Contents

Cover
About the Book
About the Authors
Title Page
Dedication
Preface
Yotam’s introduction

Cookies and biscuits

Custard Yo-Yos with roasted rhubarb icing
Peanut sandies
Almond, pistachio and sour cherry wafers
Cranberry, oat and white chocolate biscuits
Chocolate chip and pecan cookies
Cats’ tongues
Chocolate, banana and pecan cookies
Brown butter almond tuiles
Gevulde Speculaas
Speculaas biscuits
Amaretti with honey and orange blossom
Soft gingerbread tiles with rum butter glaze
Soft date and oat bars
Orange and star anise shortbread
Chocolate and peanut butter s’mores
‘Anzac’ biscuits (aka Honey, oat and raisin cookies)
Chocolate ‘O’ cookies
Garibaldis
Pecan snowballs
Not-quite-Bonnie’s rugelach
Mini-cakes
Persian love cakes
Saffron, orange and honey madeleines
Lemon and raspberry cupcakes
Powder puffs
Tahini and halva brownies
Lemon, blueberry and almond ‘teacakes’

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 Hazelnut crumble cake with Gianduja (or Nutella) icing
Baby black and orange cakes
Strawberry and vanilla mini-cakes
Victoria sponge with strawberries and white chocolate cream
Banana cakes with rum caramel
Blackberry and star anise friands
Coffee and walnut financiers
Flourless chocolate ‘teacakes’
Lemon and semolina syrup cakes
Roma’s doughnuts with saffron custard cream
Chocolate Guinness cakes with Baileys Irish Cream
Cakes
Rum and raisin cake with rum caramel icing
Prune cake with Armagnac and walnuts
Parsnip and pecan cake with aniseed and orange
Beetroot, ginger and soured cream cake
Apple and olive oil cake with maple icing
Vineyard cake (aka Cleopatra cake)
Butternut, honey and almond
Pineapple, pecan and currant
Banana, date and walnut
Grappa fruit cake
Lemon and blackcurrant stripe cake
Rhubarb and strawberry crumble cake
Coconut, almond and blueberry cake
Take-home chocolate cake
Apricot and almond cake with cinnamon topping
Pistachio roulade with raspberries and white chocolate
Tropical fruit cake
Pistachio and rose water semolina cake
Festive fruit cake
Flourless chocolate layer cake with coffee, walnuts and rose water
Louise cake with plum and coconut
Almond butter cake with cardamom and baked plums
Pineapple and star anise chiffon cake
Coffee and cardamom pound cake
Neapolitan pound cake (for the family)
Tessa’s spice cake
Lemon and poppy seed cake (National Trust version)
Belinda’s flourless coconut and chocolate cake
Celebration cake

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Cheesecakes
Lime meringue cheesecakes
White chocolate cheesecake with cranberry compote
Passionfruit cheesecake with spiced pineapple
Baked ricotta and hazelnut cheesecake
Fig, orange and mascarpone cheesecake
Chocolate banana ripple cheesecake
Apricot and Amaretto cheesecake
Roasted strawberry and lime cheesecake
Tarts and pies
Rhubarb and blueberry galette
Little baked chocolate tarts with tahini and sesame brittle (or marmalade)
Mont Blanc tarts
Chai brûlée tarts
Chocolate tart with hazelnut, rosemary and orange
Walnut and black treacle tarts with crystallized sage
Fig and pistachio frangipane tartlets
Schiacciata with grapes and fennel seeds
Apricot and thyme galettes with polenta pastry
Pineapple tartlets with pandan and star anise
Desserts
Rolled pavlova with peaches and blackberries
Gingerbread with brandy apples and crème fraîche
Ricotta crêpes with figs, honey and pistachio
Rice pudding with roasted rhubarb and tarragon
Cape gooseberry pavlova
Hot chocolate and lime puddings
Ginger crème caramel
Yoghurt panna cotta with basil and crushed strawberries
Kaffir lime leaf posset with fresh papaya
Sticky fig pudding with salted caramel and coconut topping
Pot barley pudding with roasted apples and date syrup
Cinnamon pavlova, praline cream and fresh figs
Knickerbocker glory
Frozen espresso parfait for a crowd
Saffron and almond ice cream sandwich
Campari and grapefruit sorbet
Prickly pear sorbet
Lemon, yoghurt and juniper berry ice cream
Chocolate, rose and walnut ice cream

