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Nature’s viagra and other wonders of the world of tempting Valentine’s desserts

Iced treat: Green fig preserve ice cream with halved fig preserve on the side. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

14 Feb 2025

Chocolate, strawberries, sensuous ice creams, delectable tarts – we’ve trawled through our treasure chest of recipes to sweeten your valentine with desserts both hot and cold. Here’s our Top 10.

There’s an academy in Treviso, Italy, that is devoted to the promotion of tiramisù, and which likes to spin the enchantingly unlikely yarn that Italy’s famous dessert “was invented by a clever ‘maitresse’ of a house of pleasure in the centre of Treviso”. Of course it was.

It’s also known as “Nature’s Viagra” – find out why in my full story linked below.

Now, we need to take this with a pinch of castor sugar, because the same website makes various claims that not everyone is likely to accept. Still, the people behind the academy – the Accademia del Tiramisù, if you please – are clearly passionate about the dessert and how it should be made. (The supposedly authentic recipe is on their website.)

Luxurious, sensuous, moreish – tiramisù is surely the ultimate temptress among desserts, and there are many who argue that it is the most popular after-dinner treat on the planet – but there’s a wealth of material worth reading about tiramisù, which you can delve into more deeply in my column about tiramisù linked in the next paragraph. Which brings us to:

Tiramisù

Tony Jackman’s decadent, authentic tiramisù. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The creamy, coffee-rich chilled dessert, laden with booze-sodden Savoiardi biscuits (aka ladyfingers or boudoir biscuits) is our top choice of the desserts best suited to ending a romantic dinner, if not ending the entire night. The rest of our Top 10 follow.

Find the recipe here. (Scroll down, it follows the column.)

Black truffle ice cream

Tony Jackman’s black summer truffle ice cream, served in bowls from Mervyn Gers Ceramics. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

I bought some black truffles at David Higgs’s Pantry supermarket in Rosebank, Joburg, two years ago and, among other recipes, put my mind to making black truffle ice cream. It was the sort of ice cream you’d make for a lover; seductive and dreamy.

The other wow factor, inevitably, is that the person you’re trying to impress will know that you have spent a small fortune on truffles, although the counterpoint to this is that while truffles are eyewateringly expensive, a little of it goes a very long way.

If they’re preserved in brine in a jar, they have a good shelf life, but once opened you’ll need to use them up in the few days after opening it. That shouldn’t be too hard an ask.

Make my decadent black truffle ice cream here.

Tipsy Tart, aka Cape Brandy Pudding

A classic, zested up: Tony Jackman’s zesty Tipsy Tart. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Lace, in fashion, is synonymous with allure; not only lingerie, but that black lace dress worn over a camisole. Every now and then I buy my wife something in black lace, because I know she appreciates it and feels special.

But black lace is not only for women in today’s world. There are lace men’s shirts and even suits, so this desirable fabric choice now covers (barely) all fashion bases.

But that’s not the kind of lace we’re really talking about here. I’m talking about lace as a verb – to lace food with liquor.

Our traditional Tipsy Tart (and yes, we can make off-colour jokes about those two words) has been a reliable choice of a Valentine’s dessert for decades in South Africa, and it’s all our own even though it has travelled around the world. Because it’s that good.

The liquor in it, of course, is brandy – its other popular name being Cape Brandy Pudding. I wrote about that here, and you can make my version of Tipsy Tart/Cape Brandy Pudding using the recipe in that story. And it’s a very interesting tale…

Pears Belle Hélène

Pears Belle Hélène with proper custard-based ice cream in the original style of Auguste Escoffier. (Photo: Louis Pieterse)

Now here’s a throwback. Pears Belle Hélène is one of the dreamiest desserts there is, and in the Sixties and Seventies in South Africa it was de rigueur on hotel dining room menus.

It combines five-star quality vanilla ice cream (and do make it the proper French way, please, to make the dish as luxurious as possible) with poached pears.

