SWEETS FOR SWEETIES
Valentine’s Day food ideas
“There’s something to be said about cooking from the heart and cooking with a certain intent,” says Poh Ling Yeow. “And it’s not always to be clever. It’s really cooking to nurture someone or touch some kind of feeling as well.”
For Valentine’s Day, sweet treats from her latest cookbook, Poh Bakes 100 Greats (Murdoch Books, 2019), offer the perfect opportunity to convey this sentiment. Yeow’s orange yogurt hearts with violet glaze and raspberries, and Persian love cake — both of which use the speedy muffin method (simply mixing dry ingredients with wet ingredients) — are suitable for a wide range of skill levels, including junior bakers.
And for those who only have eyes for chocolate, there’s Yeow’s flourless chocolate cake with Guinness ice cream. “It’s a really lovely combination and you can have it with strawberries (instead of raspberries),” she says. “Strawberries and chocolate are always a really nice thing for Valentine’s Day.”
Yeow is one of Australia’s bestloved cooking stars, and her culinary career began a decade ago as a Masterchef finalist. She’s a painter, author and co-owner of Jamface, a café and bakery in Adelaide.
The recipes in the book — “a wonderful mash-up of French and Australiana” — showcase her “minimum effort, maximum flavour” approach.
“The main thing is to get baking. People that have always been a little afraid of baking to maybe face their fears and just be inspired to have a go,” she says. “And also have that mentality of knowing it’s something they can’t harness overnight. It’s something they have to learn to love and keep working on, like all good things in life.” Recipes excerpted from Poh Bakes 100 Greats by Poh Ling Yeow (Murdoch Books).