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Confectionery
Saffron and pistachio brittle
Raspberry lollipops
Woodland meringues
Spiced praline meringues
Pecan and Prosecco truffles
Chocolate-coated ruby red grapefruit peel
Almond and aniseed nougat
Chocolate panforte with oranges and figs
Sesame brittle
Coconut meringue brittle
Honey, macadamia and coconut caramels
Middle Eastern millionaire’s shortbread

Baker’s tips and notes

Ingredients
Acknowledgements
Copyright

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ABOUT THE BOOK

In his stunning new baking and desserts cookbook Yotam Ottolenghi and his long-
time collaborator Helen Goh bring the Ottolenghi hallmarks of fresh, evocative
ingredients, exotic spices and complex flavourings – including fig, rose petal, saffron,
aniseed, orange blossom, pistachio and cardamom – to indulgent cakes, biscuits,
tarts, puddings, cheesecakes and ice cream.

Sweet includes over 110 innovative recipes, from Blackberry and Star Anise Friands,
Tahini and Halva Brownies, Persian Love Cakes, Middle Eastern Millionaire’s
Shortbread, and Saffron, Orange and Honey Madeleines to Flourless Chocolate Layer
Cake with Coffee, Walnut and Rosewater and Cinnamon Pavlova with Praline Cream
and Fresh Figs.

There is something here to delight everyone – from simple mini-cakes and cookies
that parents can make with their children to showstopping layer cakes and roulades
that will reignite the imaginations of accomplished bakers.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Yotam Ottolenghi is a cookery writer and chef-patron of the Ottolenghi delis and NOPI
restaurant. He writes a weekly column in The Guardian’s Weekend magazine and has
published five bestselling cookbooks: Plenty and Plenty More (his collection of
vegetarian recipes); co-authored with Sami Tamimi, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook and
Jerusalem; and NOPI: The Cookbook with Ramael Scully. Yotam has made two
Mediterranean Feasts series for More 4, along with a BBC4 documentary, Jerusalem on
a Plate. www.ottolenghi.co.uk

Helen Goh was born in Malaysia but started her cooking career in Australia, where she
had migrated with her family as a girl. After 7 years as head pastry chef at Donovans, a
landmark Melbourne restaurant, she moved to London and soon joined Ottolenghi.
She has worked closely with Yotam as the lead product developer for the past ten
years. Helen draws widely on Asian, Western and Middle Eastern influences in her
cooking – and of course, on her love of sweets.

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For my mother, Cheng, who never fails to cook with her
heart and soul; and for my sister, Lily, who ignited my
passion for baking and has been with me every step of
the way.

HELEN

For my three sweet treats, Karl, Max and Flynn, who

always refuse to share their chocolate chip cookies
with me.

YOTAM

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PREFACE: OUR SUGAR MANIFESTO

There’s so much sugar in this book that we thought

about calling it, well, Sugar. There’s nothing like a
perfectly light sponge flavoured with spices and
citrus, for example, or a mega-crumbly icing-sugar-
dusted cookie, straight out of the oven, to raise the
spirits and create a moment of pure joy. These are the
moments we’re rejoicing in here, celebrating the
sweet things in life.
We say this not to be irreverent or flippant – we are completely aware of current
concerns about the adverse effects of sugar – but we want to make it clear that this is a
recipe book full of over 110 wonderful sweet things.
In the fickle world of food fads and fashions, ‘public enemy number one’ is
constantly changing: eggs, fats, carbs – we are told to restrict our intake of them one
year, and then to make them a major part of our diet the next. To those who do as
they’re told, it’s all very confusing.
In the midst of this confusion, we try to stick to the simple rule of ‘what you see is
what you get’. People will make responsible choices about what to eat and how much
as long as they are not consuming things without realizing it – hidden sugars, hidden
salts, hidden elements with names we can’t even pronounce, let alone understand
what they are. There is nothing wrong with treats, as long as we know what they are
and enjoy them as such.
Just as we don’t hide anything, we’re also never ‘free-from’ anything, just for the
sake of it. We’re lucky to not have any food allergies and pleased that those who can’t
eat gluten have lots of ‘free-from’ choice, but ‘free-from’ cooking, for the sake of it, is
just not something that excites us. If a recipe is ‘free-from’ gluten or nuts or dairy, it is
the result of accident rather than design. A happy accident, certainly – we had no idea
we were creating over 20 gluten-free recipes here, and are delighted that we have! –
but it’s not something we specifically set out to do. (To make things easier, we have
added gluten-free and nut-free symbols to the recipes where this happy accident
occurs.)
The Ottolenghi way has always been about abundance, inclusion and celebration.
It’s the way we’ve always cooked and it’s the way we’ve always baked. It’s the way
we’ve always eaten and the way we’ve always lived.

