Dessert
3854 recipes found
Pistachio Ice Cream
Flaming Baba au Rhum
While you can flambé pretty much any confection that’s soaked in a high-proof spirit, a baba au rhum is one of the booziest options. It’s based on an airy but rich yeast dough, which can absorb more liquor than your average cake without falling apart. And, unlike crepes, it’s easy to serve to a crowd. This is an afternoon project with delicious, sophisticated results.
Coconut Ice Cream
Salted Licorice Brigadeiros
Luscious Brazilian-style fudge balls coated thickly with chocolate sprinkles get an upgrade in this marvelous recipe from Melissa Clark that brings salted licorice into the mix to create something that looks a lot like chocolate truffles but tastes even more divine: creamy, smooth and just salty enough, while still remaining firmly planted on the sweet side of the equation. Added bonus: They are extremely easy to throw together, an excellent candy-making project for families or those in search of fast-and-delicious treats.
Fred’s Chocolate-Pecan Cookies
This recipe, an adaptation of a popular cookie served at Fred’s restaurant in Barneys New York, the Madison Avenue department store, is rich, chewy and dotted with crunchy pecans. If you’re into the salty-sweet thing (who’s not?), add a sprinkle of flaky sea salt a few minutes before the cookies are done baking.
Middle Eastern Baked Apples
Shortbread Cookies with Warm Apples and Jam
WHILE chocolate desserts, fresh fruit sorbets and fruit tarts re main the classic, ever-popular French desserts, lighter, cookie- based desserts are appearing more frequently. Several Paris restaurants have recently offered sable, or shortbread cookie, desserts. This recipe comes from Jacqueline Fenix, a fine restaurant in Neuilly, a Paris suburb, where the chef, Michel Rubod, offers warm shortbread with sauteed apples and homemade apricot jam. At Tour d'Argent the menu recently featured a dessert made of three layers of sables interlaced with fresh raspberries, all set in a pool of fresh raspberry sauce, while at Jacques Cagna sables came warm from the oven, accompanied by sauteed apples and cinnamon ice cream.
Cocoa Nib Sablés With Flaky Sea Salt
Slightly more tender than shortbread cookies, golden French sablés have a deep buttery flavor and an appealing sandy texture. These are studded with crunchy cocoa nibs (also called cacao nibs), which lend a bittersweet flavor that’s underscored by a drizzle of melted chocolate on top. If you don’t have cocoa nibs, you can substitute mini chocolate chips, which make these cookies even richer.
White House Fruit and Oat Bars
This recipe came to The Times in an article about Bill Yosse, the White House pastry chef under President Obama. "Mr. Yosses’ most recent mission is changing the White House tradition of the bottomless cookie plate. (Among White House journalists, President Clinton was known for going straight from a grueling run into the pastry kitchen. Only part of it is visible through a window, but reporters outside recognized him by his sneakers.) To edge out the cookies, Mr. Yosses decided to create a child-pleasing crunchy granola bar without nuts, chocolate or white sugar. “We went through many tastings on this one,” he said in his skinny galley kitchen, patting the final result, a mix of toasted oats, sesame seeds and chewy dried fruits into a sheet pan."
Cinnamon Ice Cream
Melon Sorbet
I’ve learned a lot about making sorbets from Jacquy Pfeiffer, the founder and dean of student affairs at the French Pastry School in Chicago. He taught me to use a small amount of corn syrup – about 5 percent of the weight of the fruit – to prevent the sorbet from developing ice crystals. A very small amount of honey will also work. I asked him what the least sugar I could get away with is, and he said it depends on the fruit, but as a general rule he uses 15 to 20 percent sugar. I decided to factor the corn syrup and honey into that weight, and my sorbets were beautiful, with great texture. You can use yellow or green melon for this as long as it’s really ripe and sweet.
