The Sweet Escape

Dessert.

I have been needing a whole lot of these lately.

Desserts have always been and will forever be instant mood lifters. A hard to beat combination of flavour rush and visual delight, a dessert by definition is meant to be an indulgent, guilty pleasure that allows us our temporary escape to carefree wonderland. There is an instant appeal of a meeting a friend over dessert, because you know you evening would be  bouncy and beamingly happy. We also know from the movies that eating ice-cream directly from the carton is a legit post-break syndrome. Sin food for the soul. Perfectly shaped, colorful and delicious sweet sugary things, desserts are little luxuries.

Living in France legitimizes starting your day with an unabashed sugar rush. France has by the way the world’s largest per capita consumption of our dear friend Nutella and the mighty sinful Speculoos paste comes a close second when choosing a spread for your breakfast sandwich, to be washed down with a double espresso. However just in case you woke up late enough to manage to skip breakfast, your attempt to have a carb-free morning would be happily rendered futile by the gorgeous smelling freshly baked sweet goodies from the fifty bakeries on your way to work. Pain au chocolat - 20, Me - 0.

Typical sweet sightings at a Parisian bakery, Eric Kayser

As evident from food trends, the world seems to have finally moved beyond typical ingredients for making dessert, read too much chocolate or too much cream and desserts are becoming more and more au naturelle, using fresh seasonal ingredients, artisanally created with a keen emphasis on the combination of textures. Ice-creams today represent  this trend in a very big way and have really come of their own in the cultivated dessert scene. Bite size is another key trend, a staple with your Cafe Gourmand which is perhaps the best example of dessert sampling perfected by the French – macaroons, panna cotta, a petit creme brulee and a little lemon tart served with your choice of coffee or tea. Savoury desserts, another big one in the game, although not a big hit in India yet, are pushing creativity with the use of unique ingredients ranging from chilli to kale.

Cafe Gourmand - Choice of bite size desserts served with coffee

I’m not exactly a dessert person (barring the occasional Nutella spooning while watching a TV show), which is unusual considering the fact that my mom finds it impossible to finish a meal without mithai and craves post-dinner ice-cream like a 4-year old. I have friends who are equally major dessert fans, a friend who is literally my Zomato (Bomato in this case, her name is Bani) for last minute dessert cravings and as we all know, peer-pressure goes a fricking long way in dessert land because no you cannot possibly refuse a bite from the chocolate ganache gooey cake the friend ordered, despite whatever you ordered for yourself.

While choosing a dessert, I normally stick to a few flavor profiles and land up repeatedly ordering or eating the same things over and over again. I think good dessert is all about the one overarching ingredient or flavour and my choice of dessert would normally include one or all of the below :

Dark Chocolate – The darker the better. The benefits of dark chocolate are infinite. It’s loaded with antioxidants, makes your brain sharper, helps you lose weight and even find true love (basically as a result of the first three benefits). There is at any given point of time a bar of dark chocolate with sea salt in my fridge. This Lindt slice of heaven has just the right amount of salty surprise in an otherwise great dark chocolate. I love the simplicity and consistency of a good dark chocolate mousse as well spiked with a hint of fruit, preferably strawberries or clementines. 

Lindt Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt - A square a day, keeps 

Vanilla – Truly the most multi-faceted and amazing of flavors. Vanilla makes everything non-vanilla. I’m known to add vanilla essence to whatever I can, and believe it can fix everything including even a broken faucet. Injecting fresh vanilla pods in your jar of sugar makes it instantly special. Indian summers are incomplete without  meals ending with a large scoop of vanilla icecream paired with the season’s heartiest mango slices. Pour a shot of espresso over a scoop of good vanilla ice-cream for an impressive afternoon dessert called Cafe Alfredo. The versatile vanilla, always to the rescue.

