A few years ago my friend Haley requested an "icebox cake" as his birthday dessert of choice. He (yes, he) described a towering black and white confection of stacks upon stacks of chocolate layers nestled between blankets of snowy-white whipped cream. I was excited at the very thought of mastering this mysteriously named "icebox cake." And then I Googled it...

A Visit with Woodblock Chocolate in Portland, Oregon

As Dessert Week draws to a close (aren't you sorry to see it go? We are!) let's talk about chocolate for a moment. Chocolate inspires the most passionate responses — I know people who say, hyperbolically, that they could not live without chocolate, that their ultimate dessert is a wedge of the darkest chocolate cake imaginable. But chocolate doesn't really do it for me; I like it in small amounts or swirled with peanut butter. What about you? Is chocolate the best thing ever, or could you take it or leave it? 

If Dan Lepard's new cookbook Short & Sweet is the one-stop shop for homey everyday sweets and baked goods, Patisserie is the one-stop shop for all things classic and French. Want to become the master of puff pastry? Craft your own pulled-sugar roses? Drap petits fours with fondant? With over 3,200 step-by-step photos and 210 recipes in 800 pages, this book will show you exactly how to do all of these things and more. Wowzas.

Every now and again, I stumble across something online that makes me smile. Sometimes it's an incredibly well-written article; other times it's a preview of an album I've been wanting to hear. Then there are the times when all it takes to put me in a good mood is the thought of a single-serve soft chocolate chip cookie in a cup. 

There’s something exciting about dessert in our house — shocking, even. Dessert rarely appears at the table, even though we have no specific rules about sweets. Every now and then one of the children will make a request — usually cookies, a love they inherited from their dad — or I'll feel nostalgic for something like cobbler, vinegar pie, or homemade Magic Shell over ice cream. Dessert is not a required course and we definitely don’t need it to survive. However, because my husband and I come from different cultures (I am all South Carolina, while he is half Serbian and half French) he’s been known to claim his Gallic heritage as the reason he must have dessert. But he comes by his love of dessert honestly...

Madeleines.  That little French butter cake that most (non-French) people think of more as a cookie.  They have a classy, literary reputation, having served as Proust's muse in his famous Remembrance of Things Past.  Like most muses, however, madeleines appear to be simple but actually require a fair amount of patience and careful following of instructions.  In the end, though,  you are rewarded with a truly unique little cake, browned and crispy on the outside and spongy and soft on the inside.  A perfect accompaniment to your afternoon cup of tea.

It seems like only yesterday that the frozen yogurt craze swept the nation, cluing in the general public to what we've known for years: creamy, tart, refreshing yogurt makes a great dessert. From yogurt banana splits to yogurt-pomegranate pops, these ten recipes could give the local fro-yo joint a run for its money.

I spend a great deal of time in the kitchen writing and developing recipes and there are days when I don't have as many ideas swimming around in my head — days when I struggle to come up with original ideas for new work. On those days, I look to cookbooks and favorite online sites to mix things up a little, to hand over a slice of inspiration. Last week I found just that with this simple non-dairy Cereal Milk Ice Cream. More

Have you ever become so totally obsessed with an ingredient or recipe it completely takes over your life? Because that is exactly what happened when I recently sampled an ethereal Chocolate Hazelnut Torte at a local Atlanta restaurant. That particular sweet and nutty flavor combination is always a favorite, but it was the crispy, creamy wafer crust that had me at hello.

Some days you want a dessert that goes all out. Some days you want — scratch that, need — a rainbow sprinkle cake in your life. And The Cake Blog has an easy-to-follow tutorial to make it happen.