Fruit Dessert

Editor's note: This recipe is from Brini Maxwell's Guide to Gracious Living. For Maxwell's tips on throwing a summer pool party, click here. This eye opening dish is mostly flash and very little substance, but the fresh fruit is delicious and good for the digestion.

TREND: Roasted fruit WHO: Diane Rossen Worthington, author of The Taste of the Season: Inspired Recipes for Fall and Winter WHAT: Cooks have known for ages that roasting completely transforms meat and vegetables, taking them to new depths of flavor. Fruit is now getting the treatment, and this winter comfort dessert comes from a cookbook author who really knows about cold-weather cooking.

This pie, an easy take on toffee with bananas (hence the name), made its debut at The Hungry Monk, a pub in England, in 1972. Traditional recipes involve boiling unopened cans of condensed milk, but since that sometimes results in explosions, we thought you might prefer our method.

This is a great way to turn the peel of juiced clementine halves into a delicacy. You can also use peel torn from clementines, though the pieces will be less uniform.

Tarte au Citron There are different ways to make a lemon tart. At Bouchon, the French Laundry, and Per Se, we use a sabayon method, in which the eggs are first cooked with the lemon juice and sugar over hot water, then the butter is gradually incorporated — an easy method that results in a consistently good lemon custard or curd. The crust is made with sweet and nutty pine nuts, which I think are the perfect balance for the rich, tart custard.

Pink peppercorns add a lovely floral note to this pretty dessert.

The subtle citrus notes in this dark chocolate tart come from pink grapefruit and blood orange zests. It has a sublime buttery shortbread crust. Do-aheads: filled tart, 2 days; candied citrus peel, 1 week.

Lauren Beal of San Rafael, California, writes: "When it comes to making dinner, my husband, Stuart, and I have the perfect system. He's in charge of our backyard garden, and I'm in charge of cooking with what he harvests—things like basil, onions, lemons, and even apples. It's our favorite way to create a meal together."

Our food editors find the texture of pineapple sherbet so much lighter and fluffier than that of other sherbets and sorbets — it practically has the weightlessness of granita. It provides a wonderful, tangy balance to the rich ambrosia cake and is delicious on its own, too.

The sweet, creamy pulp of ripe Hachiya persimmons shines in a luscious dessert.