L’Orient Le Jour spotlighted a recently published book for sweets by Lara Ariss, ‘Sweet Levantine’ which celebrates oriental confectionary recipes. These include gum Arabica, rose water, salted caramel, chocolate and halva, chocolate cookies with sesame oil, dates and cardamom, orange and wild thyme or zaatar and pomegranate pudding. Speaking to L’Orient Le Jour, Ariss said since her childhood she had a passion and fascination for making original desserts. She studied advertising and marketing at LAU and worked two years in this sector before she decided to enroll in the London-based Le Cordon Bleu institute where she specialized in baking and pastry. When she returned from the UK seven years ago, culinary art or specialty was not a popular occupation like now, she said, so she had to explain to people that cooking is a profession like any other. Later on, Ariss travelled to the US to attend book writing workshops and returned to Lebanon to publish her first book on traditional Lebanese cuisine ‘Levantine Harvest’ and open her kitchen in the Beirut neighborhood of Tallet el Khayat after catering from home for some time. “All the recipes I created myself,” she boasted. On her new book, Ariss said it took her one year to invent and try novel sweets recipes and another year to publish it. She also had to focus on the layout and design of her book in terms of images and colors, with the help of Joelle Kanaan, an expert in food photography. (L’Orient Le Jour, January 9, 2019)