Over at Team Pasta Grannies, we’re a pretty savoury bunch. No, not in terms of our personalities (well, maybe we are before our Monday morning espresso), but when it comes to our palates, we’ll always opt for cheese and wine over biscuits and cake. We’re often drawn to slow-cooked pots of sauces, salty breads, and herby or warming stews. We like to cook by eye and by taste — and since baking tends to be more of a science, it’s not always how we’d choose to spend our time in the kitchen.
Yet over the years, many of our grandmothers have proven how you can bake by instinct; hands become the scales, eyes transform liquids into imaginary measuring jugs. Check out Concetta’s Almond Biscuits or Nonna Nella’s Crostata if you don’t believe us. Yet, we’re human after all, and absolutely not immune to sweet treats. So, we thought, given its Halloween and sweets might be front of mind (and perhaps even front of porches and doors), we’d round up a few desserts that don’t scare us one bit.
Linda – Tiramisu
My mum is a good cook, but if there’s something she can’t make, it’s dessert! However, there’s been one constant sweet pick-me-up throughout my childhood and teenage years — yep, you guessed it, tiramisu.
Like my mum, I became an avid coffee drinker from quite a young age, and I just love everything coffee-flavoured. There’s nothing better to me than a slice of homemade tiramisu. I actually never order it in restaurants because I’m not usually into sweet things. I’d choose a plate of pasta over a bar of chocolate any day — but I make an exception for my mum’s tiramisu.
Maybe it’s about the caffeine fix, but I think that’s only part of it; she always makes it whenever I go back home, and since I don’t live in Italy anymore, it’s a way of connecting with her.
Michaella – Torta della Nonna
Ironically, this is a cake I never ate with my nonna when she was alive — or at least it isn’t one etched in my memory. My nonna lived most of her life in Scotland, and her baking tended to focus on shortcrust pastry pies with British fruit like apples; she also made a mean chocolate-and-pear pavlova.
Torta della Nonna is something my aunt makes most Easters for us; it’s always a crowd-pleaser. To me, it tastes of the optimism that comes with a change of seasons. The light lemon and vanilla cream with its velvety texture transports me to sunny mornings in a roadside café in Tuscany — knocking back a cappuccino at a coffee bar, trying to wipe my sticky fingers after bursting the centre of a cream-filled doughnut — while the solid outer shell and intricate decorations of pine nuts bring it all together in one perfectly balanced bite.
Vicky – Ginger and Lime Sorbet
I don’t have a sweet tooth, and chocolate can hang around in my larder for months — sometimes years, even. But my Gelato 2000 ice-cream maker is a favourite piece of kit (it’s about three years old now). Everyone loves an ice cream or a sorbet, and they’re so easy to make. Lime and ginger sorbet is just the thing for a swelteringly hot day — but really, I eat it all year round. Fancy giving it a try? You can check out the recipe here. And if you’re not too much of a dessert vampire and you can hold off on the juicy stuff for one more week, next week I’ll be updating our recipe page with a blood orange and muscat jelly with blood orange curd. Technically they’re not quite in season yet, but we’re happy to leak this one a little early for you.
Livia – Chocolate Cake (or Chocolate Anything, Really!)
My mamma Frida is 88 and still can’t resist a good chocolate dessert! I learned to make a tortino al cioccolato years ago in a restaurant in Faenza — soft inside, simple to make, and always a favourite with her or any guests we have over.
We don’t really celebrate Halloween in Italy, but any time is the perfect excuse to bake a chocolate cake for me!
Have you got any favourite desserts? Any halloween baking traditions of your own? We’d love to know: hello@pastagrannies.com
