Cream Cheese

SMART SUBSTITUTION To make this popular Italian dessert lighter, use reduced-fat cream cheese and skim milk in place of the traditional heavy cream. Thanks to the semisweet chocolate, it still tastes rich.

SECRET INGREDIENTS This cheesecake has a velvety texture but less fat than more familiar versions, thanks to reduced-fat versions of cream cheese and sour cream—plus the unexpected addition of low-fat cottage cheese. With its delectable cherry topping, this dessert will please everyone, even those not counting calories.

If you choose to bake only one cookie from this collection, make it these bites. The crisp cookie base provides the perfect contrasting setup to the luscious caramel-flavored dulce de leche—caramelized milk—hidden under the creamiest cheesecake layer. The final snazzy drizzle of dulce de leche is not essential, we know, but it makes the bites downright irresistible.

Not only is this giant layer cake a stunner, it is absolutely delicious with its creamy guava filling and fluffy buttercream frosting. We had a guava tree in my mom’s garden, and when the fruit was in season, we ate our share of guava cakes, guava tarts, guava water, and pretty much guava anything. This is my homage to my mom’s guava tree.

My mom made a variation of this dessert from the time I was a little girl. I’m not exactly sure where she got the recipe, but I know it came from one of my aunts in Guadalajara. You just need to know that my uncle Ernesto would drive from his house in San Diego across the border into Tijuana to go to my mom’s house when she announced she was making strawberry pie. It’s not traditional or very Mexican, especially in its original form. She used to use a store-bought graham-cracker pie crust (which you are free to use), but I have concocted a much tastier crust using the traditional Maria cracker and piloncillo (unrefined solid cane sugar, usually found in the shape of small truncated cones). What I absolutely left alone is the filling—a fluffy, creamy, perfectly sweet filling that I could eat an entire bowl of if given a spoon. The amounts given will also work with a 9-inch round tart pan with removable bottom if you don’t want to make individual tartlets.

Delicate and beautiful zucchini blossoms make their appearance at farmer’s markets in mid- to late summer. In Italy, the blossoms are stuffed with just about anything and prepared in a number of ways, from sautéed to baked, or just served fresh in a salad. My favorite is and always has been stuffed and fried—and served with a side of marinara sauce.

“Hearts of Cream” a lovely, classic dessert and one that takes very little attention or work.

This is all about the dough: there is none better. My earliest appreciation for it came from a cookie my grandmother made. I could never get over how delicious they were, but it was only years later that I realized they were a variation on the standard kolacky. These are most easily filled with thick preserves, or you can make your own fillings from stewed dried or fresh fruit as long as the mixture is thick. Some people add enough flour to make a stiff dough, but it’s really preferable to leave the dough sticky, which translates to tenderness, and refrigerate it for a few hours, which makes it easier to handle. If you’re in a hurry, however, make the dough a little stiffer and roll it out right away. These are fun to make with kids, as the ultimate shape really doesn’t matter.

We have all eaten herbed cheese, but most of it is store-bought and contains who-knows-what. This is a traditional herb cheese with almost nothing in it; you can also make it with fresh goat cheese or with Yogurt Cheese (preceding recipe). Serve with crackers, lightly toasted pita, and/or raw vegetable sticks.

Hands down, this is Michael’s favorite cake. It’s a sweet, scrumptious memory of the days when his mother, Carmel, would bake it for him. In the Groover household, it was a family tradition that on your birthday you chose your favorite cake. Michael remembers this cake becoming his favorite at age five, and his request has not changed to this day. So naturally this just had to be his groom’s cake.

Well, here we go again. Leave it to me to dress up a collard green! I put these bad boys inside a beautifully browned blanket, and lo and behold, it was the number one hand-passed appetizer at our reception. Who would have ever thought that collard greens and cream cheese could taste so good!