Passionfruit Jellies (Pâte de Fruit)

Intensely flavorful with a delightful jammy texture that almost melts in your mouth, these passionfruit jellies are what’s known as pâte de fruit: a traditional French confection made by cooking fruit puree, pectin, and sugar until it sets into a firm gel that is then molded or cut into squares and dusted with granulated sugar.

Passionfruit is one of the most intensely flavored fruits, with a tart acidity that rivals that of any artificially flavored ‘sour’ candy (love Sour Patch Kids? Then you’ll adore these!) Made with just a few simple ingredients including passionfruit pulp, sugar, and pectin, these passionfruit jellies have a natural passionfruit flavor that is bold and bright and will send your tastebuds flying.

Pâte de fruit is a sugar-based confection that relies on pectin for its setting power rather than gelatin, which gives these candies a unique, jammy texture that practically melts in your mouth (unlike the “bouncy” chewiness of a gummy bear, for example). That also means that, unlike gelatin-based gummies, pate de fruit is entirely vegetarian (and, if you buy organic or vegan sugar, also vegan!)

Pectin-set candies are a bit more involved than gelatin-based ones, as you do need to cook the sugar and fruit mixture to a very specific temperature to achieve the ideal texture. That means pull out your most accurate digital thermometer (psst, have you calibrated it recently?)

You’ll also need to carefully manage the pH (acidity) of your fruit mixture, as we want the pectin to set, yes, but only at the end when it’s reached the appropriate temperature (otherwise you’ll just end up with a pot full of molten gloop). This is achieved by buffering the pH with baking soda, cooking the mixture up to temperature, then adding citric acid to bring down the pH back to where we want it for the pectin to set and for the passionfruit flavor to pop.

But the final result, when you bite into that first sugar-dusted square, is a bright pop of tropical flavor that will tickle your tastebuds in all the right ways. It’s intensely tart and perfectly sweet, with a satisfying texture that’s delicate and jammy and effortlessly melts onto your tongue.

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Black Sesame Amaretti Cookies

Amaretti are some of my favorite cookies for a reason: they are ridiculously simple to make, with only 3 main ingredients—plus the black sesame in this case—and always a crowd pleaser. Even better, they’re naturally gluten-free AND dairy-free (but you won’t miss a thing, I promise!)

These eye-catching black sesame amaretti cookies might look colorless, but they are certainly not flavorless! With an intense roasted black sesame flavor that’s supported by the nutty almond, this Asian-inspired twist on a classic Italian cookie is both surprising and satisfying, not to mention visually stunning with dark gray crackles peeking through a snow white powdered sugar coating.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve published a new amaretti flavor, and dare I say this one might be my favorite yet?

I’ll be honest I didn’t expect them to be quite so good the first time I made them. Usually my first go at any recipe is like throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see what happens. It started with a spark of an idea that came to me while looking at the various nuts, seeds, and powders stashed in my pantry that made me think, “what if I swapped out some of the almond flour with finely ground black sesame seeds?” In this case that hunch that turned into a munch (we devoured the first batch in no time!)

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