If you’ve ever seen any of Alison Roman’s chatty cooking videos on YouTube, you’ll know why we gravitate towards her simple, joyful, slightly messy style of cooking. Apparently, her idea of making dessert is very much the same. ‘Generally speaking, my recipe style and aesthetic could be described as “rustic”, “carefree”, “approachable”,’ she writes in her introduction to her latest book, Sweet Enough. ‘My desserts tend to follow suit, a little wild-looking and decidedly unkempt. Perfect they are not; I admit that I didn’t so much choose this aesthetic as this aesthetic chose me.
‘Conventional wisdom suggests that cooking is wild and free, encouraging creativity and improvisation. Desserts, on the other hand, should be tidy and precise. Prim, proper, controlled. Scientific, even. But as someone who would never be described as tidy or precise, who is not prim or proper, who is not a scientist, I reject those sentiments. I am, however, a person who finds joy in licking the leftover pudding at the bottom of the pot, and who can’t help but slice a pie before it’s properly cooled just to taste the insides (even though I will tell you not to). I am a person who wipes floury hands on their pants, who will use only one bowl to mix a cake batter if it means I don’t have to wash another thing, who will avoid using anything that gets plugged in at all costs, even if (or especially when) it means whipping cream by hand. Desserts, baking, whatever we want to call it here should be for anyone at any time, requiring little more than two hands and
