A perfect Provençal summer dessert for me after a lazy summer lunch is strong hot coffee poured over a scoop of hazel nut ice cream, with a side sliver of Hazelnut and dark chocolate cake. I never re-read my Sophie Grigson book: A Curious Absence of Chickens without being inspired to create something new and delicious. Ok her book is about her life cooking in Puglia, Italy, and not Provence, however I always feel free to utilise all tips and ideas for great cooking in the Mediterranean.
Hazelnut ice cream
Having finally dug my ice cream machine out of its storage box, I am already starting to experiment in creating yummy desserts. My first sorbet out was a raspberry, lemon verbena and lemon one which was sooooo nice! I’ll probably use my David Liebowitz book: The Perfect Scoop to help me create the hazelnut ice cream. I adore simplified recipes, as even though I love to cook, cooking in Provence in the summer is hot work, especially when you can see an inviting pool from your kitchen window. So I will search high and low for an easy-ish but fool-proof one, ensuring that the taste and flavours are still zinging.
dark chocolate & hazelnut cake
The Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut Cake recipe involves everyday ingredients of hazelnuts, good cocoa powder, plain flour, baking powder unsalted butter, good extra virgin olive oil, muscovado sugar and 4 fine eggs. Plus some icing sugar and cocoa to decorate.
I do a lot of forward planning, and these are definitely on the cards for my summer cooking. Asap I have photos of these two, I will circle back and add to this post. And it really does not matter where you are, the ingredients are not outlandish and easily available. You may be inspired like I was, and want to recreate these two into a perfect provencal summer dessert . . . especially if like me you lack a real ‘sweet tooth’, yet still yearn sometimes for something just right, so as to finish off a perfect lunch or dinner.