Electric Mixer

Shaving the side edge of the coconut pieces with a vegetable peeler is the best way to get strips of uniform width for garnishing the cake.

These are made with wedges of a moist, rich cake and served with a sauce that blends cooked and fresh strawberries.

Almonds and matzo cake meal make a wonderfully textured crust for this refreshing, citrusy cheesecake. After Passover, instead of pulling out the graham crackers again, experiment with other cookie crusts such as one made with shortbread.

A zingy lemon tart gains an Italian accent with a crisp, almond-perfumed crust.

Savor healthy sweets

Hot milk cake is an easy, old-fashioned dessert that has simple, modern appeal. The moist, delicate cake gets its name from the hot milk that is added to the batter just before baking. In this recipe, the individual cakes are split, then topped with berries and whipped cream.

These individual desserts get their bright flavor from lemon juice, lemon peel, and a lemon curd topping.

These gorgeous cupcakes have a sweet surprise inside: They're filled with a dollop of raspberry jam. Half of the cupcakes have a pale yellow lemon glaze; the rest are topped with a pink raspberry-lemon glaze.

A little bit of olive oil makes this cake especially moist.

This classic French dessert relies on eggs for its pool of rich custard and its islands of soft meringue. In this easy and updated version, the meringue is baked instead of poached, and the custard is enhanced with lemon and a scattering of raspberries.

This cake was inspired by Devil Dogs, the bone-shaped chocolate cakes with irresistible white goo sandwiched between their layers. You'll want to dive headfirst into this version, a tall layer of moist, dark devil's food with fluffy marshmallow frosting.

A new take on pineapple upside-down cake. Here, a sticky brown-sugar caramel drips down the sides of a super-moist banana cake.

Leave it to the French to come up with the classiest way of doing an ice cream sundae. Hide the grown-up coffee ice cream inside a crisp puff of pastry (the same dough that cream puffs are made from), then drizzle it with full-bodied chocolate sauce.

We like to use California apricots (sometimes labeled "Pacific") in this dessert. They tend to be a deeper orange, and they have a tang that's occasionally lacking in the Turkish or Mediterranean varieties.

Though Treviso is recognized as the birthplace of tiramisù, the precise origins of this phenomenally popular dessert are shrouded in mystery. Imagine my excitement, then, when my friend Celeste Tonon, proprietor of Ristorante da Celeste, passed on to me the original procedures for making this luscious assemblage of ladyfingers (savoiardi) and Mascarpone cream, which Celeste learned from his mentor Speranza Garatti, the true mother of tiramisù, he claims. Her creation was made and served in individual portions, in a goblet or coppa, which I suspect gave rise to its name, which means "pick me up" in the Venetian dialect. One of the delights of making tiramisù is its versatility. This recipe makes a family-style dessert in a large dish, but you can easily compose single servings in dessert glasses, wine goblets, or even elegant teacups for a more impressive presentation, in the style of Signora Garatti's original "coppa imperiale." And while the conventional version of tiramisù calls for espresso-soaked savoiardi, I've found that other flavors can be incorporated into the dessert with great success. Here, the brightness of fresh lemons and limoncello liqueur lace the cream and soaking syrup to make for a tiramisù that is refreshing and irresistible.

A little cornmeal gives the cake a crunchy texture. The sweet-tangy ice cream and the tart compote help dress up the dessert for this holiday dinner.

Forget the marshmallows. All that these sweet potatoes need is a little butter and a drizzle of honey.

Honey and dates make this dessert perfectly sweet (but not too sweet) and sticky. Pecans add a nutty crunch.