Fruit Dessert

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.

Taste testing is one of the great perks of my job. Every summer when our first batch of Raspberry Crumb Pies comes out of the oven, I take one home with me so that my family and I can perform “quality assurance.” It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it! Raspberries are at their best in the midsummer months. For best results, seek out raspberries that are slightly soft and plump. Raspberries continue to ripen after they are picked and have a short shelf-life, so try to make this pie within a day or two of bringing home your raspberries. Raspberry pie is equally good made with a traditional pastry piecrust (as photographed here with a lattice topping) or a Cinnamon Sugar Crumb Topping, but, I have to say, I’m partial to the crumb topping—the sweetness is a lovely complement to the raspberries’ tartness. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of Whipped Cream (page 193). This pie can also be made with the Traditional Pastry double crust (page 5).

When Kelly told me he was going to try making a pineapple pie, I thought he was crazy. I’ve heard of pineapple in a lot of things . . . but pie? Wanting no part in this, I told him to go for it, and walked away. A few days later, I found myself biting into Kelly’s first attempt. It wasn’t bad—granted, it wasn’t great either—but I began to think he was on to something. With my curiosity piqued, I decided to take a stab at it myself. Today, Pineapple Crumb Pie is one of the more popular pies we sell. For a more tropical variation of this pie, you can also try it with Macadamia-Coconut Crumb Topping (page 13).

Talk about zing! This pie will turn even the most bland and basic of winter dinners into a completely memorable meal. The red color of fresh cranberries mixed in with the pale hues of apples and pears makes for a gorgeous presentation. But that’s just the beginning. This pie also beautifully combines the tartness of cranberries with the sweetness of apples and pears. To really highlight the spectacular color of this pie, use either the Cinnamon Sugar Crumb Topping or the Walnut Crumb Topping (page 14). Or if you want to highlight the tartness of the cranberries, I recommend using the double-crust Traditional Pastry Piecrust (page 5).

Raspberries are one of those special fruits you can add to just about anything with great results. So, whenever I’m looking to spruce up more subtle tastes (like a pear filling), raspberries are my go-to fruit. Since pear and raspberry season overlap during the early fall months, Pear-Raspberry Pie is a nice alternative to the more traditional and expected harvesttime pies. You can also try this with Cinnamon Sugar Crumb Topping (page 12).