Desserts Collection

Raw Doughnuts

Doughnut Dough

We’ll be covering two different dough recipes in this class, so you can mix it up and see which one you prefer. Bonus: one of them is nut free. Both are cakey, moist and really easy to make.

Vanilla Doughnuts with Strawberry & Cream Cheese Glaze 

The dough for these can easily be made nut free. We then coat them in a strawberry ‘glaze’ and top them off with a cream cheese icing. These will be particularly awesome for the Summer time.

Jam Filled Doughnut Holes

Doughnut holes are basically just dough rolled into a ball, but these are special because we fill them up with jam that oozes out when you bite into them. Glaze these to finish or just roll them in ‘powdered sugar’, either way they’re as fun to make as they are to devour.

Chocolate Doughnuts with Praline Glaze & Chocolate Shell

These doughnuts incapsulate all that I adore as a chef; moist, delicious chocolate doughnut, gooey caramel and wrapping all that goodness in a chocolate shell! The layers are probably my favourite thing as I love the various textures and flavours it brings to the eating experience.

Raw Pop Tarts

‘Pastry’ Dough

For this, I have used one of my favourite pastry doughs! It works really well for making all sorts of ‘pastries’… and cookies as well. It’s another one of my highly versatile recipes that can be changed to suit any type of sweet or savoury ‘pastry’ your mind can conjur up!

Blueberry Pop Tarts with a lemon vanilla bean glaze 

These Pop Tarts remind me of Danish Pastries I had as a kid. The soft vanilla pastry dough pairs amazingly well with the chunky blueberry jam filling and the lemon vanilla glaze really gives it that ‘pastry’ feel. These pastries freeze really well, so you can stock up and simply defrost one when you’re ready for a treat! These are, hands down, one of the best pastries I have ever made.

Chocolate Pop Tarts with a salted caramel filling and dark chocolate glaze

The chocolate pastry dough for this is an absolute dream to work with! You can roll it nice and thin so you don’t have tons of pastry in each bite – rather, you achieve a nice balance of pastry, filling and glaze. The filling is a medjool date based caramel paste and it works so well for maintaining a soft, juicy filling bursting with flavour. We finish these off with a dark chocolate glaze and sea salt to round the whole pastry out beautifully. No way you can eat just one of these!

Delicious Dessert Bars

Frames

In this class we’ll be working with, what are referred to as, Ganache Frames. They are metal frames that don’t have a base and just frame the contents. The benefit of using a frame to form your dessert bars is that you get a perfect height and cut every time. No need to line the frame with greaseproof or cling film, so you can avoid any marks or indentations made using those methods. If you don’t want to use a frame, no problem, you can simply use a baking tin as you would with other desserts.

Chocolate Coatings 

These bars are finished using tempered chocolate, which I’ll cover in class. However, if you don’t feel comfortable tempering, or want a coating that’s quick and easy, I’ve got you. We’ll discuss the options you have for coating the bars in class.

Bounty Dessert Bars 

If you’re not familiar with Bounty Bars, they’re a sticky coconut bar covered in chocolate. It’s always been very difficult to replicate that sticky texture using healthy ingredients, but I finally figured it out and I think you’re going to love the simplicity of it. For my dessert bar version, this sticky coconut layer sits upon a chocolate crust and the bars are enrobed in “milk” chocolate. If you don’t want to temper the chocolate, no problem, we can cover other easier options in class.

Peanut Butter & Banana Dessert Bars

If you have been a student of mine for a while, you’ll know that I love using peanut and banana. I’m a pretty traditional gal when it comes to flavour combos and this one is just fantastic. You could easily change out the peanut butter for any other nut or seed butter and create a totally new bar. For this one, however, we’ll be making a peanut butter cookie dough layer first and then adding a thin layer of peanut butter praline. To that we add a banana caramel, top it up with lots of roasted peanuts and then enrobe it in dark chocolate.

Ganache Tart

No Bake Brownie Crust

For this tart, we begin by making my no bake brownie crust. This recipe has been tweaked and perfected over many years. I use it throughout my work in bonbons, chocolate bars, dessert bars and tarts alike. It’s rich and decadent, so the crust in this tart is thin in order to balance things well.

Creamy Chocolate Ganache

Ganache can be a tricky thing for people to make, but with my signature ganache recipe and method, you’ll find it a breeze. This base recipe can be adapted to suit many needs including glazing desserts, filling chocolate shells or as a tart filling as we’ll use it in this class.

