Five desserts worth the detour this month

We ate a great deal of dessert this month, which is the kind of sentence that sounds better than the reality of week three. Five of them were genuinely worth the detour.

The basque cheesecake at Camden Lane

Burnt on top in the way it is supposed to be, and still faintly molten in the middle. What makes this one is restraint with the sugar — it tastes overwhelmingly of cream and caramelised top rather than sweetness, which is the entire point and the thing most versions get wrong. It travels well, too, which is rarer than it sounds.

Pistachio kunafa from Beirut Street

Ordered hot, eaten within about ten minutes, this is one of the best things on the platform. The pastry stays crisp against the cheese underneath for exactly that long, so this is a dessert to order at the same time as the mains rather than after them.

The dark chocolate tart at Otto

A small, extremely serious slice with a salt crust. It is rich enough that two people can share one and still feel they had dessert, and it holds its texture in a box better than anything else on this list.

Mango sticky rice from Ploy

Seasonal, and right now the mango is where it should be. Ask for the coconut cream on the side — it arrives separately anyway, but saying so means it gets packed cold, and the temperature contrast is most of the pleasure.

The soft-serve at Nonna Vera

An odd recommendation for delivery, and we are aware of that. Order it for collection. It is made to order with whatever fruit came in, and it is the one thing on this list where the fifteen-minute walk is genuinely part of the deal.

And one to plan an evening around

The soufflé at Maison Clair has to be ordered at the start of the meal and arrives forty minutes later, and it is the only dessert we tried this month that made the whole table stop talking. It does not travel at all. Go and sit down for it.