. Chocolate and pumpkin? Whoop, whoop!

• Chocolate-Pumpkin Whoopie Pies
• adapted from Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Cream-Cheese Filling by Martha Stewart
• makes 6 pies (easily doubled, but these things are huge!)
• Whoopie Pies
  1 1/2 cups plain flour
  1/2 tsp. baking powder
  1/2 tsp. baking soda
  1/2 tsp salt
  1 tsp. ground cinnamon
  1 tsp. ground ginger
  2 Tbs. cocoa powder
  1 egg
  3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  1/2 cup vegetable oil
  3/4 cup pumpkin purée (from peeled, cubed, steamed and puréed pumpkin, or from a can)
  1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  
  Cream Cheese Filling
  113g cream cheese, at room temperature
  57g butter, at room temperature
  1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  1 cup icing sugar, sifted
  1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1. Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cocoa powder. Set aside.
  
  2. In another bowl, beat the egg and brown sugar together with an electric beater until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes (or use a stand mixer). Add the oil, pumpkin purée and vanilla and beat for another minute. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and beat until just combined.
  
  3. Using a 1/4 cup ice-cream scoop or measuring cup, place large spoonfuls of the dough on the baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each one. Work quickly, as the batter will spread a bit. Bake for 15 minutes, until the tops are just springy to the touch. Remove to a cooling rack to cool completely before filling.
  
  4. While the whoopie pies cool, make the filling. Cream together the cream cheese and butter, adding the vanilla after they’re well combined. Sift in the icing sugar and cinnamon and beat to combine. Keep the filling in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
  
  5. To fill the cookies, simply spread a few tablespoonfuls of filling on the flat side of one, and gently pair it with another, similar in size and shape. Whoopie pies should be kept in an airtight container in the fridge.

A few weeks ago, after Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt’s house, I had my first taste of pumpkin pie. I know this will seem both unbelievable and incredibly sad to the pumpkin pie enthusiasts among you, but I can’t lie: until recently, I believed pumpkin was possibly the grossest thing one could put in a pie.

In fact, that first bite of flaky crust and spiced filling was my first taste of pumpkin ever, pie or otherwise. With the exception of the roasted seeds, I’d never seen this autumnal accessory as something you’d want to eat. Of course now I’m a pumpkin convert. It might have taken 26 years, but I returned to the UK determined to make up for lost time.

So when I bought a pumpkin at the farmer’s market on the weekend, I knew my first pumpkin preparation would have to be a good one. I opted to bake with my squash rather than cook it, figuring that something familiar was the safest bet. At first I thought of scones but soon reconsidered, as I’ve made several for the blog in recent weeks.

One recipe popped up in my searches with insistent frequently: Pumpkin Swirl Brownies. Originally from a Martha Stewart recipe and adapted by the inimitable Smitten Kitchen, these seemed like just the ticket. Andrew loves brownies, and I’ve never posted one here before, so I got to work.

I can never leave a recipe alone, and I opted to use brown sugar as well as white here. I wish I could say that this was because I prefer its dark, molasses-like flavour or that it works so well at this time of year (both of which are true), but really I was just low on the pale stuff. I also switched out the cinnamon and nutmeg for that wonderful British invention, mixed spice. Not to be confused with allspice, mixed spice is a fragrant blend of cinnamon, coriander, dill, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. (If you can’t find it where you live, I bet pumpkin pie spice would work just as well for this, but throw in some coriander as well. It really makes all the difference.)

I rather ruined the presentation of these, unfortunately. Deb noted that they were difficult to swirl, so I really went to town with my spatula, resulting in very little swirl at all. Still, these were a delicious first foray into baking with pumpkin, and a perfect teatime treat for this time of year.

Note: If you’re looking for a very fudgy brownie, keep looking. Despite all the chocolate, butter and eggs, I’d describe these as having a heavyish cake texture, rather than a brownie-like density. They do improve over a few days, though, and keeping them in the fridge will fudge them up further.

• Slightly Swirly Pumpkin Brownies
• adapted from this recipe at Smitten Kitchen
• makes 25 small but thick brownies
• 4 oz butter
  6 oz dark chocolate, chopped
  1 3/4 cups plain flour
  1 tsp. baking powder
  1/2 tsp. salt
  4 large eggs
  3/4 cup castor sugar
  1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
  2 tsp. vanilla extract
  1 cup pumpkin purée, either canned or chopped, steamed and mashed
  1/4 cup vegetable oil
  1 tsp. mixed spice
  1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1. Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F. Prepare an 8 x 8″ baking pan by buttering it (if not nonstick) and inserting a length of parchment to cover the bottom and two sides. (Butter the parchment lightly, too.)
  