Organic vanilla pods - ready to go into your sugar jar

Salted caramel or Caramel au Beurre Sale – No a better thing wasn’t created. It found its origin in Britanny, France in 1980 in the form of a rich buttery sugary-salty candy and what can be seen from this NYT article, #saltedcaramel is definitely trending worldwide since early 2000s. Pour salted caramel sauce over any dessert or have it by the spoonful, whip it into a cookie, a brownie, a bar or a cake, a real salted caramel dessert is hard to make but a true keeper. What is interesting in its flavour combination is that you taste the saltiness, taste the sweetness, taste them together and yet experience them separately. Make a large jar using this recipe from Nigella and pour away baby.

Caramel au Beurre Sale, Ummmmhhhh

Ghirardelli, an SF based chocolatier does a fine combination of dark chocolate, sea salt and caramel chocolates. It’s difficult to not bite into your fingers while eating this damn thing.

Holy Trinity - Dark chocolate, sea salt and caramel

Coconut – My fondness for coconut is stuff of legends. I find inventive ways of incorporating coconut in my daily life, be it summer or winter, drink or dessert. When it comes to dessert, my love for coconut ranges from greasy coconut barfis that come home with wedding cards to the chocolate supreme, Bounty (no debate here). It cannot get more amazing that most people dislike or are by and large opinionless about coconut and hence I always land up getting a giant’s share of any coconut based dessert. My summer of 2015 is full of the Bombay staple and newly launched in Delhi, Natural's Tender Coconut ice-cream, with real coconut chunks and the right amount of sugar! #truelove

Natural's Tender Coconut Ice-cream - Perfect summer dessert

Cheese – The single most important ingredient of the best desserts – from Tiramisu to cheesecakes. Though Italians have originally mastered inventive uses of their cheeses in texture-heavy, melt-in-your-mouth desserts, the Americans gave cheese its legitimacy in dessert land with the eponymous cheesecake.  Bake or no bake, a classic cream cheese based cheesecake is the American way of life, where cheesecakes come with anthropological names depending on their origin (New York,  Pennsylvania  Dutch..) and are home to organized crime at The Cheesecake Factory, which boasts of 34 unique types of cheesecake. (Here’s a nice ranking of all the 34 - yes people have actually done that). Back in la Italia, mascerpone and ricotta are the 2 most widely used Italian dessert cheeses. A favorite ricotta based dessert is found in Naples - Sfogiatella or a signature warm and flaky pastry with a sweetened ricotta cheese filling. Typical example of cheese dessert divine.

A typical New York no-bake blueberry cheese cake

Naples signature dessert - Sfogiatella 

Another handy cheese dessert, Dolce Sergio, named famously after an Italian friend with a famous sweet tooth who invented it, is your Italian debauchery created by amazing things easily available at home - simply layer Speculoos biscuit crumbs, mascarpone and good quality fruit jam (raspberry works for me) on top of each other and top it up with a seasonal fruit. Kept in the fridge for 30 mins and it becomes the best thing to serve for a weekday dinner.

My attempt at Dolce Sergio, topped with oranges

I have always believed in the merit of dessert being a separate meal and the creation a dessert hour to celebrate the wonders of dessert as a cuisine in itself and not just an after-thought. I guess we all should add more of these moments of hedonistic rush, endorphin release and heightened mood to our daily lives and revel in the pure luxury of allowing ourselves a much-needed sweet escape.

A few of my favourite sweet things and where to get them in Delhi :

Creme Brulée – Le Cirque at The Leela Chanakyapuri or Le Bistro du Parc, Def Col

Tiramisu - Artusi, GK 2 M Block (by far, faaar, faaaaaaar)

Blueberry Cheesecake - The Big Chill Cafe, Khan Market 

Salted Caramel Eclair - L'Opera bakery, Khan market

Kahlua Mousse Cake - Whipped, GK 2 

Brownies - Theobroma, Mumbai (simply get them couriered to Delhi)

Expert Tip 1 : Knowing how to bake is therapeutic and sexy in equal parts.

Expert Tip 2 : Get on to dear friend Shaheen's eclectic food blog PurpleFoodie for your daily dose of sweet advice and simple tips on becoming a dessert diva at home. I once baked brownies with her in my apartment in Paris and it was really fun! 

Baking brownies with Purple Foodie on a rainy day (ah well always) in Paris
May'13

Sweet dreams, literally.