Dessert
3850 recipes found
Dulce de Leche Chocoflan
Also known as el pastel imposible (the impossible cake), chocoflan is a baking wonder, its layers of chocolate cake batter and dulce de leche flan swapping places in the oven and coming out as a tiered two-desserts-in-one showstopper. This Mexican staple is often served at birthday parties and other celebrations, but comes together easily enough to enjoy as a sweet treat at home.
Quintessential Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sherry Yard's iconic chocolate-chip cookies are just the right mix of chewy and crisp, with a bittersweet morsel of chocolate in each bite. They are the cookies anyone who asks you to make chocolate chip cookies are asking for -- the kind of chocolate cookie that demands to be dunked into a glass of ice-cold milk.
Daniel Skurnick’s Franco-Chinese Steamed Ginger Custard
This custard, a mix of French and Chinese techniques and tastes, comes from the New York pastry chef Daniel Skurnick. Because Mr. Skurnick is responsible for the desserts at the French restaurant Le Coucou and the pan-Asian restaurant Buddakan, this kind of blending comes easily to him. Here, he uses just five ingredients to make a dessert that is packed with the flavor of ginger and has the quintessential jiggle and litheness of custard. It reminds me most of an oven-baked French crème caramel, but it’s steamed, the way many Asian desserts are. If you have a bamboo steamer that fits over a wok, this is the time to use it – its flat bottom is perfect for this job. If all you have is a steamer insert, don’t despair – just make the dessert in two batches. Once chilled, the custards are lovely plain, but for a bit more polish, pour over a few spoonfuls of spiced caramel syrup.
Pumpkin Cheesecake In Nut Crust
Some cheesecakes are the culinary equivalent of a punch in the gut: too sweet, too heavy, too filling. This one, first published in The Times in 1984, is delightfully different. It's lightly-sweet, slightly tangy and gently laced with spiced pumpkin flavor. The texture is surprisingly airy. Serve slices with a dollop of whipped cream or créme fraîche. Don't skip the part of the recipe that calls for allowing it to cool in the oven overnight; it promises a crack-free, glossy top.
Raspberry Pavlova With Peaches and Cream
This Pavlova’s meringue foundation has freeze-dried raspberry powder shot through it, tinting it pink and giving it a fruity, candy-like flavor. But if you can’t get the freeze-dried berries, just leave them out. The meringue will still bake up with a shatteringly crisp shell and a marshmallow-like interior that makes an edible bowl for the whipped cream and fruit. If it’s not humid out, the meringue shell can be baked up to a day ahead. Otherwise, it’s best made the day you plan to serve it.
Raspberry and Cream Éclairs
A pretty-in-pink version of the classic favorite, these éclairs are filled with a raspberry cream made with fresh and freeze-dried raspberries for concentrated flavor and a rosy hue. Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods carry freeze-dried raspberries, as do many online stores, but you can leave them out if you can’t find them — the cream will be less intense, but still tasty. These éclairs are a labor of love, best enjoyed the day they’re created.
Orange Marmalade Cake
This beautiful, tender, citrus-scented loaf cake filled with bits of candied orange peel is everything you want with your afternoon tea. The key is finding the right marmalade; it needs to be the thick-cut (also known as coarse-cut) marmalade made with bitter oranges, which will be laden with big pieces of peel. Look for the British brands in the international section of your supermarket if the jam aisle lets you down. (And not give up and use the neon orange marmalade that's more like jelly.) Your reward is a fine-grained, not-too-sweet cake that will last for days well-wrapped and stored at room temperature (if you can manage not to eat it up all at once).
Magnolia Bakery’s Buttercream Vanilla Icing
From the world-famous Magnolia Bakery, comes the ultimate buttercream icing recipe. With loads of butter, piles of confectioner's sugar and a generous glug of vanilla extract, how can you go wrong? It's simple, but spectacular. It goes great with their cupcake recipe, but it plays nice with almost any cake.
Peach-Raspberry Ice Cream Cake
Adults swoon and children squeal at the prospect of ice cream cake. This from-scratch version, with layers of peach-studded ice cream, raspberries and tender butter cake, will delight both those contingents. The ice cream here does not require an ice cream maker; it's made by folding freshly whipped cream into a mixture of chopped peaches, peach preserves and evaporated milk. It is deliberately less sweet than other no-churn ice cream recipes you'll see, to avoid overwhelming the delicate peach flavor. But if you prefer, you can use store-bought ice cream in place of the cream mixture here. Omit the evaporated milk and heavy cream; instead, combine the chopped peaches with the peach preserves and salt, then fold into two pints of softened good-quality vanilla ice cream. It will be richer, but a little messier to assemble.
Soufflé Omelet With Apricot Sauce
Soufflé omelets are quick desserts that sound a lot more difficult to make than they actually are. The sauce for these is adapted from an apricot filling for crepes in Sherry Yard’s book “Desserts by the Yard.”
Rhubarb Crumble
In this fruit crumble — a relative of other homey desserts like crisps and buckles, bright red rhubarb makes a brilliant show, though a combination of rhubarb and apple can be nice too. Pistachio in the topping is optional and could be replaced by walnuts or pecans. Serve with cold heavy cream, whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.
Danish Rice Pudding With Fresh Cherries
Whole-Lemon Tart
My grail is a simple dessert that both satisfies and surprises. This tart, adapted from a recipe that was originally given to me by Jean-Marie Desfontaines of the Paris patisserie Rollet Pradier, has all that I look for in a dessert. The filling is the surprise — it’s made with every part of the lemon except the seeds, and so its flavor is exuberantly full. It’s also easy to make — it all happens in the food processor. It bakes to a creaminess that teeters between custard and pudding. Alone, it’s interesting, but with the sweet crust (think butter cookie), it’s deeply satisfying. To get every lick of flavor and the best texture out of the crust, don’t roll it too thin and make sure to bake it well — you want the color to be truly golden brown.
