You can’t really get any better than an Easter brunch of pancakes, bacon, sausages, sweet and savoury versions of French toast, frittata, tea, lattes, and champagne cocktails.

Oh wait, you can if that brunch is homemade.  Check.

And you can if that brunch is made by Sugar.  Check.

When your plate looks like the following, there’s nothing left to do but smile, pick up your knife and fork, and dig in.

The bliss that comes from eating such food confirms why breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

A high from sugar, white flour, cheese, pork, butter, pork and butter fat, alcohol, and caffeine is the stuff of legend.

So, what’s that red stuff on the plate?

Overheard:  Fruit at breakfast is like green vegetables at Thanksgiving.

An unnecessary reminder that you’re not being as good as you could be in the health department.

That’s where the Barefoot Contessa comes in.  Like many contemporary chefs, she’s not shy of adding a little richness to her fruit and veg.

For Easter brunch, I made our fruit fat (read: delicious) by making her mascarpone fruit dip.  It was like melted vanilla ice cream.  Rich, but not crazy-rich like whipped cream.  Not too sweet.  Just perfect.

Mascarpone Fruit Dip

1 small tub (around 250 g) of mascarpone cheese

2 tablespoons of honey

Half a teaspoon of vanilla extract

Seeds from one vanilla bean

Mix—you can thin with cream if you like.

Then, serve.

Lastly, enjoy.

Tropical heat is a magic ingredient. Temperature, humidity, and sunshine combine to form a fairy dust that touches flowering vegetation in regions of the world lucky enough to hover on central latitudes.  I left a world of standard apple-banana-orange colours to fall head over heels in one full of rich hues, aromatic flavours, and addictive textures. 

Jewels in the culinary crown of Vietnam, the fruits native to the South are… better than chocolate.  Their sweet juices, soft flesh, and heavenly perfumes reference the sun and all the glory that it brings.

The sun bursts from passion fruit, jackfruit, and pommelos.

Can you get much prettier than a mangosteen?

Its thick case is almost sponge-like.  You can push on the bottom to crack it and reveal the edible segments.  Soft and delicate, they burst with intense sweetness.

In a place where you “don’t drink the water,” the plethora of peel-able fruit is extraordinary.  The milk apple requires you only to scoop out the soft middles of the halves or quarters you cut.  Doing so releases it’s milky juice that should also be lapped up.

My new favourite fruit is the custard apple.  It’s slightly fibrous flesh is dense with tropical sugar (and apparently calories).  It is contained within a thick, bumpy skin that could camouflage it as an artichoke from afar.  Its custard flesh is dotted with shiny and black kidney-shaped seeds. 

I’m not sure how to describe it except to say that it’s heavenly.  Perhaps more apt—it’s worth spending 18 hours in a plane to get one.