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Dessert recipes

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Dessert recipes
As a former pastry chef, senior food and wine editor Susan Jung has always had a thing about desserts – like , Japanese-style gooey cheese tarts, chocolate rum raisin cake, and chocolate layer cake with salted caramel and crunchy praline. Learn how to make these treats and dozens more on this page.
highlights from
100 Top Tables 2025 Restaurant Directory
100 Top Tables 2025 Restaurant Directory
At Mesa by José Avillez, the restaurant’s namesake chef (left) works closely with head chef Herlander Fernandes to craft a menu that reinterprets Portuguese cuisine for international diners in Macau.

Mesa by José Avillez celebrates artistry of Portuguese cuisine in Macau

In partnership with:SJM Resorts
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Enjoy a classic Christmas turkey at Regent Hong Kong this festive season. Photo: Handout

Where to enjoy Christmas dinner in Hong Kong this festive season

Hot Wine at The Aubrey, Hong Kong, one of the many seasonal drinks on offer in the city this year. Photo: Handout

Your 2025 guide to the best Christmas cocktails in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s hospitality sector faces staffing shortages, but start-up Shift Happens is offering a recruitment solution. Photo: Jelly Tse

Need restaurant staff? Shift Happens is here to help

Beloved Hong Kong bar The Daily Tot, one day after its closure this month. Photo: Jocelyn Tam

Looking back on a bruising year for Hong Kong’s bar industry

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Content from SCMP's Specialist Publications
Sesame seeds, which come in various colours, are used in Asian, Middle Eastern and African cuisine. The tasty oil extracted from them is often drizzled over dishes. Photo: Shutterstock
Food and Drinks

How healthy, oily sesame seeds add flavour to dishes in Asia and beyond

The tiny seeds, which are sprinkled over food or pressed for their nutritious oil, are a key ingredient of Chinese deep-fried sesame balls.

Food and Drinks

Why chocolate is more than just a sweet treat

Food and Drinks

All about mace, nutmeg’s twin. How cooks use it and a recipe idea

Food and Drinks

3 new pastry chefs in Hong Kong who are redefining desserts

‘Sweet but not too sweet’ – Eve Minialai of Louise, Leo Faler of Cristal Room by Anne-Sophie Pic, and Astoria Koh of Caprice rise to the challenge.

Hongkongers like their dessert a little less sweet than Westerners, and three pasty chefs are rising to the challenge. Photo: Jocelyn Tam
Food and Drinks

All about cardamom, how to use it in cooking, and a recipe idea

The bitter spice comes in green and black varieties with the former more intense. It is used sparingly in Indian dishes and desserts.

Food and Drinks

All about vanilla, how to use it in baking, and a dessert recipe idea

Why is vanilla so expensive and how should I use it in the kitchen? Your questions answered, plus an indulgent recipe for meringues.

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Food and Drinks

From Hello Kitty to Rolex watches, Hong Kong baker’s custom cakes

Hong Kong baker Alison Chan crafts hyper-realistic ‘illusion cakes’ that resemble everyday objects – and now she’s now getting recognition with her first exhibition, at the city’s K11 Musea mall.

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Alison Chan at Dear Harley Bakery. From Hello Kitty to Rolex watches, her custom cakes are so realistic you’ll do a double take. Photo: Xiaomei Chen
Food and Drinks

‘It’s very therapeutic’: Malaysian baker on creating her floral jelly cakes

In a layer of translucent jelly on a cake base, Siamy Tan sculpts stunning flower designs. When people in Hong Kong saw the cakes on social media they asked for lessons. Now she’s learning more skills to pass on.

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Food and Drinks

Would you eat Wagyu, oyster, bitter gourd or chilli … in a dessert?

Fine dining chefs the world over are infusing desserts with savoury flavours, from Michelin-starred Noma in Denmark’s dish with oyster stock, to Ynshir in London’s treacle tart with A5 Wagyu fat

Susan Jung's recipes

How to make calamansi tart with toasted macadamia crust and meringue

Calamansi may be small but they punch above their weight when it comes to flavour. The intensity is balanced with crème fraîche.

How to make a refreshing calamansi and crème fraîche tart with macadamia crust and meringue. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Susan Jung's recipes

How to make fig and raspberry tart with a silky smooth crust

This rich, sweet tart is light and silky smooth with a brioche crust, fresh figs and raspberries, and a colourful pistachio filling.