  2. In a medium (not too small!) saucepan over very low heat, melt together the butter and chocolate until smooth. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  
  3. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
  
  4. Using a stand mixer or hand beaters, beat together the eggs, sugars and vanilla until light and fluffy, about 3-5 minutes. Gently beat in the flour mixture as well.
  
  5. Pour half of this batter into the saucepan with the chocolate, and stir with a spatula until smooth and uniform. Add the pumpkin purée, oil, mixed spice and cinnamon to the other half (still in the bowl or stand mixer) and beat until combined.
  
  6. Layer the batters in the prepared baking pan, starting with half the chocolate one, then half the pumpkin one, and so on. With a knife or small spatula, swirl the two batters together, reaching right down to the bottom to mix the two. (Whether you want to over-swirl or under-swirl is up to you; over-swirling will give a more uniform flavour, while under-swirling is prettier.)
  
  7. Bake for 40-45 minutes until just set. Cool in the pan for about 20 minutes before using the parchment ends to lift to a cooling rack. When completely cool, cut into 25 square pieces.

I’ve just realized that I haven’t put anything sweet on the blog this week. Since I know that’s completely unacceptable, I wanted to quickly share this recipe, which I made last week, before I head out to the farmer’s market.

I made these cookies, adapted from a recipe on marthastewart.com, for the simple reason that I was craving something sweet, chocolatey and salty. Ever since the great New York Times cookie phenomenon of 2008, I’ve been a great believer in sprinkling sea salt over the top of sweet things. Of course, it’s not appropriate for everything (I wouldn’t want a salty strawberry shortcake, for instance), but it can do wonders for the flavour of cookies and cakes. 

And salt with chocolate and caramel? Count me in. I took Martha’s recipe and halved it (as I often do with sweets), and added a few of my own minor tweaks. In my Christmas stocking last year, I received several bags of Chipits brand chocololate, butterscotch, peanut butter and toffee chips for my baking pleasure, and I had yet to use the toffee ones. Since caramel goes so well with sea salt, I opted to use them instead of the called-for chocolate chips. 

These cookies are very cakey and fat, and if you don’t overbake them, they have a dense, chewy centre very much like a brownie. If you’re not into caramel, you could always replace the toffee chips with chocolate, peanut butter or anything else, but do remember the sea salt. It really elevates the flavours here, making these more grown-up sweet than kiddie treat. 

• Salted Caramel Brownie Cookies
• adapted from this recipe by Martha Stewart
• makes 12
• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
  2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  1/2 cup plain flour
  1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  1/4 teaspoon fine salt
  1 egg
  1/3 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
  1/2 tsp. vanilla extract 
  1/3 cup toffee bits
  a few pinches sea salt
• 1. Preheat oven to 170°C/350°F. Melt chocolate and butter together, either in a small saucepan over the stove, on in a bowl in the microwave. Set aside.
  
  2. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
  
  3. In another bowl (or using a mixer), beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla together until light and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate/butter mixture and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix until combined. Stir in the toffee bits- batter will be very thick. 
  
  4. Drop heaping tablespoons of batter onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, about 1 to 2 inches apart. (These cookies will not spread much.) Sprinkle a small pinch of sea salt over the top of each cookie, and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. The tops of the cookies will be shiny, crackly and brown, like a brownie. Cool on a wire rack. 

This morning’s breakfast, made with the leftover danish pastry dough.  Otherwise known as perfection.

• Pain au chocolat
• makes 6
• 1/2 batch danish pastry dough
  100g dark chocolate, chopped finely
  Egg Glaze
  1 egg
  2 Tbs. milk 
• 1. Roll out dough to a large rectangle, 30cm x 45cm, and cut into six 15cm squares.
  
  2. Sprinkle one sixth of the chopped chocolate down the centre of each piece of dough. Fold in thirds, seal the ends and place folded side-down on a baking sheet.
  
  3. Allow to rise for about 1 hour. Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F. Whisk the egg and milk to form a glaze.
  
  4. Brush the glaze over the tops of the pain au chocolat. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Cool for 10 minutes before serving. 