Cherry and Apricot Clafoutis
Cherries and apricots are both in season together, and combine nicely in many desserts. I use half almond flour and half all-purpose flour in this clafoutis. Serve it warm or at room temperature, and eat leftovers for breakfast.
Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies
What makes these cookies truly “perfect” isn’t anything radical; it’s simply an attention to detail. The pastry chef Ravneet Gill was meticulous in developing her recipe, and all of her instructions exist for a reason. When she tells you to chill your dough overnight, don’t think you can skip over that. (If you do, your cookies will spread.) When she instructs you to roll the dough into balls before transferring them to the fridge to rest, do as she says, and you’ll get a nice plump, domed cookie instead of a sad flat one. Don’t go swapping in milk chocolate for dark, and chop the chocolate into large chunks for those dramatic, dense puddles of goo. One allowance: If you don’t have Maldon salt, another flaky salt or even kosher salt will do.
Tumble-Jumble Strawberry Tart
I first had a strawberry tart like this one more than 10 years ago at the Paris cafe La Palette, and I’ve been making my own version of it ever since. It’s simply a crust slicked with some jam and then topped with an abundance of berries; whipped cream or crème fraîche is optional. The recipe is straightforward, but the construction is genius. You bake the crust, which is both crisp and tender, to a beautiful golden color and then set it aside. (Use the scraps of dough to make cookies; sprinkle with sugar before baking.) When you’re ready for dessert, you cut and finish only as many servings as you need, ensuring that the crust will always have great texture and the berries will always be fresh and bright. You could use a store-bought crust, but there are so few components in this dessert, it’s good to make each one count.
Milk and Honey Cake
The flavor of this ultrabuttery layer cake, adapted from Odette Williams’s “Simple Cake” (Ten Speed Press, 2019), can be as mild or pronounced as you like, depending on the variety of honey you use. Clover honey will give you something gentle and mellow, while more assertive buckwheat or chestnut honey have more depth. You can serve the cake plain, with dollops of the whipped cream on the side, for a casual gathering, or frost and fill it, adding berries or other fruit, for a more celebratory affair. It makes an excellent birthday cake.
No-Bake Lemon Custards With Strawberries
Ultracreamy but still ethereally light, these individual custards are set with lemon juice rather than eggs, cornstarch or gelatin. They are thick and velvety, but not overly rich, with a bright, clean citrus flavor. Based on a British dessert called a posset, the key is to simmer the cream and sugar before adding the fresh lemon juice, giving the cream a chance to thicken slightly. In this summery version, the custards are served with a topping of syrupy, sugared strawberries and a sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper, which adds a gentle spicy note without overwhelming the fruit.
Crème Fraîche Cheesecake With Sour Cherries
This light cheesecake bridges the gap between those who love their cheesecakes tall and dense, straight out of Lindy’s, and others who prefer a daintier cake, made airy with farmer’s cheese or ricotta. Here, you’ll use cream cheese, goat cheese and crème fraîche to concoct a light, fluffy cheesecake that isn’t too sweet, making it the perfect platform to show off a bunch of summer cherries, simmered in sugar. Or you could skip the cherries and eat it plain, or drizzle over some honey and toasted nuts.
Azo Family Chocolate Cake
The cake takes about 25 minutes to cook and even less time to put together. After the batter bakes in a very hot oven, the pan is cooled a bit, then wrapped in foil and placed in the refrigerator. The tactic results in a cake with a delightfully fudgy center.
Chocolate and Olive Oil Mousse
Olive oil makes this bittersweet chocolate mousse kosher for a meat meal. Joan Nathan brought the recipe to The Times in 2007. “This is a contemporary dessert from Tangiers, a city with a blend of cultures,” the cookbook author Ana Benarroch de Bensadón said. “Originally this recipe included butter and cream, but we replaced it with olive oil, making it ‘parve’ or neutral.”
Nectarine Tart
A beautiful dessert made from any great summer fruit — figs, nectarines, apricots, plums — that, yes, takes a little time. The reward is in the wow factor you get from the result — and in the flavors it provides. Brushing the pastry with a slick of good preserves before you add the fruit will create a thick syrup on the bottom that helps keep the pastry from becoming soggy. Then cut the fruit into quarters or eighths, depending on their size, then crowd the wedges so that they stand at attention in tight concentric circles on a pastry shell. Dust the whole thing with sugar and baste the top with melted butter. Cook and cool the finished tart, then serve with crème fraîche, whipped cream, or a few scoops of your favorite ice cream.
Croissant Chocolate Pudding
Mulling-Spice Cake With Cream-Cheese Frosting
The spices in this cake from “Live Life Deliciously” by Tara Bench (Shadow Mountain, 2020) are, indeed, those you’d use if you were mulling cider or wine. They’re the flavors of fall and winter, and especially of the holidays; that their aromas linger in the kitchen is a bonus. They’re warm and hearty enough to hold their own when blended with the cake’s apple cider and molasses (use an unsulfured brand, such as Grandma’s). The batter is very thin, but it bakes up sturdy, easy to cut and ready to be generously filled and covered with cream cheese frosting. The cake is lovely on its own, but it welcomes extras. Ms. Bench decorates hers with almond and candy Christmas trees, but a little crystallized ginger or chocolate is nice too.