Fruit Dessert

Gloria Linss, grandmother of my editorial assistant, Valeria, was kind enough to provide us with the perfect ratio of sugar and cinnamon to squash for this recipe. She also pointed out that at her house they did not chop the squash; she would literally smash the whole gourd onto the kitchen floor until it broke into pieces. You can keep it old-school and do that, but I suggest you go with a very sharp knife: it makes cleanup easier. For a sweet finish, do as Gloria does and drizzle the squash with chilled evaporated milk before serving. The cold milk is the perfect counterpoint to the extravagantly sweet, melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon-scented squash.

The Clafouti is essentially a fruit-laden baked pancake. I love this Americanized version, which is crunchy and sweet.

In place of apples, you can use pears here or a mixture. In fact, this is a universal crisp recipe and will work with just about any fruit. Almost needless to say, it’s great with vanilla ice cream.

I make these skewers, the creation of my friend Johnny Earles, several times each summer. The bananas, especially, drive everyone wild.

If you take soft, ripe fruit, top it with a fancy sauce like crème Anglaise, and run the whole thing under the broiler, you have a four-star dessert. But if you top the fruit with something like sweetened heavy cream, whipped just enough so that it holds some body when broiled, or sweetened sour cream—which hardly needs to be whisked—you can produce a similarly glorious dessert in less than half the time. Although this preparation is lightning-quick, it has to be constantly watched while cooking. Get the broiler hot, put the dish right under the heating element, and keep your eyes open. You want the topping to burn a little bit—it will smell like toasting marshmallows—but obviously not too much. When the topping is nearly uniformly brown, with a few black spots, it’s done. The fruit will not have cooked at all.

Look for Large Pears, just about ripe; their “shoulders” should yield to gentle pressure, but they should not be mushy. Serve these, if you like, with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream, or ice cream, or sour cream.

The ideal bananas for cooking are just ripe, yellow with barely any brown spots. Double this recipe if you want a more substantial dessert or serve with vanilla ice cream.

Nothing can match dried fruit for convenience and intensity of flavor. And when you poach an assortment with port and a few spices, the results belie the ease of preparation. This is not a summer dessert—no one would mistake this for fresh fruit—but it is delicious, low-fat, and a welcome change from heavy winter desserts. One tip: Use a port you’ll enjoy drinking (or buy a half bottle), because you’re going to use less than a third of a full-size bottle in this recipe.

This Dessert the kind of thing that Jell-O is supposed to imitate is unusual these days, but it’s easy and delicious, a nice use of fruit that’s available year-round.

Sour cherries are too acidic to eat raw but are the best for cooking. This simple preparation amounts to cherry pie without the crust.

This recipe, adapted from a classic by cookbook author Claudia Roden, is a longtime personal favorite. It becomes heavenly if you add a little rose and/or orange flower water.

Frozen pound cake is fine for the summer pudding (homemade is better, of course, though not one in ten people will know the difference), but fresh berries are essential.

A simple, traditional, and super-rich dessert.

Here’s a strawberry dessert that not only is delicious and intriguing but also can compete with plain fruit in lightness. Strawberries are sugared to juice them up a bit, then drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with a pinch of black pepper. The result is so elegant that you’ll find it in great restaurants from here to Emilia-Romagna, the home of balsamic vinegar. It’s an ideal dessert after a heavy meal. Serve, if you like, with a few crisp cookies or a slice of pound, sponge, or angel food cake. This will not hold for any length of time; you can sugar the berries an hour or two before you want to serve them, but no longer.

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

This mixture of sour and whipped cream is akin to crème fraîche, but I find it more delicious. It’s killer on strawberries.

This recipe and the four that follow share one basic requirement: in-season, preferably locally grown strawberries. In the event that you can’t find strawberries that match that description, substitute any other berries—blackberries, blueberries, raspberries—that are at their peak. Look for strawberries that are dark red, inside and out. The sugar will juice up any strawberries and make them sweeter of course, but it cannot work miracles.

Not “caramel apples”—whole apples coated with candy—but caramelized: Sliced apples baked in caramelized butter and sugar until lightly browned, served warm or at room temperature. If you think applesauce smells good when you make it, wait till you try this—for many, a new way to enjoy our continent’s favorite fruit. There are two ways I like to prepare this: One when I have time and one when I’m in a hurry. The preferred method—essentially a tarte tatin without the crust (if you like, top it with Sweet Tart Pastry, page 654, before baking)—is the main recipe, but it takes a while. This is good with pears (not too ripe) or Asian pears, too.

There are many ways to serve this simple classic, but I like to pipe the meringue into a ring on a baking sheet, then fill the center with the puree and top it with a little sour cream. The result is a surprising, rather elegant winter dessert that’s not too heavy but certainly sweet enough and fun to eat.

Pronounced cla-FOO-tee, this is one of the most successful spontaneous desserts you can add to your repertoire, yet fancy enough for a blowout dinner party. It can be made with any ripe fruit (including berries, and even apples if you cook them) and (aside from such tasks as pitting cherries and the like) takes well under an hour to prepare. Note that in place of the cream and milk mixture you can use half-and-half.