Fruit Dessert

When our late summer/fall cheater barbecue party guests deserve something fancier than sliced watermelon, we serve Swanky Figs. Like a good barbecue sauce, this dessert demonstrates the appeal of yin/yang balance—salty sharp blue cheese, creamy rich mascarpone, sweet honey, and tannic toasty walnuts. Go ahead and broil the figs early in the day. After dinner, discreetly step into the kitchen and reappear minutes later with a drop-dead platter of edible jewels.

Charred with butter and sugar, Broiled Peaches are a summertime romantic dinner-for-two essential in R. B.’s little black cookbook. Guys who lack strong dessert skills can relax. Broil the peaches early, set them aside at room temp, and assemble the dessert when ready to serve. R. B. likes his peaches with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a splash of Amaretto, Smoky Caramel Sauce (page 198), and toasted sliced almonds on top. Substitute fruits abound for this dish—you can butter, sugar, and broil banana halves, fresh pineapple spears, seeded melon wedges, and pitted and halved plums. We use whatever is in season. They all taste great with any of our cheater smoked dessert sauces.

Deep in the interior of the island on the fringes of the barbagia is Nuoro. It seemed a cultural suicide, wielded by unsentimental politicos over this past half century, that smote Nuoro’s picturesque and pastoral life. This, the place on Sardegna where Stone Age man first set his fires, the place least contaminated by the passing of the millennia, was swiftly, gracelessly swept away by those compelled to gentrify her. Little has changed about the Nuoresi themselves, though. As best they can midst their fresh new proscenium of concrete, they still dance their simple rhythms, honor legacy and heritage with their reserved sort of gaiety. A sweet—once made only by the Nuorese massaie, farmwives—is now fabricated in crisp, shiny laboratories and sent then, in its handsome trappings and tassels, to elegant shops on the Continent. Still, the women cook their ancestral aranciata at home for feast days, sometimes tucking it into bits of lace, placing little pouches of it at everyone’s place at table, then hiding an old silvered tin of it in the back seat of a new friend’s automobile.

A while ago, I’d heard from a friend about a tart made with oranges from the groves on the island of Capri, it, once an idyll and now mostly a tourist ruin just seventeen kilometers across the bay from Napoli. Specifically, it was the island’s village of Anacapri that was the scene of my friend’s tart story. She told me that the confection was barely sugared, so perfect were the oranges of its making. She said it was all of a cool cream in the mouth, each little bite of it a sensual, sweet/pungent explosion. She said that even the crust was scented with oranges, perhaps with some locally distilled liqueur of the fruit, and that, too, the crust gave up some soft breath of herb, like wild mint or rosemary. But where in Anacapri, I begged, never having seen the sweet in any pasticceria nor read of it on any menu nor found it perched on any dessert cart. Worse, everyone I asked about the tart shook their heads. “Non c’è una cosa del genere qui, signora.” “There is nothing of that sort here, madam.” This bantering betwixt my friend and I has endured several years. She insists that the tart, indeed, exists. I think it some citrusy half-dream of hers, a tart that should have been, perhaps, but one that never yet was, at least not in Anacapri. And so I baked it, hearing her gurglings and swoonings in my mind at every step. Though I’ve yet to make it for her—she living in Oregon while I’m here in Tuscany—I offer it here and tell you, humbly, of its goodness, of its simple sort of persuasiveness. I think it is the pastry I would make and share and eat on the last day of the world.

During my college years, I’d return home to Los Angeles every summer and promptly—you guessed it—look for a restaurant job. One summer, I did a stage at L.A.’s premier French restaurant, L’Orangerie. I started my stage in the pastry kitchen with Chef Yves. He taught me the classic techniques of crème brûlée, chocolate puff pastry, and soufflés made to order. But my favorite of his desserts was sautéed apples with caramel sauce and crème anglaise. A little less formal and traditional than the rest of his repertoire, that dish was simple, straightforward, and all about the apples. To make our own version of Chef Yves’s apples at Lucques, we cut the apples in half, toss them with lots of butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and Calvados, and roast them, basting all the time, until they are a deep golden brown and glistening with spicy juices. With a scoop of cinnamon ice cream melting over the apples, this easy-to-make dessert is an elegant way to finish a winter feast.

