The Last Bite: A Whole New Approach to Making Desserts Through the Year

The Last Bite: A Whole New Approach to Making Desserts Through the Year is an all-encompassing baking book that explores inventive flavour combinations across puddings, pastries and more. It sets out a clear aim: to make desserts “delicious from first to last bite”, with an approach designed to appeal even to those who say they do not do desserts.

Written by award-winning pastry chef Anna Higham, the book reframes dessert-making through techniques more often associated with savoury cooking. It encourages you to engage your senses by tasting, seasoning and allowing ingredients to shine. Organised around key ingredients season by season, it explains the “how” and “why” of dessert cooking, with guidance on working with fruit, grains, fats and chocolate, alongside tips on constructing desserts and examining seasoning, structure and texture to amplify flavour.

Key details

• By Anna Higham
• Explores dessert-making through the year, season by season
• Over 150 base recipes and over 40 plated dishes
• Includes bakes, tarts, jams, mousses, meringues and ice creams
• 87 recipe and produce photographs, plus illustrated openers

Synopsis

This book presents a modern approach to desserts, focusing on flavour, seasoning and technique. It covers seasonal ingredients and offers practical advice on building desserts with attention to structure and texture. Examples span the year, from ricotta ice cream and roasted peaches in summer to apple crisps and pear sorbet in autumn, rhubarb rice pudding and puff pastry in winter, and milk meringues and prune purées in spring.