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YOTAM’S INTRODUCTION

My first job in a professional kitchen was whisking egg

whites. Yes, just that. It was the 1990s and I was doing
my training as a chef during the day, and assisting the
pastry chef in a fancy central London restaurant at
night. On the dessert section most of the work is done
before service starts. Since I was so junior and tended
to do the late shift, there was one job I spent a lot of
time doing: beating egg whites to order for our very
popular vanilla soufflés. By the end of three months, I
was a bona fide expert in the right consistency of egg
whites needed for the perfect soufflé.
It must be fate then, or some kind of direction from above, that I ended up making
my name on egg whites, sugar and lots and lots of air. The famously giant Ottolenghi
meringues, which have adorned our windows for many years, have become our
trademark. I am crediting this to divine intervention, rather than all of my whisking,
because it would not have been my plan-A for Ottolenghi to be referred to, by some, as
‘the meringue shop’. There are worse names to be called, I know, but my ambivalence
towards them is no secret. I do actually love meringue, just not so much of it! The
Louise Cake here, for example, wearing a white crown of meringue on its head and
gilded with flaky almonds and bits of delicious coconut, is, in fact, one of my favourite
cakes in the book.
Looking beyond the Ottolenghi window, or, rather, through it, it wouldn’t have
been hard to spot my love for all things sweet and the fact that I eventually honed my
skills as a pastry chef beyond the holy trinity of egg white, sugar and air. Sitting
alongside our grilled vegetables, grain salads and the rest of the savoury dishes
inspired by Sami Tamimi’s and my childhoods in Jerusalem, were a bunch of sweet
treats that were not at all fluffy or airy. Fruit galettes, little cheesecakes, Amaretti
cookies, danishes and muffins, tarts filled with citrusy curds and all manner of
chocolate delights: these were rapidly rallying a crowd of lively devotees keen to
augment their salad box with a little (or big) sweet finale.
In fact, it was precisely this juxtaposition of good, yet different, things – strikingly
appetizing salads alongside wonderful, hand-crafted sweet treats – that has come to
define the Ottolenghi experience. And by ‘good things’ I mean anything that is freshly

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made, with love, a bit of flair, real ingredients and lots of attention to detail.

Helen’s arrival
I assume that it is this tacit philosophy – plus the window, no doubt – that attracted
Helen to Ottolenghi and brought her to us as soon as she had come off the proverbial
boat from Australia in 2006.
I can actually remember getting a phone call from her and then meeting for the
first time outside one of our shops, hearing her story and not quite understanding
what drives such a star to leave behind a very successful career – Helen’s professional
history both as a pastry chef and as a psychotherapist is remarkable – in a very sunny
Melbourne in favour of a rather elusive future in a rather grey London.
It took seeing Helen at work – first cooking savoury food with Sami in Notting Hill
and running our Kensington kitchen, later spending much of her time dreaming up
pastries, cakes and all manner of sweet things for the company – for the penny to
drop. I finally realized that it was Helen’s restlessness and her insatiable drive for
perfection that had brought her to us. What we shared, which Helen had identified
right from the start and I took a bit longer to realize, was the notion that there is no
upper limit to the number of times you can bake a cake or the amount of thought that
can go into the components of a tart in order to get it just right; that you can discuss
the minutiae of a chocolate ice cream or a nut brittle as if the fate of the entire universe
rests on the conversation, without worrying for a second that this may be, just may be,
a tiny bit over the top.
This kind of intensity and commitment has been a constant throughout Helen’s
different roles in Ottolenghi. Over the years she has been involved in creating canapés,
testing breakfast dishes, trying out salads and offering her insights into anything,
really, that appeared on our menus or was placed on our shelves and required the
kind of depth and breadth of knowledge of food that she has. More than anything else,
though, it is with her cakes – a term I use very loosely here, to mean anything from a
dreamy chocolate chip cookie, to a light-as-a-feather meringue roulade, to a rum and
raisin bundt with caramel dripping down its sides – that Helen carved her inspired
mark on our food.