How to make fig and raspberry tart with pistachio frangipane and brioche crust: silky smooth and rich. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Susan Jung's recipes

How to make plum and raspberry pie – looks good, tastes good

This fruit pie calls for dark plums that aren’t too juicy, and if you have one, a pizza stone to brown the bottom. Adjust the sweetness to your own preference.

Susan Jung's recipes

How to make bread pudding with whisky sauce and home-made custard

Three custards and whisky make this a rich, indulgent adult-only dessert. Cooking custard takes patience, a low heat and plenty of stirring.

Susan Jung's recipes

How to make caramelised apple tarts, inspired by a Parisian bakery

This recipe, inspired by the famous Poilâne bakery, uses puff pastry, which you can make or buy, and firm acidic apples that will hold their shape during cooking.

How to make caramelised apple tarts: light, fluffy and inspired by a famous French bakery. Photo: Koji Studio
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After Squid Game’s dalgona, how to make hotteok - Korean sweet pancakes

These Korean pancakes have a sweet nutty cinnamon flavour, and are perfect as a winter snack. Beware of the super hot filling when you bite into them.

Hotteok - Korean pancakes with brown sugar and walnut filling. Photo: SCMP/Jonathan Wong
Desserts

How to make banana splits for grown-ups, with an elegant twist

An elegant take on the crowd-pleasing banana split, dulce de leche adds caramel sweetness and sugar-and-spice pecans bring the heat.

Food and Drinks

How to make Macanese pasteis de nata, Macau-style Portuguese egg tarts

A variation on Portuguese egg tarts, these are easy to make, especially using commercial puff pastry, and use a unique non-rolling method to create the tart shells.

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Food and Drinks

Gaston Lenôtre started dessert revolution that swept the world

In Lenôtre’s Ice Creams and Candies, French pastry chef Gaston Lenôtre demystifies desserts and shows you how to make them at home. Just use the best ingredients, he says.

French pastry chef Gaston Lenotre cooking in France in 1993. Photo: Eric Brissaud/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Susan Jung's recipes

How to make chocolate and caramel verrines with salted peanut praline

This recipe from our archives shows how to make an elegant layered pre-dessert with a light chocolate mousse and indulgent caramel.

How to make hazelnut tart from the Alice B Toklas Cookbook

Cookery memoirs can be a gold mine, and this recipe is adapted from a classic of the genre.

Susan Jung's recipes

How to make classic Cantonese mango pudding and mango sorbet

Mango pudding is a favourite dessert in Hong Kong, and this simple recipe lets you make it at home. Choose good, ripe mangoes.

How to make classic Cantonese mango pudding (above) at home. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Desserts

How to make double chocolate cherry tarts

With chocolate in both the pastry and the ganache, these cherry tarts are rich and indulgent. You can make them in advance, but they are better served warm from the oven.

This double-chocolate cherry tart is rich and decadent, and best served warm from the oven. Photo: Koji Studio
Susan Jung's recipes

How to make brown sugar pavlova, the dessert from Down Under

In a twist on the Aussie and Kiwi favourite, this pavlova dials down the sweetness with brown sugar meringue, piled with whipped cream and fresh fruit, just as it should be.

Coronavirus China

A Hong Kong-based French patisserie that is eyeing expansion in China

Paul Lafayet plans to open around 100 outlets on the mainland, as it eyes China’s growing market for desserts that is set to reach US$37.6 billion a year by 2025.

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Food and Drinks

Why nuns were in the habit of creating heavenly desserts

The French have canelés, the Portuguese have queijadas and the Italians have ‘virgin’s breasts’ – all invented or perfected by nuns. There are a few reasons why so many desserts and candies originated in Catholic convents.

Bebinca is a layer cake from the Santa Monica Convent in Goa, India. Photo: Shutterstock
Recipes for special occasions

How to make a NSFM chocolate rum-raisin cake

To the untrained eye, this cake might not be much of a looker, but it packs a boozy punch.

Susan Jung’s chocolate rum-raisin cake. Photography: Bruce Yan. Styling: Nellie Ming Lee
Desserts

China vs Italy: which country ‘invented’ ice cream?

In the book Ices Italia, author Linda Tubby explores the uncertain origins of ice cream and recounts how it became ‘the world’s favourite comfort food’.

Susan Jung's recipes

How to make chocolate and salted caramel tarts

With its chocolate pastry, gooey caramel filling and rich glaze, this dessert recipe is worth its (pinch of) salt.

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