Electric Mixer

This cheesecake has Classic Caramel Sauce swirled into it, which makes it flavor-rich as well as visually exciting. The crust, made with toasted walnuts, provides a perfect balance of both flavor and texture. Because the cake needs time to cool and chill, I recommend making it at least a day in advance of when you plan to serve it.

The Christmas season in Puerto Rico is blessed with balmy weather and clear skies. There is nothing like dining under the shade of a gourd tree on Christmas Eve, savoring every morsel of the earthy tamales called pasteles and adobo-flavored pork while looking at the sea. Puerto Rican women get together with their families to prepare pasteles by the hundred, freezing them until needed for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, family reunions, the Fiesta de Reyes, and the religious season called octavas that follows the Feast of the Epiphany. It is the blend of the tiny pepper ají dulce and broad-leaf culantro in the fragrant sofrito (cooking sauce) that gives an unmistakable Puerto Rican identity to these earthy tamales. A dash of vinegar lends the sofrito just the right amount of tang against the mild dough of malanga and plantain tinted orange-yellow with achiote-infused lard. I learned to make these in the traditional kitchen of the Puerto Rican side of my family. While one person took care of trimming the plantain leaves, others were busy grating the vegetables and making the sofrito. There the vegetables are grated by hand, though you can find machines designed specially for this purpose in any market or use a food processor. Puerto Ricans are extremely fussy about the wrapping—it has to be perfect and watertight because pasteles are normally boiled. But I prefer to steam them.

When I was just starting to put some ideas together for recipes that I wanted to be included in this book, I had a conversation about lightened whipped cream with my friend and mentor Maida Heatter. She suggested that I try a recipe of hers called Cream Ooh-La-La, which she uses to top strawberries macerated with sugar and Grand Marnier, in Maida Heatter's Best Dessert Book Ever (Random House, 1990). It's basically sweetened whipped cream with the addition of some sour cream and whipped egg whites. I've transformed it a little by substituting reduced-fat sour cream and a cooked meringue. This results in a whipped cream with overtones of crème fraîhe and an exquisite lightness.

Most chocolate mousses are high in calories, but it's quite easy to make a delicious chocolate mousse that contains a fraction of the original calories and fat. The secret is to use high-quality bittersweet chocolate. It packs a strong, lively chocolate flavor and makes up for the fact that the mousse doesn’t have a quart of whipped cream in it.

No one really knows just whose idea it was to use a sponge cake crust for Junior's cheesecake recipe. It worked, and that same base continues to delight today.

"This is as good as it gets!" Alan exclaimed as he took his fourth forkful of this creation, followed by a fifth. Picture a warm, creamy, puffy bread pudding, straight from the oven, that tastes like it was made in a praline confectionery shop in New Orleans. You start with a loaf of challah, cut it into thick slices, and pour over a rich, creamy custard. Marble it with a buttery brown-sugar praline crunch filled with pecans and flavored with cinnamon. The secret is to refrigerate the pudding for several hours or overnight before baking; it's the long soak that makes this bread pudding the best you've ever tasted!

I get no greater satisfaction than knowing we've snuck some sweet potatoes and red cabbage onto the dessert menu at Vedge. This dish was originally inspired by a trip to the Czech Republic, where I enjoyed plum dumplings dusted in powdered sugar and served with vegan sour cream. Here, we fill our turnovers with candied whipped sweet potato, and the kraut garnish offers a nice bright note from the sweet Riesling. If you want to go all out, try serving them with a dollop of vegan sour cream whipped with a little powdered sugar and orange zest.

Mayonnaise in the batter isn't as weird as it sounds—it's just eggs and oil, after all. It's also why this cake is so moist.

We make lots of things from scratch on Thanksgiving, but pumpkin purée isn't one of them.

A splash of brandy—plus orange zest and juice—in the doughnut batter complements the fruity jam filling perfectly. Try it with any preserve, pastry cream, or sugar coating you like.

We admit that we have had cake for breakfast before. Who hasn't? But how about breakfast for dessert? This recipe came about when we accidentally made too much pancake batter on Sunday morning. It's our take on a thousand-layer cake. The pancakes can be made up to a day ahead and refrigerated. The cake can be assembled up to 2 hours ahead. Not feeling like dessert? Prepare the pancakes using only 2 tablespoons of sugar and have them for breakfast.

When we were first dating, we would stay up in bed for hours trying to come up with new interpretations of classic desserts. Bird chile and passion fruit pavlova; Stilton mousse with walnut Florentine; apple, currant, and Brie pot pie. But some classics we knew not to amp up with "bold flavors" because they were sacred. Such is the tarte bourdaloue. This was one of the first desserts Matt and I were both taught to make in our classical pastry training; it is the pride of any French patisserie worth its (artisinal) salt, and you will treat it with some goddamn respect! Traditionally, it's a buttery tart crust filled with poached pear and luxurious almond cream. However, no matter how mind blowing the tarte bourdaloue is, almost no one in this country knows what it is. French Matt Says: You uncultured American swine! So, in an effort to make this winning flavor combo a bit more popular this side of the pond, we broke tradition and messed with it a little to turn it into a cupcake¿I mean, what's more American than cupcakes? Besides bald eagles, of course, but then again, you can't eat those (yet)!

If you like, serve this with whipped cream or an extra dollop of yogurt.

These old-fashioned marshmallows look beautiful in apothecary jars. Find one at a flea market, Williams-Sonoma, or on etsy.com.

This is a winning-contestant recipe from Season Four of Fox's MasterChef.

This is one of those sleeper recipes that's more complex-tasting than it sounds. Each element is supereasy to prepare and can be made days in advance, but the finished dessert is a stunner.

This rich, subtly tangy cream spiked with almond essence gives ripe, sliced pears just the embellishment they need to go from fruit to fabulous.