Our tasting sessions

Forming friendships and collaborations around a spread of food is the Ottolenghi way.
I bonded with Sami in this way all those years ago, then with Ramael Scully, co-author
of NOPI: The cookbook, who taught me to love miso and appreciate a few new cooking
techniques. My friendship with Helen was mostly formed around a piece of cake.
Here is an image that I can’t shake: it’s a Sunday afternoon, around 4pm probably;
my husband Karl looks out the window of our first-floor West London flat, an
expression of clear foreboding appears on his face and then, very quietly, he says:
‘Helen’s here . . . with her cakes.’ Helen then walks through our front door like a gust of
wind or, rather, an over-zealous dusting of icing sugar, carrying more brown carton

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boxes than humanly possible and, before even setting them down, begins apologizing
for all the things that went wrong with her cakes. This one hasn’t risen properly, the
other bowed around the centre, an icing has split halfway through its application, a
sabayon lost its air, a sorbet failed to churn, a sugar syrup crystallized, a cookie
crumbled and so on and on and on.
Helen would then open up her boxes and take out what seemed like at least three
solid days’ worth of standing in the kitchen and baking. In one Sunday session we
could, very easily, sample three versions apiece of two cakes-in-progress, each with its
own minuscule variation (one flavoured with vanilla, for example, the other with
pandan, the third with Chinese five-spice), a biscuit Helen had in America, tried at
home and wanted to Ottolenghify, a couple of confectionery items (say, a chocolate-
nut brittle and an Italian nougat), three flavours of summer cordials, and, to round it all
up nicely, she would quickly cook up a batter she’d brought with her for a new
pancake or waffle to add to Islington’s breakfast menus.
You’d think there’s a touch of embellishment here but there really isn’t, I promise.
The sinking of Karl’s heart was entirely justified. It had nothing to do, though, with the
cakes that failed – according to Helen – or the cookies that crumbled, and everything
to do with how hard it was to stop yourself indulging in all those incredible sugary
pleasures. Helen’s ‘failures’, you see, are the stuff the sweetest of dreams are made of
for mere mortals. Our Sunday afternoons tended to end up with all participants
nearing a perfect state of sugar-induced delirium.

This book
Many of the cakes in this book are a result of those elated Sunday sessions. Items that
eventually received our seal of approval, after endless tests and infinite discussions,
were, if I may say so myself, pretty magnificent. Other recipes are older, going back to
the early days of Ottolenghi. Those evolved organically in our stores, based on
feedback from our customers and staff. Many were brought to us by a great number of
talented pastry chefs who have worked with us over the years; we acknowledge them
with gratitude in the introductions to the recipes. Some recipes have been developed
especially for the book, when we felt we were missing a particular angle, a specific
style of cake, or just something that we love to eat and that happened to be sweet.
What all of the recipes share is having been through the full Ottolenghi treatment,
which is exactly the way I described a ‘good thing’ earlier: they were all conceived with
love and a bit of flair and made with real ingredients and lots of attention to detail. I
feel confident that you’ll be able to find all of these components in each of our ‘cakes’
here.

One final note

These days, my tastings with Helen are not quite the same as they used to be. I suspect
it’s to do with the fact that we both became parents in recent years.

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 In our first meeting after Helen’s Sam was born, the three-week-old was resting in
his Moses basket next to us while Helen and I were debating the merits of different
consistencies of marshmallow for making s’mores. To my regret, I sent an offhand
tweet reporting that an infant is the third wheel in our regular tastings, only to receive
a bunch of grave warnings from concerned followers about the fatal risks of feeding
cakes to newborns.
Setting aside this particular mishap, Sam and his brother Jude’s arrival and, later
on, the birth of my boys, Max and Flynn, did slightly alter the nature of our meetings.
Our attention now has to be harnessed and somewhat focused, deliberations are
shorter and, unconsciously, we find our cakes a bit more child-friendly (you wouldn’t
know that, though, looking at the number of cakes in the book with serious quantities
of booze in them). Children’s birthday parties are now natural testing grounds for
sponges and the boys themselves are some of our fiercest critics. Just the other day I
offered Max a slice of cake, to which he quickly replied: ‘Did Helen make it?’ ‘I am afraid
not,’ I said. ‘No, then,’ was his resolute and final answer. What a few years back may
have been a very lengthy discussion was over before it had even started. Having been
put so clearly in my place, all I could do was go back to the kitchen and whip up some
egg whites.

YOTAM OTTOLENGHI

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