Dessert
3853 recipes found
Moroccan Moufleta
For Moroccan Jews — and increasingly Israeli and other Jews of all stripes and ancestral origin — the end of the Passover holiday is not complete without a Mimouna feast. And at its center is moufleta, a flat cake that you fry in a pan and assemble into a stack. (If that seems too tricky, we provide a method here for making them individually.) The dough is fairly simple, as are the traditional toppings, soft butter and honey. But if you prefer homemade or Nutella, no one but the staunchest traditionalists is likely to complain.
Seeded Chocolate Chip Cookies
When I make chocolate-chip cookies, I always use a recipe from the pastry chef Sherry Yard, with whom I wrote two cookbooks, as my touchstone. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m adding ingredients like nuts and seeds, or using different types of flours. I always use a quality dark chocolate (70 percent or higher), and I cut it into chunks the way she does. I don’t skimp on quantity when it comes to the chocolate, but in this adaptation I’ve reduced the sugar by 25 percent and thrown in a good measure of rolled oats, sunflower seeds, chia seeds and pumpkin seeds. I’ve made these cookies using half whole-wheat flour and using all unbleached all-purpose flour, and I prefer the whole-wheat version — and not just because it’s healthier. I love the nutty flavor of the flour, which complements the nutty flavor of the seeds. You would think that adding wholesome ingredients like oats and seeds to a classic chocolate-chip cookie would result in something weighty, vintage 1970s, but on the contrary, the oats and seeds stretch the dough and make the cookies lighter than all-flour cookies. Bake them until they’re nice and dark on the bottom, and when you rotate the trays halfway through, tap them on the oven racks to get the cookies to flatten a bit. The end result is a crisp cookie with no shortage of melting chocolate chunks.
Apricot and Almond Tart
Grape Dumplings
Grape dumplings are a favorite treat among southeastern Indigenous nations. Originally made with strained muscadine or possum grapes, they’ve been adapted by modern cooks using other dark grape varieties and bottled Concord grape juice. In a blend of old and new, this take on the popular indigenous recipe pays homage to the historic use of cornmeal while observing popular contemporary practices of adding flour and sweetener. The dumplings incorporate blue cornmeal and whole-wheat flour to intensify the rich evening shades of the dish, and the sauce substitutes agave for granulated sugar. Pair them with vanilla ice cream and a sprig of fresh tarragon for a delightful explosion of perfectly purple goodness.
French Toasted Apricot Brioche
Lebanese Apricot Cream
Buckwheat Crepes With Roasted Apricots
Apricots are delicious in both sweet and savory dishes. The flavor will deepen with cooking. Roasting apricots intensifies the flavor, and the apricots give up some delicious juice. It blends with the small amount of butter and honey here, and you can use it as a sauce. This dish offers a combination of earthy/nutty from the crepes and sweet and tangy from the apricots.
Apricot and Saffron Gratin
Almond-Apricot Tart
This rather simple tart recipe is open to interpretation. Bake it according to the recipe, which includes pastry bolstered with ground almonds and a filling rich with apricots that suggests frangipane with more almonds and mascarpone. But as the season takes on summer’s glow, you could use this recipe as a template and swap out the apricots for a layer of lightly sweetened fresh raspberries splashed with framboise eau de vie. Diced poached sweetened rhubarb, diced fresh apricots or quartered and stemmed fresh black figs would work, too.
Gâteau Breton
With its soft, buttery crumb, this classic French cake is similar to a giant shortbread, though moister and more tender. Its hidden prune filling is traditional, although you can use other dried fruit, such as apricot, instead. In France you sometimes even see bakers sandwiching melted chocolate or caramel between the layers. This keeps well if you want to bake it 1 or 2 days ahead. Store it well wrapped at room temperature.
Apple Dumplings
Apple dumplings are a perfect dessert for pie-phobic bakers. All-butter pastry, rolled out and wrapped casually around a brown sugar and currant-stuffed apple, looks rustic and adorable and tastes even better. No pie plates, double crusts, or fancy crimping to worry about. And, they are already portioned perfectly. Serve them warm with scoops of vanilla ice cream or swirls of crème fraiche.
