Last year I wrote about Bitter Honey by Letitia Clark here. ( https://haftonandkelly.com/2020/06/ is the link but it’s the third post that month so you’ll have to scroll down past the garden and Matilda). Subtitled Recipes and Stories from the Island of Sardinia it managed to convert my kitchen and garden into a glimpse of Sardinia several times while we were unable to leave our homes. Now she has written La Vita è Dolce, in the same charming style, but this time with recipes that cater for the sweeter side of life. Many of the cakes, tarts, biscuits, puddings and pastries look magnificent but this is not a fiddly patisserie-style book; the recipes are enticing rather than intimidating. In a recipe for Sbriciolata (a delicious ricotta and dark chocolate almond crumble tart) Letitia describes the crumble mixture as ‘a loose and ragged rubble’ – none of the ‘fine breadcrumbs’ so often called for are deemed necessary here.

A preliminary read-through to find which recipes I’d like to make resulted in a huge list of potential delectables. I’m delighted to discover that Amaretti are easy to make and that there is a cake with Campari – a delicious-looking, upside-down creation with oranges and melt-in-the-mouth yoghurty sponge.

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In between the recipes there are short pieces on various ingredients, moka coffee pots and quanto basta, or why recipes can never be exact. Letitia is the perfect cookery writer: opinionated, helpful and easy-going. I made Ricciolinis partly because I love the combination of almonds and cherries but, if I’m honest, mainly because the name translates as ‘little hedgehogs’. They were utterly delicious.

Obviously I think you should buy the book, equally obviously I think that you should buy it from a real bookshop, not the faceless online you-know-what.

Jane