Dessert Recipes & Ideas

Have you seen the latest irresistible recipe making the blog rounds? We’re speaking about plum crumble, a dish that Molly of Orangette just put on the menu at Delancey, and a dish that has a quite impressive lineage going back through Luisa Weiss and Marian Burros. But sources aside, this dish speaks for itself. It’s freaking fantastic.We love plums; they are one of our favorite fruits in late summer and early fall.

Of all the pre-made and pre-packaged foods that we’ve been trying to move away from, we’ve found it hardest to let go of snack bars – particularly Nutri-Grain’s Fruit and Nut Bars. We were devastated when they disappeared from store shelves! Then again, now we’ve figured out how to make them ourselves!The beauty of making these ourselves is that we can add whatever fruits or nuts to the cereal base that we feel like.

Here’s a recipe that has been on our radar for a long time: Katherine Hepburn’s brownies. Yes, apparently Katharine Hepburn baked, and this recipe for fudgy brownies has been passed down in her name. We first heard about it from Laurie Colwin, and we bookmarked it then. But brownies are not our go-to dessert, and we took a long time to get around to trying these. That’s a shame.It’s a shame, because these, folks, are the perfect brownies. Well, at least we think so.

In accordance with last night’s Top Chef Masters events, we thought we’d share a recipe from Mr. Rick Bayless himself. This is one of our favorites and unlike his 27-ingredient Oaxacan Mole, this recipe only has 5 ingredients and doesn’t even require the stove!We loved Rick before, but even more once we discovered his Twitter obsession and his love for helping the home cook, our love could have turned to an infatuation.

Last week I was planning dinner for visiting friends, and I was seized by a craving for cool, creamy chocolate mousse. I had a bag of Scharffen-Berger chocolate burning a hole in my baking cupboard and no desire to turn on the oven. But there was just one problem: my friend is pregnant, and my favorite recipe for chocolate mousse has not one but two pregnancy no-no’s in it. What to do?Make pregnancy-safe chocolate mousse, of course!

If we had to name the ultimate Fair Food, hands down it would have to be funnel cakes. The sweet smell of fluffy, frying bread in combination with powdered sugar is enough to make even the strongest go weak in the knees.Well, lucky for you, they aren’t difficult to make and are perfect for a party or just a weeknight snack.Not wanting to disappoint anyone’s favorite childhood (or adult!

A granita is a traditional Italian dessert of puréed fresh fruit, sugar, and water that is semi-frozen and then scraped or shaved. Similar to sorbettos and italian ices, granitas differ because of a much coarser texture. They are very simple to make and usually never contain more than four ingredients, and so versatile; you can use almost any seasonal fruit to make a granita.

OK guys, this is it. If you bake just one cobbler this summer, this is the one.That’s a rather audacious claim, I realize, but this cobbler is just so good. It’s a proper cobbler: a biscuit dough enriched with egg to make a light, fluffy topping that really complements the tender fruit beneath.And ripe, tangy nectarines are also really perfect underneath that fluffy topping. They are already sweet (yes, drastically reduce the amount of sugar this recipe calls for!

OK everyone, here is an ice cream mix-in you do not want to miss. While at Trader Joe’s last weekend, stocking up for a lunch with family, I spied these milk chocolate covered peanut butter crackers on the shelf of new releases. These aren’t the sort of thing I normally buy, but I had ice cream on the brain.Wouldn’t these be perfect for my peanut butter-loving guests, I thought. And yes, yes they were.

Early watermelons are starting to appear at the markets, and I was excited to get my hands on one of my favorite fruits this past week. I wanted to serve it as a light, refreshing dessert at a mid-week meal. But when I cracked it open, I found it disappointingly pale in color and flavor. What to do? Well, there are a few things you can do to jazz up a weak watermelon and make it vibrant enough to stand on its own as dessert for any meal.

Earlier this week, a reader inquired about more uses for mung beans. Like several of you, my thoughts turned to Asian-style sweet mung bean soup.In Vietnam, sweet soups or puddings are known as chè. They may be served hot or cold in bowls, glasses, or over ice, and contain ingredients ranging from various kinds of beans to tapioca, glutinous rice, jellies, lotus seeds, and fruit. As a child, the scent of chè simmering on my family’s stove always had me jumping in excitement.

In the summer, we want fast, easy, and, if it’s hot out, cold desserts. This is one of the simplest out there—even quicker if you use a prepared pie crust. Just fresh, ripe fruit, yogurt, some whipped cream, and a little stay in the freezer…The entire pie has only three tablespoons of sugar, so most of the sweetness comes from the fruit. You could of course use any ripe fruit—strawberries and peaches would both be good.

