Dessert
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Recipe: Coconut affogato
Who doesn’t like affogato? Besides people who don’t like coffee. Or ice cream. Or cold coffee. Well, you get my point. Because I have no desire of consuming regular ice cream any time soon (the dairy and sugar combo just kill me), I’ve been making my affogato with frozen coconut cream. I haven’t added any extra flavourings yet but I suspect it would be equally delicious with a dash of vanilla or almond essence, or a sprinkle of cinnamon.
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Recipe: Chocolate coffee bites
There are only a few things that can mess with my willpower and usual tendency to eat sensibly. One of the biggies: dark chocolate-covered coffee beans. That’s the reason I (almost) never buy them. One night I was studying and I felt like I *needed* my cacao-caffeine fix, but all the shops were closed. I came up with this super simple, quick and dangerous alternative.
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Recipe: Dairy-free crema volteada
Another dairy-free version of another Peruvian classic dessert: crema volteada (our take on crème caramel). This is my mother-in-law’s and my sister Gloria’s favourite dessert. The original version uses evaporated and condensed milk, and is served with caramelised sugar on top. Yes, it is very sweet. I used coconut milk and cream and just enough honey to make it slightly sweet. The texture was very similar to the original version but was paler in colour because there were less protein and sugar to react with the heat.
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Recipe: Gluten and dairy-free tres leches cake
I don’t know where tres leches (three milks) cake came from but it’s very popular in several Latin American countries. It’s basically a sponge cake soaked in a mix of evaporated milk, condensed milk and cream (hence the name). Peruvian dessert queen Sandra Plevisani has a cinco leches version that uses coconut milk and dulce de leche (caramel) in addition. Needless to say, both versions are unbelievably sweet. While it’s not my favourite cake (I prefer chocolate over anything else), I realise it’s a crowd pleaser. My version is lower in sugar, plus gluten and dairy-free.
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Recipe: Gluten-free lamingtons (take 1)
Happy Australia Day! Time for a confession: in the 4 years I’ve lived in Australia I have never eaten a lamington. When we were “fresh” in the country I didn’t like coconut. Over time, this aversion disappeared but I just wasn’t too excited about sponge cake with chocolate icing and desiccated coconut. Then I ditched the grains so lamingtons were out of the question. As an almost citizen of Australia, I felt it was about time to try a lamington. I thought it would be relatively easy to find a gluten-free commercial one, but not a grain-free, crap-free one. So I had to make my own. Luckily, I’m one of…
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Recipe: Lúcuma coconut mousse
The three Fs I miss from home are family, friends and food. And to be more specific about the third F, I’d say fruit is what I find myself craving more often. Not only standard stuff like bananas, avocados and papayas are way tastier on the other side of the world, but there are some fruits you just can’t get here. Among them: lúcuma. Lúcuma is a fruit native to Perú, although it’s now grown in other South American countries (don’t let the Chileans fool you about its origin!) It’s a medium-sized round fruit with a dryish thin green skin that cracks when the fruit is ripe, soft fibrous orange…
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Recipe: Suspiro de limeña
Following with the meal I prepared last week, now it’s time for the sweet course. I try to make my Peruvian-themed dinners strictly Peruvian, but I always find it hard to choose a dessert that it’s not too caloric and sweet. Given that I had already made one of the few light, not-too-sweet desserts two weeks ago (leche asada) I had no choice but to feed my friends a sugar-loaded bomb, which happens to be my favourite Peruvian dessert. Keep in mind that I don’t like my desserts to be too sweet, meaning that this particular one is too good to reject. The bomb is called suspiro de limeña, named…