The clafoutis was invented in Limousin, France, to showcase that region’s famous cherries. Some compare the eggy consistency of clafoutis to flan, as it’s neither cake nor custard. To me, it’s more like an extra-thick crêpe dotted with fruit. Clafoutis puffs beautifully as it bakes, and hot out of the oven, it’s crisp on the outside and airy in the middle. When chilled, however, it collapses, becoming dense and custardlike. I love it both ways. One of the great aspects of clafoutis is its versatility. Once you know how to make the batter, you can make great desserts with it year-round. At Lucques, we’ve made clafoutis with sautéed apples in the winter and with berries in the summer. For the fall, I like a clafoutis featuring that indigenous American jewel, the cranberry. This dessert is delicious as is, but if you want to gild the lily, serve it with a dollop of bourbon-spiked whipped cream.

Everyone has had berries in cobblers and pies, but when people see this gratinéed dessert, their eyebrows rise in curious anticipation. The raspberries and custard are cooked briefly under the broiler, creating a delicious warm crust that only partially hides the tart berries and warm cream beneath. Once you learn this technique, you can use it with other berries, or winter, a gratin made with sautéed apples or pears with dried fruit is delicious, too. Choose an attractive dish that can go from oven to table.

This is a dessert I serve all year round with whatever fruit is ripe. I always include orange segments though, as a reminder of the citrus in the sabayon sauce. You can make each serving of this dessert as small or large as you want, depending on how much fruit you use. In its simplicity, c’est bon!

In this simple dessert, fresh fruit is the star. Lemon juice brings out the sweetness of summer cherries and berries. Any red berries work here—fresh red currants, black currants, and gooseberries are great options, too.

Berries and apples are my favorite fruit combination in crumbles and cobblers. I try to have blueberries and cranberries as often as possible for their powerful antioxidant goodness. Here’s a way to enjoy a sweet, delectable crumble, minus the thirty-minute baking time usually required. The twist here is that it’s made on the stovetop rather than baked in the oven.

I’ve become a huge fan of butterscotch lately; I’m not sure if it’s the flavor or the scent that appeals to me most. I love the synergy between the tart apples and the mellow sauce; it’s like making caramel apples in the pan.

Poached pears always make a lovely dessert, but what makes this extra pleasing is the addition of glazed pecans.

The flavor of maple syrup marries well with pineapple, especially glazed right into the surface. If you like pineapple, you’re sure to enjoy this nearly instant dessert. This is particularly appealing when made with canned organic pineapple mini-rings.

One winter evening some time ago, our younger son said he had an idea for a dessert, and ordered us all out of the kitchen. He made the caramel sauce from scratch, but it was rather involved and made a bit of a mess (though it tasted incredible). Since this is a book dedicated to ease, I’ve used prepared caramel syrup in this recipe. When I was finally allowed to peek into the kitchen, I saw that Evan had combined apples with chocolate, a combination I thought wouldn’t work well. Pears and chocolate, strawberries and chocolate, yes, but apples? It turns out I was wrong. We loved this dessert, and since then have had it regularly. With prepared caramel sauce, it’s a snap to make and strikes a wonderful balance of raw and cooked, healthy and decadent. It looks pretty, too. Lucky me to have such a great young dessert chef in the family!

This pie is like one big, caramel-covered candy apple, sans the stick and a bit easier to eat. And if you are all about the crunch, add the chopped nuts to the Cinnamon Sugar Crumb Topping to really drive home the candy apple experience. This is the perfect pie to celebrate fall birthdays and other harvesttime occasions.

This pie is all about decadence, where the smooth and velvety filling melds beautifully with a flaky pastry crust. For optimal results, be sure to use ripe bananas as they’re more flavor packed and they maximize the creamy texture that’s the hallmark of a perfect Banana Cream Pie.