Looking for a light no-bake summer dessert that still looks impressive?We’ve been waiting to try Summer Pudding until we finally had some summer weather. The dessert is a British classic and consists of bread layered with berries that have been cooked in sugar, water and a little bit of liquor. The bread and berry mixture goes into the fridge the day before. The whole operation took only about 30 minutes (and that’s with the photos)!

After writing about this cherry recipe from The Atlantic yesterday, we decided to try the leave-the-pits-in method with another fruit: plums. It was so easy and fast, and we love the way the whole, pudgy plum looks nestled in a bowl with some ice cream. Get the recipe, below…We followed a similar technique as in the cherry recipe, stewing our fruit in a mixture of water and sugar. But because we used so little liquid, we really could call this steaming rather than poaching.

We love make-ahead desserts, and among easy, delicious, elegant make-ahead desserts, panna cotta reigns supreme. And yet we find that it’s not as well-known as it should be. Why? Is there an impression of difficulty? If so, let us banish that immediately. Panna cotta is perhaps the easiest dessert we know. Read on, and allow us to lecture you further on the delights of this gelled Italian pudding.What is panna cotta?

We helped cook for a big graduation party a couple of weeks ago, and ever since then we’ve been waiting for the right time to give you this recipe. It’s hard to describe how good these little morsels of creamy coconut and lime are, so you’ll have to trust us.We’re actually not too crazy about chocolate truffles. They’re so rich, and they’re a mess to make, too.

Eton Mess is a lovely, versatile dessert: It’s light, yet very satisfying, and appeals to both young and sophisticated palates. Traditionally made with strawberries, it takes advantage of seasonal fruit and can be thrown together in a matter of minutes. Served in bowls, it makes a nice casual family dessert or spoon it into vintage champagne glasses as a elegant finale to a fine dinner.But how does it taste?

Onion lovers, take note. This caramelized tart, a riff on the classic apple versionWe saw this recipe on a new (to us), beautifully photographed food blog, O Pistachio. The tart is baked just like a tarte Tatin, with the pastry fitted on top of the caramelized onions. Then you invert the whole thing onto a plate to serve.

Remember those Rice Krispie eggs from Bouchhon Bakery that we showed you around Easter? That was a rather easy recipe for colorful crispy eggs. This is one more recipe from Bouchon Bakery. They have these on sale for Mother’s Day, but here we have their secret recipe. It’s a little more complicated than the Krispie eggs, but it’s also a fascinating look inside how professional confections are made.

Take a look at these peaches! Are ripe, sweet peaches in season already? Well, not exactly, but these look just as good… These are actually peach sandwich cookies (breskvice), a traditional Yugoslavian recipe. Medena of Cafe Chocolada says that she has tried many different versions of these cookies — some from Croatian sources, and some from friends.

We may upset some apple pie purists here, but, being chocolate lovers, we went a little cuckoo when we saw this pie from Kayotic Kitchen, a food blog from the Netherlands. Chocolate pie dough? Oh, heck yeah. Read on for a link to the recipe…Kay, the creator of this unusual delight, writes that it really isn’t too sweet—in case some of you are looking at the chocolate crust and chocolate-apple filling and thinking, “Overload.

Last week, we spotted something called a Nantucket Cranberry Pie over at the blog Cooking Books. It’s a recipe from Laurie Colwin, and it involves so few ingredients and so little effort, we had to make it immediately. Yes, we know those don’t look like cranberries. Bear with us…There were no cranberries to be found at the grocery store (nope, not even frozen), so we went with a mixture of frozen cherries and blueberries.

We aren’t really whizzes with a pastry bag. In fact, we don’t own one. But we think we could get this look using a plastic bag with the corner snipped off. These dots don’t have to be too precise, or even the same size, to be charming…Polka dots are just cute; there’s no way around that. Dots of varying sizes all over a layer cake is simple enough to do, and they can hide imperfections in your icing (if, say, you have a few crumbs that got rustled up).

The only frozen thing many of us have on our minds right now (especially in New York) is what’s falling out of the sky. But the snow piling up on our windowsill is not stopping us from making ice cream—especially when it’s a minty, Christmasy flavor.Peppermint ice cream with hot fudge sauce is pretty much a perfect dessert for us. This round, we tried putting the chocolate in the ice cream.

