Tasting notes

Sweet (and fuss-free) treats for family and friends

Crowd-pleasing home-made gifts

LIKE A FAVOURITE jumper or fail-safe lipstick, there are cookbooks that – treasured and well thumbed – are the first to be pulled out when the mood is right. Annie Rigg’s Gifts from the Kitchen appeals unashamedly to my sweet tooth. The recipes are not exclusively sugar-based – there are cheese biscuits, chutneys and mustards in there, and even home-made pasta shapes stuffed with butternut squash, spinach and ricotta (one of very few lengthy methods) – but give me the chocolate truffles, raspberry and rose wafers, and creamy vanilla fudge any day, and throw in tissue-paper-wrapped cookies, too.

Rigg, a Leiths-trained chef, food writer and stylist whose recipes are foolproof and low on fuss, recommends that these treats are boxed, beribboned and given away, ‘sure to brighten anyone’s day and make the world seem a better place’. Cooking for others can feel grati- fying for many of us, a perk-up for the chef as much as the dinner guest; and handing over a parcel whose contents will be consumed with a smile harks back to childhood projects, baking flapjacks for Mum and Dad or ‘stained glass’ biscuits for Granny.

Gifts from the Kitchen was first published in 2010, made a paperback in 2015, and thanks to popular demand is just about to be reprinted again by Kyle Books as a smaller hardback – a gift that keeps on giving, then, and a nice present itself in its new dinky format. It’s out on 7 March (for £15), so is timely for Mother’s Day (31 March) and Easter, or any occasion worth marking with a treat.

From top Annie Rigg’s lollipops; strawberry and vanilla conserve