Cornmeal Lime Shortbread Fans
Buttery and crisp, with an appealing texture from the cornmeal, these shortbread cookies are baked in a round tart or pie tin, then cut into wedges to resemble slim fans. The lime juice in the glaze cuts the sweetness and echoes the zest in the dough. (You can also use lemon, orange or grapefruit — or a combination instead of lime, if you prefer.) The cookies keep for up to two weeks when stored airtight at room temperature, and freeze very well.
Black Cake
Although black cake is descended from the British plum pudding, for Caribbean-born New Yorkers and their children, who number more than half a million, it evokes nostalgia for the islands, where the baking was a solemnly observed annual ritual. The cake is baked just before Christmas and eaten at Christmas dinner and afterward, in thin slices, for as long as it lasts. Because of the soaking of the fruit and the use of brown sugar and a bittersweet caramel called browning, black cake is to American fruitcake as dark chocolate is to milk chocolate: darker, deeper and altogether more absorbing.
Marbled Shortbread With Ginger and Turmeric
This cookie combines ground ginger and turmeric with roasted cashews and white chocolate. A simple shortbread dough, made with a larger ratio of butter to sugar, allows the complex flavors to shine. Shaping the dough into a rectangular block and cutting it into logs keeps things compact in the freezer while also allowing for easy and even slicing and baking. Thanks to the spices and aromatics, the cookies even get a little better with age. Don't worry about getting your swirls perfect. No matter how you do it, these cookies will be as beautiful as they are delicious.
Candied Fruit Cheesecake
Watermelon Sorbet or Granita
This works only if your watermelon is juicy and sweet. If you make the granita version, you can use less sugar and omit the corn syrup because the ice crystals won’t matter.
Chocolate-Mint Thins With Candy Cane Crunch
This cookie is a handmade homage to the Girl Scouts’ classic combination of dark chocolate and mint. A bright, festive decoration of crushed candy canes adds color and crunch. If store-bought dark chocolate cookies are available, you can use them instead of making your own. And if you temper the coating chocolate instead of simply melting it, your chocolate shell will have a bit more snap and durability.
Strawberry-Coconut Ice Cream Cake
This is an impressive dessert that’s not at all difficult to prepare and doesn’t require an ice cream maker. For the best flavor, use sweet, ripe farm stand berries: They should really smell like strawberries. The whipped cream and a touch of vodka help keep the mixture from forming ice crystals — up to a point. You’ll still want to make this cake the day before you plan to serve it, since its texture is best in the first 24 hours and it can take up to six hours to freeze.
Brownie Ice Cream Sundaes
The ice cream sundae has shed its youthful, frivolous shell. This is a balanced, thoughtfully constructed dessert, something that nourishes the intellect and the palate, not just the pangs of the stomach.
Gingered Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie
Maple Leaf Rag Sundae
This recipe came to The Times in 2011 from the Franklin Fountain in Philadelphia’s Old City, where the Maple Leaf Rag sundae pays homage to Scott Joplin’s 1899 composition with maple syrup, walnuts, crushed pineapple and house-made banana ice cream. It’s easy to make it home, because the recipe doesn’t require homemade ice cream (although it wouldn’t hurt.) And most of the pieces can be made ahead of time.
Brunsli
Agnes F. Hostettler, of Statesville, N.C., was 72 when she shared this recipe with The Times in 1990. She baked brunsli and zimt sterne each Christmas, as they were the cookies she baked as a child with her mother in Germany. The year she contributed this recipe, she has already baked about 1,000 cookies that she has sent to her five daughters. “My daughters all have my recipes,” she said. “But they say, ‘Mom, they never taste as good as when you make them.’ ”
Union Square Cafe’s Chocolate Biscotti
The recipe for these superb biscotti came to The Times in 2009 from Union Square Cafe, the Manhattan restaurant. Wrap a few of these up as a parting gift for dinner guests, or eat a few and stash the rest in the freezer for a treat any time.
Cherry Clafoutis
This classic French dessert looks fancy, but it is a cinch to make. I use yogurt in my clafoutis, although it isn’t traditional (the French use cream). And I always enjoy leftovers for breakfast.