Vegan custard: the recipe

March 03, 2019 by Lucia D'Ulivo in Dessert

The idea was, indeed, to make the Sicilian gelo, replacing watermelon with mano and pineapple…after having placed the gelo in the fridge and waited patiently 4 hours (and eventually overnight, just to be 100% sure), my dessert hasn’t jellied :( Why? By browsing the web, I found that making a mano and pineapple gelo is indeed feasible…also because we use corn starch and not gelatine that will be hydrolyzed by the pineapple’s proteolytic enzymes. Can someone help me to figure this out???

Banana bread: the recipe

August 03, 2018 by Lucia D'Ulivo in Dessert

Speaking about fruit, I thought about banana bread. A while ago, encouraged by a friend, I tried a "healthy" version with half doses of sugar and butter...bah, forget it. I will share, instead, the recipe of my colleague, it's excellent, you won't regret it :) You can find it on my old blog.

Simple sugars and fruit juices: let’s shed some light

July 31, 2018 by Lucia D'Ulivo

There is the diffused and erroneous belief that sugars “naturally” contained in juices are of higher nutritional quality than those sold in packages, in every grocery store. When I speak about juices, I mean those obtained by squeezing or homogenization, without sugar added. The misunderstanding is always due to the bogus belief that, for example, the sucrose “naturally” contained in fruit is healthier than the commercial one (“industrial”). Based on this belief, marketing has built fruitful campaigns that have increased the profits of many companies, but didn’t significantly change the life of consumers. Please, follow me. The discussion is long and I will probably annoy you the chemical part of the story.

Raspberry gelato: the recipe

May 18, 2018 by Lucia D'Ulivo in Dessert

We are finally here, for Thursday’s, ahem, Friday’s recipe :) No Proustian memories, today. Actually, raspberry gelato and, generally speaking, all the berries gelato were never my cup of tea. The reason why I propose this recipe, today, was strictly dictated by practical reasons (=I had a box of raspberries on the edge of going moldy :P).

Berry jellies: the recipe with pectin

April 05, 2018 by Lucia D'Ulivo in Dessert

But now, let’s get back to fruit pastes or jellies. It is with much of joy that I announce that I finally squared the circle! More precisely, I manage to find a type of pectin that is easy to handle and gives reproducible results. The beauty of fruit pastes is that they can be prepared from juice. The purists might turn up their nose, but it is an option, in particular if the fruit you are looking for is not in season (and well, now, it is definitely not the right time for berries, and those you find in the grocery taste nothing :P).