Dessert Recipes & Ideas

Whatever the name, this pie is so good we made it more than once.You can find dried lavender buds at many Asian groceries, often with the tea. Ours was labeled “lavender tea” but contained nothing but dried lavender.We wanted a silky custard pie that didn’t taste too much of egg – firm yet smooth. We used a bit of cornstarch to firm it up, so it slices well. But it’s still light and silky and deliciously cool.

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.

Pastry and pie crusts all have roots in one basic recipe, but there are a myriad of tiny variations that bakers argue about endlessly. Butter, shortening, vodka – so many ways to tweak a pie crust! We are really not very good at pie dough; we are much better at butter-rich tarts and cakes. So we’re on a quest to improve our pies. Here’s the formula we’re currently using; it is working well for us but feel free to add your own variation too!

Confession: We had a foodie crush on David Lebovitz long before we saw the tour of his quirky Paris kitchen last week. We’ve been loving his Guinness-Milk Chocolate Ice Cream for some time now.The recipe comes from Lebovitz’s book The Perfect Scoop, and, like the Guinness Milkshakes from last week, would be a natural for St. Patrick’s Day. But we love it as a deeper, more complicated winter alternative to all the crisp vanillas and frosty fruit flavors of summer.

We have always been curious about dessert in the slow cooker. We use our Crock-Pot all the time, but mostly for braises, curries, and roasts, like this slow-cooked pork roast. Many people use it to make breakfast, cooking steel-cut oats all night. But we had never tried dessert. So when we received a soufflé recipe straight from Crock-Pot, we just had to try it out. Here’s how it went…The directions for preparing the soufflé were quite similar to a traditional soufflé.

Early summer seems perfect for lemon meringue pie, blowsy with airy meringue and easy to wolf down before a late afternoon nap. But here on the precipice of spring, when it’s still cold outside and summer feels so far away, we’re looking for a jolt of flavor. This lemon tart hits that spot.Like a Shaker Lemon Pie, this recipe uses the entire lemon, peel, pith and all. After macerating, the lemons are combined with eggs for a bittersweet marmalade-like filling.

We were arrested by this week’s Amanda Hesser column in the Times Sunday Magazine; blanc mange, the milk pudding of the form-obsessed Victorians, was the topic. We had always wondered what exactly blanc mange was…We remember references to blancmange, a food for invalids and sick sisters, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. We were fascinated by this strange-sounding dish then, with no reference for what it could be.

On the weekends we like to do projects that will give us meal building blocks for freezing and later use. Sometimes these take a little extra time, so the weekend is the perfect time to invest in later meals. A current favorite is this two-for-one project: poached pears and red wine syrup.Poached pears are an easy, oh-so-sophisticated way to build a salad or a dessert. They’re also relatively light, which is good for our current diet-consciousness.

Our second finalist! This was a no-brainer from the huge set of entries in our Bittersweet Baking contest.The sheer amount and variety of chocolate in these brownies (plus our weakness for cocoa nibs) helped reader Sara’s entry; we all loved it. It includes Valrhona dark cocoa, cocoa nibs, and a heaping dose of chopped dark chocolate too! We were in a chocolate daze just reading the recipe.

Not to be confused with breakfast coffee cake, our Coffee Cake with Coffee Glaze is a fluffy, moist, and coffee-scented dessert with a sweet, creamy glaze icing. We wanted a lightly coffee-flavored cake with all the moistness and sweet fluffiness of our favorite coconut cake. It took some real testing to get there (we’ll show you our testing process later this week).

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.

Have you ever made a tart? We hadn’t until recently, when our removable-bottom tart pan lured us into what seemed like a tricky undertaking. Guess what? It was so easy!Since then, fruit tarts have become our go-to dessert. Food processors make tart crusts extra easy: throw your butter, flour, salt and sugar into the food processor and presto you have a crust. It’s actually preferable to mixing by hand, since the food processor doesn’t warm the butter the way your fingers do.