Rum Soaked Bananas

This element really make the tart special. The bananas are soaked in a sweet rum marinade, lined on the crust and the ganache goes over the top of them. It brings a freshness to every bite and lightens the tart up. These could also be caramelised in the dehydrator or oven and laid on top of the tart with their delicious syrups.

Easy Dessert Slices

Pumpkin Pie Slice 

It’s that wonderful time of year again, Pumpkin season! This is a perfect dessert to make for the upcoming Holiday season. It’s got all the Pumpkin Pie vibes that one could want and it’s topped off (literally) with a sticky pecan caramel sauce on top. Serve it with your favourite whipped cream.

Gingerbread Slice 

Another homage to this time of year. Gingerbread and Pumpkin Pie are truly my favourite tastes of all time. I love warming spices and both of these desserts have them in spades. The gingerbread ‘cake’ is soft, moist and brimming with flavour! It pairs incredibly well with the caramel and chocolate ganaches on top. Both are very thin layers which keeps this dessert light and fresh, but also with that hint of decadence.

Carrot Pineapple Layer Cake

Soft, Moist Layer Cakes

The foundation of any great layer cake. This carrot layer cake is made using a dehydrator, so the resulting cake is similar to a baked one – soft, moist and bursting with flavour. This cake is 4 inches in diameter and about the same in height. You can also opt to make it a large cake.

Fermented Pineapple Cardamom ‘Buttercream’ Frosting

We’ll get into some easy fermentation by fermenting cashews which boost the nutritional properties and make these cakes a probiotic delight. Traditionally, carrot cake is finished with a vanilla cream cheese icing, but I decided to switch things up for this new iteration of my carrot layer cake. We’re using a Pineapple Cardamom cream cheese frosting. This pairs extraordinarily well with the spices and flavours in the carrot cake.

Decorating

Fermented ‘buttercream’ frostings work amazingly well for piping. You’ll learn some important tips and tricks to get you on your way and keep you rocking. We’ll finish the cake as seen in the photos, so I’ll show you a fun bit of piping that’s really easy to do, how to make these lovely fresh carrot curls and how to assemble it all so it looks delightful.

Mocha Hazelnut Layer Cake

Soft, Moist Layer Cakes

The foundation of any great layer cake. These cakes are made using a dehydrator, so the resulting cake is similar to a baked one – soft, moist and bursting with flavour. In this class we’re making a rich chocolate cake, full of flavour and the perfect texture.

‘Buttercream’ Frosting

We’ll get into some easy fermentation by fermenting cashews which boost the nutritional properties and make these cakes a probiotic delight. These “buttercream” frostings pipe like a dream, so if you have wanted the perfect decorating cream, look no further. For this cake we’re making a coffee frosting that pairs amazingly well with the chocolate cake and hazelnuts.

Mango Coconut Tartlets

Coconut Oat Tart Crust

This is a nut free, no-bake tart crust that goes perfectly with the tropical vibes in this tart. It’s simple to make and can be used to form little tartlets or a full size tart.

Mango Curd Filling 

This entire dessert is nut free which keeps it on the lighter side and allows the fruit to really take the spotlight. The base of this curd is coconut cream, so it keeps with the tropical theme and gives the creamy vibes we want in a curd. We use a combo of coconut oil and agar to set this curd into a light, airy texture while maintaining a creamy mouth-feel. For an oil-free tart, you could omit the coconut oil entirely.

Mango Gel

Mango is a wonderful fruit for so many reasons. One is that it has a gelatinous quality whereby it firms up when cooked and cooled. We use that to our advantage in this recipe to create a very simple gel that’s bursting with mango goodness in every bite. It brings the sauce-y element we need on this tart to keep it all feeling juicy with every bite.

Ice Cream Bars

Ice Cream Bases

The base recipe for these bars is super simple to make using easy to find ingredients online or in your local market. It’s a highly versatile recipe and, in the class booklet, I will provide you with 5 + tried and tested recipes to play with.

You can make these using either a nut free base, or one with nuts added. The base recipe is very simple regardless of whether you use nuts or not.

Recipes You’ll Get 

• Mint Chocolate Chip
• Chocolate Ice Cream with Cookie Dough Pieces
• Coffee Ice Cream with Hazelnut Caramel
• Maple Butterscotch Ice Cream with Pecan Caramel
• Peanut Butter with Chewy Medjool Date

Dipping Them in Chocolate

Unlike most of the dipping I get up to in my work, we don’t want to temper the chocolate for dipping these. Additionally, we need to tweak it a little so that the chocolate melts in your mouth and doesn’t go all waxy against the ice cream. I’ll show you the tricks in class to get the perfect shell on your ice cream bars.