Russian Honey Cake
The key to making this exquisite, gravity-defying cake, which comes from Michelle Polzine of 20th Century Cafe in San Francisco, is patience. This cake takes a lot of time! Set some aside to do it right. There are just two components — airy, lightly spiced cake layers and glossy whipped-cream frosting, both tinged with burned honey — but both require precision. Clear your schedule, and your countertop, to make the time and space to get it right. Then invite a dozen or two of your favorite people over the next day to delight in the impressive results of your hard work. You can buy dulce de leche at most Mexican markets or upscale groceries (look for brands made in Argentina), or make it a day ahead using this recipe.
Walnut Cake With Persimmons and Pomegranate
This simple walnut sponge cake is quite versatile and keeps well. You can increase the spices to taste and substitute other nuts if you wish. Serve with a dab of whipped cream or crème fraîche and any kind of seasonal fruit. This fall version calls for peeled firm Fuyu persimmons and bright red pomegranate arils for a gorgeous splash of color.
Oreo Chocolate Pie
Olive Oil-Walnut Cake With Pomegranate
Extra-virgin olive oil gives this easy cake richness and a tender crumb. The cake keeps well for several days, as does the syrup, so it makes sense to prepare it in advance. However, wait to add the syrup until the day you serve it.
Peach Ice Cream
This easy ice cream is meant to evoke hazy memories of a summer spent luxuriating on a front porch, cold glass in hand, waiting as your ice cream maker does the churning work for a late-afternoon treat. Use the best peaches you can find — the flavor of this depends directly on the fruit. You can also use mangoes or strawberries, or other stone fruits. Use your imagination, but let the ice cream maker do most of the work.
Baked Coconut Balls
During the traditional Mimouna celebration at the end of Passover, many Israeli Jews lay out an elaborate table with sweets. Because dietary rules during the holiday ban flour from the house (including frozen cookies that contain it), the treats are usually flourless. Here, ground coconut turns the texture of these cookies into a soft and pleasantly cloudlike.
Turkish Burned Milk Pudding (Kazandibi)
This delicate Ottoman milk pudding has a burned bottom layer that adds a toasted-marshmallow, caramel-like flavor reminiscent of crème brûlée. The pudding itself is thickened with cornstarch for a soft, delightfully wobbly dessert that’s gently perfumed with mastic. You can find mastic, an aromatic tree-sap resin harvested in the Mediterranean, from specialty markets and spice shops. But if you can’t get it, feel free to substitute more vanilla extract, using a full teaspoon for the recipe. You need to make this at least 6 hours ahead so it has a chance to firm up. Making it a day or two ahead is even better. You will need a flameproof 9-by-13-inch metal baking pan — as long as it's made entirely of metal without an enamel coating, it should work. Avoid glass, which will shatter.
Red Wine Pears
A classic cool weather dessert, these poached pears taste best if made a day or two in advance giving them time to soak in the red wine syrup. Serve with crème fraîche, whipped cream or ice cream. Use firm Comice, Anjou, Bartlett or Russet pears.
Banana Upside-Down Cake
Like a cross between bananas Foster and pineapple upside-down cake, this homey dessert is topped with caramelized banana slices and crunchy walnuts. Cooking the brown sugar in a skillet before adding the fruit gives you a particularly deep, complex flavor. Because of the moisture in the topping, you’ll need to bake this cake a little longer than other, similar butter cakes. Underbaked cake will be soggy and apt to fall apart, but an ideal result will have a well-browned surface and dark, slightly crunchy edges.
Poached Apricots With Kaymak
Microwave Saffron Turkish Delight
Rice Fritters With Orange Blossom Custard
This is my take on the Tuscan dessert frittelle di riso. The custard makes these a very special dessert, but you can also just make the fritters, if you like, which makes them more of a snack. They go really well with coffee, either served as they are or with whipped cream.
Vanilla Bean Spritz Cookies
Delicate, buttery and festooned with colored sugar or sprinkles, spritz cookies are a holiday staple. You can make excellent ones without any special items like the vanilla bean paste and cultured butter called for here. But those ingredients will make your cookies even more delicious. You can leave them tasting purely of vanilla, or add another optional flavoring, such as citrus zest, cinnamon or cardamom, or almond extract. These fragile cookies don’t ship well on their own, but you can increase their stability by turning them into sandwich cookies, filled with chocolate, Nutella, or thick jam.