It’s divine, gorgeous to look at, and you can read all about this classic dessert, and the recipes for both the ice cream and the pears, right here.

Rich chocolate tart

Tony Jackman’s rich chocolate tart. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

This recipe was the result of my quest to try to emulate a Marco Pierre White chocolate tart recipe I once made when we lived in southern England two decades ago. It had appeared in The Times. But no amount of trawling the internet would cough up the holy grail of chocolate tart recipes.

So I decided to devise a chocolate tart recipe of my own – the object of it being as decadent as that Marco Puerre White one – and I was thrilled with the results.

There isn’t much in the world of chocolate desserts more swoonworthy than a deeply decadent chocolate tart, and I hope you like it as much as I did. Here’s my recipe.

Panna cotta, the ‘cooked cream’ of cold puddings

In the pink: panna cotta and macerated strawberries infused with rose water pink gin. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Strawberries and creamy, dreamy panna cotta – that’s seduction on a plate. The strawberries are laced (there’s that word again) with Musgrave rosewater pink gin, and if that doesn’t scream “Valentine!” I don’t know what does.

There’s an intriguing story or three behind panna cotta, though whether the legends are true is unclear. There are saucy stories behind all sorts of recipes, and whether they are true is hardly the point. Life is more interesting with tales worth reading, even if they are tall.

More about that, and my recipe, here.

Strawberry tart

Tony Jackman’s strawberry tart, a cake-like dessert. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

This was one of those recipes that could go either way – I concoct the recipe, bake it, and wait to see what happens. The result was interesting – somewhere between a tart and a cake. Nice and gooey at the bottom in the way of a malva pudding.

But as you can see, it looks more like a cake, and has that kind of texture too.

The strawberries are macerated in liqueur first – I used Pineau de Laborie, only because I had it, but use any liqueur or noble late harvest wine.

It’s an ideal Valentine’s treat, and the recipe is here.

Dark chocolate cake

Rich dark chocolate cake. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

For years, decades, I’d had so many disappointments when ordering a slice of chocolate cake that looked like a million dollars. Then, when carving out a spoonful of it and tasting it, it delivers none of the rich, chocolaty decadence you were hoping for.

So I set out to write a chocolate cake recipe that would be so chocolaty that you’d sigh and swoon and yell, THAT’S the one.

Okay, now that I’ve set that up, you might say that it’s a brave and overly bold claim to make. Well, make it and let’s see. I hope you think I pulled it off. I have a very discerning, hard-to-please friend who is chefs’ academy-trained and he raves about it.

The recipe is here.

Peppermint Crisp tart

Tony Jackman’s peppermint crisp caramel tart. Now you can have a turn at sending us your best dessert... (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Two tarts walk into a bar. One says…

Just kidding. This is one of two very South African tarts that I weighed up before choosing one to include in this Top 10. The other was Cremora Tart. But this one edged ahead by a whisper.

A traditional Peppermint Crisp Tart contains two ubiquitous South African sweet treats – Peppermint Crisp, of course, and Nestlé Caramel Treat. Together, they conspire to delight and intrigue.

The peppermint flavour affords this chilled tart a certain “after dinner” feel, while the caramel adds a decadent counterpoint. Make it for your valentine here. (It was published at the time of a major rugby match, so ignore that aspect of the story.)

Green fig preserve ice cream

fig preserves Iced treat: Green fig preserve ice cream with halved fig preserve on the side. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

I combined our beloved preserved green figs with the classic French way of making a custard-based ice cream to create a luxurious frozen concoction redolent of the platteland.

It has a mildly gingery flavour, that being one of the elements of making preserved green figs, and consequently it could be matched with a glass of one of our superb ginger liqueurs.

Here’s the recipe, and while you’re making it, drink a toast to all valentines everywhere, and to a world free of all that stuff that’s happening in the background of our lives. There are more important things. DM

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