This post is not going to start with a fond childhood memory of eating Oreos accompanied by a tall glass of milk. I didn’t have that kind of childhood; my Mum doesn’t like sweet things much herself, and so endeavored to raise my sister and me to have similar tastes. When we were really young, the health quotient in our house was high. Cookies were always homemade (ginger snaps sweetened with molasses), peanut butter was natural and snacks consisted of a cup of frozen peas. We even drank unsweetened grapefruit juice, for heaven’s sake.

This changed once my sister and I got a bit older, of course. Perhaps it was too much effort for Mum to keep up the whole Earth-mother act, or maybe she just accepted that she’d lost us to the evils of sugar after we first tried orange juice at a friend’s house. Either way, we began to become a household of bought treats. (Much to my Dad’s relief, I imagine- he has a real sweet tooth.) 

My first Oreo-specific memories actually date from much later, though. High school, in fact. My parents’ house is only half a block from my old secondary, so naturally my place was the obvious hangout for lunchtime, spare periods, after school, etc. It wasn’t unusual for my Dad to come home at lunch to find ten shrieking 16-year-olds sitting around the dining room table.

We each had our own unique lunchtime routine. Mira and Larissa would microwave the remaining dregs of morning tea from the teapot to a ridiculous temperature. (It didn’t matter how often I told them they were welcome to make a fresh pot- they evidently enjoyed having their throats scalded by tea that had been steeping for four hours.) Katy and Jessi would often buy their food from the school cafeteria (anyone else remember those curly fries?), and Margaux, with her homemade lunch, would muse about opening her own cafe one day. 

Myself? I’d heat up a no name brand burrito from Loblaws (you may scoff, but don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it) before enjoying a cup of fresh tea and two cookies. Often, those cookies were Oreos. I remember because around the year 2000, Oreos was loudly (proudly?) proclaiming on the side of their boxes: Only 3 1/2 grams of fat per cookie!, which never failed to make us all laugh hysterically (cue my Dad coming home). Because, I’m not really a calorie-counter, but I wouldn’t call three and a half grams of fat per cookie something to brag about, would you? 

Having said that, I have no idea how much fat is in these homemade Oreos, nor do I want to know. I botched the recipe together from several that I found online, with a dose of my own culinary intuition, and wasn’t particularly concerned with the caloric reward. The taste reward more than makes up for it, anyway.

These are truly the Oreos you (might) remember from childhood: dark, chocolatey and slighly salty, with a sweet vanilla-scented filling. Delicious with milk but even better with a cup of hot tea, they keep well, too. If my Mum had given me these as a child, the orange juice might not have been such a shock to the system. 

• Homemade Oreos
• makes about 28 1 7/8″ sandwich cookies
• Cookies
  70g (5 tablespoons) unsalted butter
  1 1/4 cups plain flour
  3/4 cup cocoa powder
  1/2 tsp. baking powder
  1/4 tsp. baking soda
  1/4 tsp. salt
  1/3 cup caster sugar
  1/3 cup dark brown sugar
  1 egg
  1/2 tsp. vanilla
• Icing
  113g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
  1 1/2 cups icing sugar
  1/4 cup caster sugar
  pinch salt
  1 tsp. vanilla  
• 1. In a small saucepan, heat the butter gently until just melted. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly. 

  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside. 

  3. Add the sugars to the (now slightly cooled) butter and whisk until no lumps remain. Add the egg and vanilla and keep whisking until smooth and creamy. 

  4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix with a wooden spoon or dough whisk. This is a dry dough, so you will probably need to get in with your hands, as well. Once the dough has come together into a cohesive ball, divide into two separate pieces. Wrap each in clingfilm and place in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.

  5. Preheat your oven to  170°C/ 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and remove the dough from the fridge. Roll out, between two pieces of parchment, to a thickness of 1/8″. Using a 1 7/8″, cut out circles and place on the waiting baking sheets. (Obviously, you can use whatever size cutter you want, but I like these to be quite small.)  

  6. Bake cookies for 8 minutes, and remove to a wire rack to cool completely before icing. 

  7. To make the icing, beat the butter with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Slowly add the sugars, salt and vanilla, and continue beating until just combined. 

  8. Using a 1/2″ tip on a piping bag, pipe large dollops (about one teaspoon) into the centre of half the cookies. With a “matching cookie” (I pair them up according to size first) gently press down on the icing until it just reaches the sides. These cookies will keep in an airtight container for one week, and actually improve for for a day or so.