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.

It’s been a while since we had a reader recipe: this one comes from Melinda in Pittsburgh. “I picked up fresh blueberries at the Farmer’s Market this week and made this super simple dessert from my South Carolina childhood. There are many different types of cobbler crusts/toppings–buckles, crumbles, brown-bettys–but this is my favorite, a sweet, buttery, rich batter, with crispy and chewy bits. Delicious plain, but even better with vanilla ice cream.

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.

It’s just too easy to make your own smoothies – here’s one of our favorites. Sweet, tangy, and most importantly, ice cold, this tastes just like a Creamsicle. All you need is a blender and a few basic groceries. Whip one up and stay cool!

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.

Here’s a summery dessert that takes advantage of seasonal fruit, wherever you’re at. We found perfectly tiny apricots at the market last week and just had to show them off.We liked the hearty base of this crostata; unlike the usual pie crust base, we used a biscuit crust that gets deeply golden on top and tender in the middle.

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.

Risottos and braises are not the same, since a risotto is not covered at any point in the cooking process. But they are related in that the rice is fried with butter at the beginning, then cooked slowly in liquid. Well, they’re close enough anyway to make us feel that this deliciously warm, chewy and gooey caramel risotto is in keeping with our theme this week.This is a simple but heavenly dish, requiring just a little milk, some sugar and rice, and a lot of stirring.

Here’s the hot water bottle of desserts, warming and weirdly pink. While dried fruit simmered in wine may seem old-fashioned or unsexy, we think this is a rich luxury for an icy night. The warm wine, cloves, cinnamon, and pepper wake up summer’s stone fruits and turn them in to something more than we were expecting. Serve the fruit with a scoop of ice cream, sour cream, Greek yogurt, or fresh ricotta. Try leftovers on your oatmeal the next morning.

This isn’t a bake sale cookie, or a three-at-a-sitting treat. It’s a dressed up version of a classic, nearly underbaked so it’s still chewy, with sticky mouthfuls of gooey, boozy prune and dense chocolate. Do not attempt these without a tall glass of cold milk!

Meringues have become ubiquituously associated with the “Fat Free!” “Almost ZERO calories!” crowd of diet desserts at the grocery store, crowded into plastic tubs that cheerily advertise their low-calorie benefits. They are certainly not what we would reach for when looking for an indulgent dessert.

One of our favorite dessert party tricks is phyllo cups. You can buy those little phyllo cups, pre-shaped and crimped, out of the freezer at the grocery store. But you can get far more out of a regular package of phyllo, and it doesn’t take long to make cups in the size you want. Once baked these can be filled easily and creatively with all sorts of good things – raspberries and cream, chocolate mousse, whipped blue cheese with bacon crumbles.

Rather to my surprise, this cake turned out deliciously light and soft. It has a very airy, tender texture, with a mild sweetness that reminded me vaguely of maple syrup.There is no butter – all the fat comes from eggs and buttermilk, so this is light enough to serve for breakfast with fruit and cream; and yet it’s unusual and grown up enough for an after-dinner dessert, served with dark chocolate or espresso sauce.

Old-Fashioned Hot Fudge Sauce makes about 1 1/2 cups 1/4 cup butter (half a stick) 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate 2/3 cup boiling water 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/4 cup corn syrup 1/2 teaspoon salt Melt the butter in a medium saucepan, then add the chocolate and melt over low heat. When the chocolate is melted, stir in the boiling water, sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring, then stop stirring and let it boil for six to eight minutes, or until it’s thickened and become glossy.

This sandwich cookie suits that craving perfectly. Spicy molasses cookies are a classic, especially in the winter. These are soft, light, and not as greasy as some recipes. Their dark spice is brightened by a tart lemon filling that softens the sandwiches into sunny, chewy, one-bite treats.Try not to overbake these cookies. Even if you do, however, just slather on the lemon filling and put the sandwiches in a covered container in the fridge overnight.

