European

This light, rich mousse literally melts in your mouth. It is a component of the Chocolate-Pear Cake (page 98), but you can serve it on its own.

A chocolate pastry cream lightened with meringue, this crème chiboust is an elegant topping for a bowl of warm roasted berries. When I make this to finish Meyer Lemon Tarts (page 121), I freeze it and cut it into disks.

Dessert wines are usually too sweet for me, so I introduce the natural acids of fresh fruit or berries for balance, as in this granité. Serve this over berries or add it to a margarita.

The combination of bitter Campari and sweet tangerine couldn’t be more refreshing.

I love this cookie for its buttery, fragile tenderness, but I also like to make crumbs from it because they’re such a great texture in a layered dessert (like the Rose Oeufs à la Neige on page 134). The cookies are best served the day they’re baked. I’ve written the recipe so you freeze half the dough and have it waiting for another day.

This bread is a staple in the pastry kitchen and it has many uses—from French toast to croutons. The direct mixing method and overnight rise is a technique I picked up over the years. Brioche freezes beautifully.

This bread gets put to so many uses in my kitchen, from pressed sandwiches to croutons (which could go on a cool sundae). You could use it for French toast or as the base of a chocolate bread pudding. Or just slather it with butter and jam for breakfast. I recommend keeping some of this bread on hand in the freezer.

This is an all-round great tart dough. It’s my adaptation of a dough I learned from Thomas Haas when he was the executive pastry chef at Daniel. The pastry’s not too sweet, so it’s versatile. You can use it for everything from berry tarts to quiche. Put the flour in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes before you start making this pastry. Chilled flour will make the flakiest dough.

Late-night eating is one of those things that’s pretty much a fact of a chef’s life. Really late-night eating. And I often end up with friends at ’ino and ’inoteca, where they make the greatest panini in New York. One very late night, my cooks and I thought it would be fun to create a sandwich for the dessert menu. Here’s the result. The combination of chocolate with the tangy olives is addictive.

In this dessert, a grapefruit gelée gets poured over grapefruit segments, which brings a different flavor note out of the grapefruit. It’s important to add the zest at the end to avoid bitterness. The combination of grapefruit and tarragon is one I really love, but I also wanted to add something spicy. Ginger is a natural, since it enlivens the herb flavors and is intense enough to carry through the ice cream, which gives this dessert its great mouthfeel.

This dessert was the brainchild of Amanda Clarke, one of my cooks, who went on to become pastry chef at Jean-Georges’s Perry Street Restaurant in New York. The floral notes of the rose, the bitter edge of the Campari, the sweet acids of the tangerine and citrus, all meld into a unique balance of flavor and texture.

The technique here is traditional and French. The fresh and dried cranberries and the star anise are modern and provide bright hits of flavor in every bite. You’ll need two 6-cavity Flexipan savarin molds (the 2 3/4-inch size) if you want to match the shape of the dessert in the photograph. But you could also freeze the nougat in a baking sheet and cut pieces to serve.

The origin of this dessert is Tarte Vaudoise, a traditional European pastry. I’ve replaced the original heavy cream with crème fraîche and added different nut textures. It may look simple on the plate, but it’s complex in flavor.

I’ve always considered corn a borderline fruit, so why not incorporate it into the pastry menu? Here I pair it with buttery Madeleine Sponge Cake, my adaptation of the classic seashell cake, with a shatteringly crisp sugar crust. And I pile on the garnishes: kettle corn and freeze-dried corn bring their own special crunch to the dessert, and they’re easy because you can find them readymade in good grocery stores. I use plastic tubes that I’ve had cut to my specifications when I make this panna cotta at the restaurant. You can, too, if you have access to a plastic supply shop; the tubes I use have a 1-inch diameter, and they’re 18 inches long. But you can also make the panna cotta in cannoli forms or muffin tins (see Make It Simpler).

When I go to the farmers’ markets in summer and see all the bounty, I start asking myself, “What can work with what?” and “What would balance that fruit?” Apricots and peppermint are both refreshing flavors. In this dessert, the mint livens the apricot, providing an herbal contrast to the natural sweetness of the fruit.

This is a riff on Jean-Georges’s grandmother’s rhubarb tart. It’s not her recipe for the pastry or the streusel, but the notion of macerating the rhubarb before baking and adding the flan came from her. Mustard may not be a traditional ingredient for desserts, but it adds a definite edge to the jam and it’s my nod to Alsace, from where Jean-Georges hails. You’ll have leftover jam. Try pairing it with cheese or with a sizzling steak.

I started making vacherins when I was in the south of France, at Pâtisserie Chéreau in Nice, and fell in love with this combination of meringue, creamy ice cream, fruit, sorbet, and whipped cream. We made big ones in France, but I like individual vacherins best. I use a stencil when I make these meringues in the restaurant, but I’ve adapted the recipe for a pastry bag here. The recipe makes more than you will need for the dessert, but it’s nearly impossible to whip any less egg white successfully. The meringues will keep for several days if you store them airtight, and they’re a great snack. Make as many of the composed desserts as you like. You will have enough sorbet and ice cream for up to 24.

This dessert showcases the versatility of rhubarb, its acidity balanced by a silky, creamy cheese panna cotta. The recipe scales up quite easily if you want to make more for a crowd.

Maybe I like rhubarb so much because I started eating it when I was a child; my mother’s strawberry-rhubarb pie is one of my earliest memories. And I love summer fruit soups; that’s something I learned from François Payard. So this combination is a natural for me. You need just the pod from the vanilla bean for this dessert, so if you have saved some used pods, now is the time to recycle. And you will need a whipped cream charger (see page 279) for the foam. You will have leftover consommé (which you can freeze) and foam; you simply can’t successfully foam less liquid than is in the recipe.

Biscotti means “twice baked,” a cooking method that results in the firm, crunchy cookies that have recently become wildly popular here in America. These cookies were eaten by sailors back in Columbus’s day because they last for a long time without going bad. They’re great for dunking in coffee or tea, which is how my mom, nonna, and I would eat them when I was growing up. The citrus zests provide an extra little zing, and really evoke the tastes of Italy. If you want, you could use just orange or lemon; it doesn’t have to be both.