Amanda Saab, a social worker and home cook who lives near Detroit, riffs on her Lebanese grandmother's recipe for namoura, a cake made from semolina flour, soaked in syrup while it's still warm When she serves it at iftar dinners during Ramadan, Ms Saab often doses the syrup with a little bit of lavender extract

If you go to a children’s birthday party in Australia or New Zealand, you may not get birthday cake, but you are very likely to find fairy bread: triangles of untoasted white bread covered with margarine or butter and “hundreds and thousands” (known as sprinkles stateside) Fairy bread is a much-loved treat with fairly murky origins; one variation is hagelslag, a Dutch treat that uses chocolate sprinkles instead of rainbow-colored rounds After one bite of fairy bread, it is clear why the combination of soft bread, creamy butter and crunchy, sugary sprinkles is beloved by so many — and may be soon by you, too.