More than a decade after acai bowls reached peak popularity in Australia, the Amazonian berry is back, with a dedicated TikTok fanbase – and a soft-serve makeover Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email In Old Guildford, a suburb in Sydney’s west, there’s a small cafe open until midnight called Caffeine Hit. It’s a fair walk from the main strip, in a mainly residential area, with a bottle shop next door and an Arabic church across the road. It doesn’t have a flashy dining room, a fancy menu or a famous chef, but there’s often an evening queue outside. Everyone is there to get one thing ..read more

Spring’s fresh new shoots deserve the very lightest touch The tender young shoots are here, long-stemmed broccoli, purple sprouting and early asparagus all waiting in line in for a spoonful of hollandaise sauce. I ring the changes by stirring in a few fresh garlic or tarragon leaves, or the finely grated zest of an orange, then add a textural contrast with toasted almonds or fried breadcrumbs – sometimes both ..read more

A creamy mango frozen dessert with a salty-sour chilli kick inspired by a Mexican street-food favourite I spent two glorious weeks in Mexico City last year, and nearly every day I bought a large cup of the juiciest mango, all chopped up and sprinkled generously with a bright-red powder that I quickly learned was called Tajín. This is a ready-made spicy mix of chilli peppers, lime and salt that transforms mango into a perfectly sweet, spicy, tangy snack with which I soon became obsessed. I’ve channelled those flavours into this semifreddo for a refreshing, no-bake pudding. Discover Benjamina’s ..read more

Scoop something cold and sweet into something soft and bready for a scrumptious sandwich treat The Amalfi coast, summer 2005: I’m 14 years old and on a family holiday. I keep seeing people eating these brioche rolls stuffed with ice-cream and, naturally, they’re all I can think about. When I finally get one, it’s not at all how I’d imagined – the brioche is a bit stale, and the sun melts the ice-cream inside and it runs down my elbow. I still love the idea of it, though, and I like to think this version is an improvement on that first one I ate in Italy ..read more

All four Thai flavour sensations – salty, sweet, sour and fragrant – feature in a prawn salad with green mango and peanuts and a pineapple coconut lime loaf for dessert I still remember the first time I tried Thai green mango salad. It was, and is, a heady combination of flavours: salt, in both crystals and from fish sauce; sugar, preferably unrefined; fresh chilli, lots of it; citrus tang from the lime; and lots of aromatic notes from the herbs. It’s also very simple to bash together at home, as is this embellished version with prawns and peanuts. Just make sure you have a large pestle and mo ..read more

Will your toasted hazelnuts hang around long enough to make these delightful Piemontese biscuits sandwiched together with chocolate? They might be smaller than the point of a pin, but pollen grains are packed with information that endures. Pollen trapped in sediment, or fossilised within rocks, can be analysed by paleoclimatologists to chart changes in vegetation and climate going back hundreds of thousands of years. It was pollen that revealed hazel to be the first of the deciduous forest trees to migrate from what is now Asia Minor and send down roots all over the place in the postglacial pe ..read more

Store-cupboard heaven: a no-bake, creamy coconut and passionfruit tart with a biscuit base, and a simple and adaptable spiced pineapple tart with bay cream I’ve always felt that dessert is the best part of a meal. And I’m typically the designated dessert person – the one who volunteers to bring along something sweet. It’s a role I take very seriously. My new book is full of the recipes I make for those cosy dinner parties with friends, for church potlucks, last-minute get-togethers, weekend lunches, big family gatherings and everything in between. These two tarts put store-cupboard staples and ..read more

While some purists cry quelle horreur, the famous pastry’s latest iteration is proving a happy amalgam at one Sydney bakery Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Parisian pastry-chef-purists say they will “never do le crookie”, Adrien Chrunyk warns me. I ask the French baker if he disagrees – which I assume he does, given he is handing me a crookie he made himself, still warm from the oven, while we talk in his shop Tonton Bread in Surry Hills ..read more

Teenagers queue outside bakeries to buy pastry seen on TikTok that puts American twist on French pâtisserie It was 3 February when the queues started forming at Boulangerie Louvard in Paris. Even in the sort of downpour that usually empties streets, clued-up teenagers gathered outside the family-run bakery in the 9th arrondissement, desperate to get their hands on one thing: its owner Stéphane Louvard’s invention, le crookie. It’s a crisp croissant filled with American-style cookie dough, then baked to achieve a soft, gooey centre, and a video of the Frankensteined pastry had gone viral on Tik ..read more

Pleasingly retro, fudgy cupcakes with a white chocolate bark, and crunchy-chewy chocolate and icing-filled meringues Easter is a wonderful time for baking, and today’s recipes are both family crowdpleasers and perfect for getting kids involved with decorating. The rich chocolate cupcake sponge is divine, topped with a swirl of silky ganache icing and playful shards of Easter “bark”. The meringues are super-cute, too: individual nests dressed with cream, chocolate drizzle and mini eggs ..read more