Here is a very, very last-minute food gift that takes literally five minutes to make, and yet everyone you share it with will love it (and you). Too good to be true? No — it’s just chocolate-dipped pretzels.The other very nice thing about this pretzel project is that it is quite inexpensive. All you need are pretzel rods, chocolate chips or another chocolate good for melting, and some sprinkles or coarse sugar.Here are a few tips for making these salty-sweet treats.

What is the state of the American cookie? Three food writers, Dorie Greenspan, David Leibovitz, and Sara Dickerman discuss the definition of a cookie, what makes a cookie American, and chunky vs. thin.This roundtable discussion, conducted leisurely via email and published at Slate, yields a wealth of fascinating cookie topics near and dear to bakers’ hearts. Underbaking and overbaking, the role of nostalgia in cookie preferences, the ritualistic habits of cookie-eating (childlike, perhaps?

Whether you’re planning on making candy for the holidays or want to make your own candy in general, it’s a great idea. Candymaking is both economical and fun, and since you’re choosing your own ingredients, you know exactly what’s going into it. You can easily make your own organic, low-sugar candy without additives and preservatives. In this post, we’ll share a recipe for making your own peppermint patties. You’ll never buy them at a store again!

Sixty-seven years of amazing cookies — 1941-2008. That’s what Gourmet Magazine is featuring on their website right now. They went back through every year of their magazine’s history and chose a favorite cookie from each year.It’s like a time capsule back to their early days inthe 40s and 50s and all through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. They give a quick recap of each decade and some of the new influences in each.The real stars of course are the cookies.

Apples and bread pudding – what could be more well-suited? This is fall dessert at its most comforting. We made this chock-full of autumn flavors – toasted whole wheat bread, fresh picked apples, roasted walnuts, plump raisins. We poured cinnamon cream and eggs over top, baked, and drizzled real homemade Caramel Sauce on top of individual servings.Great for breakfast – we speak from experience! Click through for recipe and another pic.

Spicy and sweet, crystallized ginger can add a wonderful zing to cookies, cakes, ice cream, and cranberry sauce. We also like it finely chopped and sprinkled over savory dishes like roasted acorn squash and pumpkin soup. Chewing on the ginger treat can even help soothe an upset stomach. Although a jar of it can be outrageously expensive at the store, crystallized (or candied) ginger is quite simple to make at home.Use the freshest, most tender and firm (not spongy) ginger root you can find.

We focus a lot on the dough and crust when we talk about pies, since this is often the most intimidating part for new pie-bakers. And yet if your filling isn’t delicious as well, then what’s the point? Fruit filling is what makes us love pie. The opportunity to use fresh, seasonal fruit with a minimum of preparation or fuss, letting the fruit’s flavors shine out clearly – it’s one of the best things about baking.

Have you heard of the vodka pie crust recipe? It made big news in the baking world when Cook’s Illustrated first published it last fall. Half of the pie dough’s moisture comes from vodka, which is 40% pure alcohol. The alcohol doesn’t promote gluten formation, so it helps the crust stay much flakier and more tender – a foolproof help to those of us who tend to overwork our pie dough.So, how does this pie dough work? Is the unconventional addition of vodka worth it?

Remember the doce de abóboraWe love all manner of Indian sweets, many of which are made with milk. One of our favorite sweets is carrot halwa, an Indian dessert made with reduced milk and sugar (like dulce de leche) and shredded carrots. The Brazilian and Portugese pumpkin compote reminded us of that.We decided, impetuously, to experiment with adding milk (and a couple other things) to Patricia’s recipe for butternut squash compote.The results? Well, first of all, we were lucky.

We recently linked to a gingerbread-pear cake in our daily Delicious Links, and lo and behold, we found ourselves with that very same cake in the oven a few nights later. We wanted, you see, to give you a personal opinion.I have a Thing for gingerbread. Gingerbread cookies and gingerbread men – crispy, soft, and chewy – all kinds. Gingerbread lattes, gingerbread bread pudding – mmm, sometimes.

Just as we were starting to lament the dwindling abundance of summer stone fruits at the farmers’ market, in marched a whole new array of fruits to inspire us. Asian pearsfresh dates Each fruit delights the tongue: a crisp juicy pear, crunchy young dates with hints of honey, and pomegranate seeds that burst in the mouth, sweet at first and then tart. A dressing of pomegranate juice, honey, ginger, and cinnamon ties them together.