When I think about doughnuts, I often think of them oozing with tart, almost transparent lemon filling. A good yeast doughnut with goopy lemon filling and a thick dusting of powdered sugar is a favorite treat, indulged on very rare occasions. That lemon filling, so exclusive in my experience to doughnuts and commercial bakery products, is actually quite easy to make at home. This lemon filling uses cornstarch and gelatin to create its thick texture, and egg yolks for body and color.

This is an unusual kind of recipe. It is really like making a roux – a flour and butter mixture used to thicken sauces. The dough is a thick paste that gets piped out and baked. This turns out a tiny morsel of a cookie with a deep sweetness from the coconut, a crispy top and a chewy middle.Depending on humidity these may need to bake a little longer; test by taking a cookie out and letting it cool for a moment.Chewy Chocolate Coconut Cookiesmakes about 3 dozen 6 oz.

Acorn squash is tremendously good for you, and when roasted it has a velvety, luxurious texture that lends itself to both spicy and sweet flavors. Fortunately, there are two halves to a squash, so I dust one with curry powder for a spicy dinner and the other with small mounds of brown sugar for a sweet dessert.I am giving measurements here, but obviously this is the most flexible sort of recipe. Adjust to your taste.

I love the idea of Christmas cookies but I have to admit I find many of them, cut out in different shapes, slathered with colored icing, well they can taste a bit cloying. Sure, they’re pretty, but I tend to prefer good old-fashioned oatmeal cookies. Of course I do dress them up a little for the holidays, studding the dough with raisins, chocolate chips and walnuts. The edges get nice and crisp, while the middle stays soft and chewy.

These are not difficult at all. Fruit juice is boiled with pectin and a sugar syrup is stirred in. Then it firms up overnight into a solid yet sticky bar that can be cut into individual pieces, which are rolled in sugar to give them that charming gumdrop exterior.Again, these are really sweet, so be sure to use juice that has no added sugar at all.

In fact, it never fails to amaze me that this recipe was invented by someone who did not have an electric mixer. How did they do it? How would they even think to whip egg whites this long? I wouldn’t even do this with a hand mixer – a stand mixer is what makes divinity easy.The almonds are highly recommended; this candy is so teeth-achingly sweet that it’s nice to cut it with some salt and smokiness.

These freeze well. I, regrettably, prefer them straight from the freezer. They are also the first of several Christmas candies, suitable for food gifts or the holiday buffet table, that we’ll look at in the next several weeks.Chocolate and Peanut Butter Buckeyesmakes about 13 dozen 2 lbs. powdered sugar3 cups peanut butter (smooth and not the all-natural kind)1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)1 1/2 lb. chocolate chips, semi-sweet (24 oz.

5-6 organic lemons, about 1 1/2 pounds1 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cup cold water2 cups sugar Superfine sugar (optional) Peel the lemons with vegetable peeler, taking off long, thin strips. Fill a medium sauce pan 3/4 full with water and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add the lemon peels and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, then drain. Repeat, using the other 1/2 teaspoon of salt. This is softening the lemon peels and taking away the residual bitterness of the white pith.

A little bit of sparkle, a little bit of chocolate, stirred up in a tiny cut glass cup. That’s the recipe for my Mini Chocolate Ice Cream Sodas.If you don’t spring for champagne for your next party, here’s another way to end the night with some delicious tiny bubbles. I first served these at my holiday party last year and, as my guests quickly discovered, these aren’t your run of the mill float.

“No, no – you’ll have to give me the recipe.” In Rosemary’s Baby (1968), an ambitious actor (John Cassavetes) and his childlike bride (Mia Farrow) move into a creepy New York apartment complex (the Dakota), and soon make the acquaintance of the strange old couple who are their neighbors. The wife in the pair, Minnie (played with mischievous banality by Ruth Gordon) is the kind of woman who invites herself in and peers into all the kitchen cupboards.