I don’t think I ever had cheesecake until I was a teenager. At least, I don’t remember having it before then. Growing up, dessert was a rare occurrence. My parents were fond of the classic “Why don’t you have a piece of fruit?” line. Well, a piece of fruit is all fine and well, but what I wanted as I child was dessert, and I hope you’ll forgive me the assertion that eating something after dinner doesn’t make it dessert.

No. To me, dessert should be sweet, indulgent and preferably of the baked variety. Bonus points if there’s chocolate or ice cream involved. Needless to say, my youthful explanations fell on deaf ears, and when my Mum did decide to bake something for an after-dinner treat, it was usually a pie, crisp or crumble. What other children might have found acceptable I took as a personal affront to my beliefs, as well an underhanded attempt at being “healthy”. To this day I have an aversion for any dessert containing cooked fruit.

As a teenager, though, I learned that there was plenty dessert to be found outside the walls of my home. And real dessert, too- not simply fruit in the guise of something delicious. It was at this point in my life, if I remember correctly, that I discovered cheesecake.

The discovery came about in the Byward market area of downtown Ottawa, at a small cafe called Memories. During high school, I used to go there on summer evenings with my friend Fiona. We’d sit, on the patio if it was warm, or else at our favourite table in the window, sipping tea and eating cheesecake. This place made the best flavours, and I was instantly smitten. My favourite was the white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, though I also had a soft spot for the chocolate-and-caramel Turtles incarnation.

In later years, we abandoned Memories for Oh So Good a few streets over (better music, cooler crowd, and a palm-reader on Thursday nights). Despite our new hangout’s superior selection of desserts, I never strayed far from my cheesecake love. I hear both establishments have gone downhill in terms of food and service, but in my mind, cheesecake will always remind me of balmy evenings in the Byward Market, being young and bored and free to have whatever dessert I felt like, thankyouverymuch.  

Despite this long-harboured love of the dessert, I admit that I don’t have much experience making it. I think the idea of the water bath, required to achieve the perfect creamy texture, just intimidates me too much. Years ago, my sister and I did tackle this Nigella Lawson recipe with good results, but there’s something reassuring about baking in your parents’ house, with your baking-centric sister in the driver’s seat. Would I attempt this alone in my London kitchen? Never. 

So when I came across this recipe in Tessa Kiros’ book Falling Cloudberries, it seemed like fate. Not only is this tart baked sans water bath, but it’s Italian in origin (always a bonus, as far as I’m concerned) and uses ricotta, a current obsession of mine. The flavours, a mixture of dark chocolate in the crust and light citrus in the filling, seemed perfect. 

So, did it match up to my memories of cheesecakes past? Well, yes and no. The ricotta makes this a very light tart, less rich and not as creamy as the versions I wolfed down in my youth. Once I got past that, I found it lovely- light, flavourful, sophisticated. It’s good served at room temperature the day it’s made, but I think it improves in the fridge, and tastes even better a day or two after.

• Ricotta Tart with Chocolate Crust
• adapted from Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros
• serves 8
• 100g butter, slightly softened
  85g caster sugar
  150g plain (all-purpose) flour
  30g cocoa powder
  1 egg, beaten
• 2 eggs, beaten
  90g caster sugar
  500g ricotta cheese
  1 tsp. orange zest
  1 Tbs. lemon juice
  1 Tbs. orange juice
• 1. For the pastry, beat the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy. Sift in the flour and cocoa and beat until just combined. Add the egg and beat until smooth and uniform. (The pastry will be very soft, but shouldn’t be too wet- add more flour if you feel that it is.) Gather up into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for about an hour. 
  
  2. Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F. Roll out your pastry on a lightly floured surface until about 1/4″ thick, or large enough to line an 9″ loose-bottomed (or springform) cake pan. Gently drape the pastry over your rolling pin and place into the pan, allowing it to relax into the corners. If it tears, don’t worry- the softness of this pastry makes it very forgiving. Just patch it with some more dough.
  
  3.  Line the pastry with parchment paper, fill with baking beans or uncooked rice, and blind-bake for about 20 minutes. Remove the beans and paper and bake for another 5 minutes to dry the base. Set the tart case aside to cool.
• 4. For the filling, whisk together the eggs and sugar until thick and creamy. Add the ricotta and whisk for another minute, until combined. Mix in the orange zest and juices, and scrape the filling into the tart case.
  
  5. Bake for about 30-40 minutes, until the filling is set and the top golden in places. This tart is best when allowed to cool to room temperature, or else chilled in the fridge.