It’s the first day of fall, and fall is high pie season for us. Sara Kate has already shared her favorite pie plate and a great sour cream pie crust recipe. But we also love this recipe from Martha Stewart for Pâte Brisée, a fancy name for a very basic French pie dough. It’s our go-to for pie crust. We use it all the time.

Last weekend I found a bush on the side of the road teeming with wild blackberries. Our two-year old thought it great fun to pick them, and drop a few of them into her red bucket, while eating the rest. That left us with about seven berries. Later, when she wasn’t looking, I dashed back out and filled the bucket again for Blackberry Buttermilk Ice Cream. The lighter berries you see in the photo are some pale pink raspberries from my garden.

Now that we’ve got our ice cream makers churning away this month, we’re looking for fun ways to play with the results. Mochi ice cream balls have popped up everywhere from swanky restaurant dessert menus to the freezer case at Trader Joe’s.But why not make a batch of your own?

Readers, we’re going to let you in on a little secret. This stuff tastes like Pinkberry…We watched cookbook author Patricia Wells make this yogurt sorbet for Ina Garten on an episode of Barefoot Contessa and thought, “Really? That’s it?”It was one of the first things we made when we bought our ice cream maker, and we proceeded to make it again and again until we got sick of it. But this summer, we’re getting reacquainted.

Yesterday we took a “Hot or Not” vote on flag cakes (at the time we’re writing this, it’s pretty much a tie), and then we saw this smaller, round version. Just as festive, but not quite as kitschy. We vote “hot.”See another photo, without the raspberries, below…In the interest of full disclosure, our (Elizabeth’s) sister made this cake. So call us biased.

OK, this makes three – three! – dessert recipes with lavender that we’ve posted in the last month or two. Lavender is just such a wonderful ingredient for spring and summer desserts; used with a light hand the herbal notes elevate fruit, cream, and honey into a whole new space.Even with the extra step of steeping lavender though, this light, eggless pudding may be the easiest dessert we know. So little work – so much benefit!

We consider ourselves hearty dessert eaters. We rarely say, “Oh, I just want a bite of something sweet.” We get seconds.But this dessert from Martha Stewart, which we featured on April Fool’s Day, was so rich we almost had to lie down and unbutton our pants…And oh how silky and delicious it was.Like our popular recipe for Coffee Fluff, this Rhubarb Fool is basically a serving of heavy whipped cream — with a ribbon of sweet, puréed rhubarb running through it.

Remember Magic Shell, that thin chocolate sauce that you pour over ice cream? It “magically” hardens in a matter of seconds into a waxy layer of hard chocolate. It’s junk food, and we love it. We don’t love the trans-fats and mysterious ingredients, though, so it’s a good thing you can easily make it yourself…Jocelyn at Brownie Points explains how just melted chocolate and coconut oil together make Magic Shell, DIY-version.

This recipe and and review come from AT:SF editor Shayna – welcome Shayna! With all of the chocolate talk during bittersweet baking week, we couldn’t hold out any longer and had to jump in on the fun.We’ve made this several times since it first debuted in Gourmet last year, this time we tweaked it a wee bit.

Ice cream in January? Are we crazy? Yes, we know that it’s in the low teens outside and although the sun is shining here, it’s still very, very cold outside. So ice cream may seem utterly unseasonal of us – it’s just that this ice cream is one of our favorites and it’s made from still seasonal cranberries.We love the tart pop of scarlet cranberries in this rich custard ice cream, side-by-side with shiny chunks of dark chocolate that melt on the tongue.

Remember the big to-do over Jessica Seinfeld’s new cookbook, Deceptively Delicious? She sneaks pureed carrots, spinach and broccoli into foods that kids will eat, like mac and cheese and meatballs. The approach was wildly controversial, judging from the comments on our original post.We asked if anyone had actually tried it, and Darlene from my burning kitchen wrote us to say that she had. What did she think of Seinfeld’s vegetable concoctions?

Old-fashioned candies, sweet and strong, are our favorites. Toffee, caramels, divinity – they all show up in our Christmas packages. Here’s a new favorite with an old flavor: molasses. These are strong little candies with a heady molasses kick that tastes of burnt-sweet and sour dark sugar syrup. We added a pinch of salt and a dash of cocoa to round out the flavor.We love how these appear hard at first – teeth crackers! – but soften into taffy as they warm in the mouth.

They are called Melting Moments because one of their key ingredients is cornstarch and they literally melt in your mouth!These cookies are also somewhat similar to a shortbread; they’re chock-full of butter, with a tart lemon glaze that melts in your mouth first.We topped each one of the cookies for the wedding with candied flowers – lilac, violets, and yellow mimosa.