After some experiments and variations, the final recipe gave a rich yet light custard, not too sweet and flavored brightly with spices and honey.The texture is lighter and creamier than a traditional pumpkin pie filling, and the spices exchange heavy cinnamon for the citrus and herb notes of coriander. The top is covered with a crackly burnt sugar crust that balances the earthy pumpkin with a slightly bitter caramel flavor.

Here’s a fall flavored weekend dessert that can be assembled ahead of time and baked just before serving. It’s great for company as a finale to a homey fall meal. The earthy flavor of the sweet potatoes really comes through, pairing well with the spices and the caramely, nutty sauce. I made a batch and gave some to two sets of friends who heated it up in the microwave later. Everyone raved.

Dessert can be demanding. So much whipping, melting, baking and waiting. I’ve picked up some tips for putting together a decent “company dinner” on the double, but I can’t get the last course right . . . and I have this frustrating feeling that it’s the end of the night that everyone remembers.I’m learning that some home cooks have a stable of desserts that rely on pantry ingredients that don’t demand too much ambtion or make a mess at the last minute.

It’s the Jewish New Year so it’s time to celebrate and reflect. This weekend, since I didn’t have time to make my traditional, from scratch honey cake, I opted for a no-fail bundt cake recipe. I recently learned that the bundt pan was created by Nordic Ware here in the United States after a couple of ladies from the Minneapolis chapter of the Hadassah society asked Nordicware founders, Dave and Dotty, to make a pan similar to the ones their grandmothers used in back in Germany.

The DIY feature from Faith, our new Editor-At-Large, will offer options to that jar or packet at the grocery store by giving you recipes for foods you might not think to make yourself. Homemade bread, peanut butter and jam – they’re much easier than you think. Dulce de leche, cajeta, milk jam, confiture du lait – whatever you call it, it’s delicious.

Our neighborhood ice cream joint is Cones on Bleecker Street. A few weeks ago I noticed a new (new, or new to me?) flavor: Sweet Corn Ice Cream. It was delicious, and after trying it out at home, I realized it was quite easy to make. This is not their recipe (I don’t think they share such information), but an approximation of what I tasted there.

With all the talk about ice cream lately, we wouldn’t want you going out and buying cones, which often have shortening, artificial flavourings and preservatives. Here’s a very simple way of making your own. This is a great accompaniment to your original ice cream recipe that you’re submitting to the contest, don’t you think?

We learned yesterday in The History of Ice Cream, that Thomas Jefferson was an early adopter in the New World ice cream scene. Turns out, someone came across his own personal recipe for vanilla ice cream . We thought we’d try to decipher the manuscript (see recipe below with some clarifications and compare to the original recipe), and then make it ourselves.

“I think it looks a little sad because I used my glass pie plate which is a deeper than I remembered so it doesn’t have that nice plumped up effect. It’s based on a family recipe that both my mother and my grandmother made, which we all tend to play fast and loose with. This pie combines half cooked fruit with half fresh fruit, so you can sugar and spice up the cooked part but still get the freshness of the raw fruit. ” (Thanks, Abby!

We celebrated the birthday of a Bermudian friend a few nights ago. On the menu were Dark & Stormies and Rum Cake, of course. Being with child, I did not gulp a D&S, but I did enjoy the cake. The recipe, in its original form, comes from the birthday boy’s mother in Bermuda, who gets it from Bacardi.

Hungry and thumbing through the Passover catering catalog from Eli Zabar’s that dropped out of my newspaper recently, I came across this gorgeous photo of their Mile High Lemon Meringue Cake and had an emergency drooling situation on my hands. Normally, I’m not a big meringue person, but this cake is so beautifully executed, it’s hard to recall those early childhood memories of meringue that didn’t do me right. And this is no pie, folks, this is a flourless cake.