The idea behind a verrine is quite simple: layers in a glass. The execution, however, can be beautifully elaborate, like in the verrines that Pierre Hermé offers in his Paris confectionery. These little glasses of sweet or savory layers have become wildly popular, showing up on blogs in and in newspaper food sections quite frequently. Here’s a savory verrine with goat cheese, carrots and beans, and another sweet one with strawberries and cream.

Instant pudding brags that only five minutes will get you the “homemade” pudding you crave. Ignore the marketing and make real homemade pudding in nearly as short an amount of time. This basic, old-fashioned pudding has the benefit of being entirely natural, with no artificial thickeners or flavorings, and you can make it as sweet or warm as you like. And you can even eat it with skin on top, if that’s the way you like it! All you need is a little milk, cornstarch, and sugar.

Chocolate Orange Trufflesabout 4-5 dozen 2 cups crushed vanilla wafer cookies2 cups powdered sugar1/2 cup cornstarch1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled1/2 cup orange juice concentrate, thawed1 teaspoon vanilla1 cup minced pecans1/4 cup candied ginger, minced as finely as possible 12 ounces chocolate chips1/4 bar cooking waxZest of 1 orange Mix all ingredients except for the chocolate chips and wax. Stir well and add more powdered sugar or cornstarch if it’s still too goopy to handle.

Plums are in season, and we have been busy thinking up more ways to use them. We were inspired by Heidi Swanson’s Rosewater Plum Compote a couple weeks ago, and we set out to make our own plum sauce. We love tea and plums together, so we played around with an Earl Grey concentrate and sweet-tart red plums until we found a combination we liked. The tea gives the sweet plums undertones of tannins and herbs, and these deep flavors ripen as it sits.

Blueberries are good hot, like when they’re baked into muffins or a cake and they pop just enough to let their juice ooze out in spatters of purple juice. We love them in this cake – it’s a dead easy butter cake, so soft and moist, with orange zest and nutmeg to bring out the flavor of the berries. Good for breakfast, with a crumble on top, or for dessert with homemade ice cream.

What says summer like fresh strawberry ice cream? We had the mix for this ice cream chilling in the fridge Tuesday night when we opened up the Times and saw that Melissa Clark agrees. She went on the hunt for a strawberry ice cream recipe that has swirls of fresh fruit but somehow avoids strawberries’ tendency to freeze into unpleasantly icy chunks.

We offered to bring some finger-food treats to a friend’s party this weekend. It needed to be something quick to make and preferably a recipe that wouldn’t heat up the oven in the 90º heat. This two-bite dessert is light, easy, and oh-so-quick. We just stuffed tiny fresh apricots with a creamy filling of lemon and almond cream cheese, lightly sweetened and dusted with cinnamon. They went over quite well, and we went looking for more fruit to dip into the leftover filling!

We’ve used cardamom in the layered pastry – its spicy, smoky sweetness goes beautifully with the blackberries here! Any leftover blackberry sauce is heaven swirled into plain yogurt or over pancakes, too.

Eclairs, fruit pastries, napoleonsand other little treasures of the patisserie usually have one thing in common: pastry cream. Pastry cream, or creme patisserie, is an egg-enriched custard with flour or cornstarch for added thickening power, used to fill or layer pastries. It’s quite similar to vanilla pudding, and super easy to make. The recipe here only includes three egg yolks, considerably less than a traditional French recipe – which can include up to ten.

Summer berries are turning up and cobbler is one of our favorite ways to use them. Frozen berries are a great substitute, however, and we were impressed by Whole Foods’ bag of mixed organic berries. It included blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, and the diversity gave this cobbler a wonderful freshness and flavor. The cream cheese filling swirled in is not too sweet, and it makes this a refreshing dessert that could easily double for a weekend breakfast.

One enduring tradition in Orthodox churches is the Easter food basket, taken on Saturday or Sunday to the church to be blessed by the priest. A typical basket includes the foods given up during Lent, like ham or sausages, eggs, butter, cheese, and a sweet eggy bread. Pascha (pronounced paska) cheese is classic Easter basket food.

We admit that this recipe started out as a bit of a stunt – what kind of fruit could we braise? But it turned out so well – better than any of our other attempts at caramelized bananas or Bananas Foster – that we’re putting it in regular rotation. Braising the bananas directly in brown sugar and brandy infuses the delicate banana flavor throughout the entire sauce, which, if you like bananas, is a treat.