Dairy Free

Thin strips of soft-candied citrus peel enliven the flavor of desserts and look beautiful as garnishes for cakes, fruit compotes, sherbets, custards, and, especially, Champagne Gelée (page 114). Although it’s convenient to have a jar on hand to use on a whim, they’re quick and easy to make.

There’s no reason to ever buy candied orange peel since it’s so much better when you make it at home. I can’t bear throwing away anything remotely edible, so when I have rinds left over from juicing oranges or tangerines for sorbet, I always make a batch of candied peels and serve them alongside. Finely chopped bits of candied orange peel enliven a batch of cookies like Gingersnaps (page 199) and add an unexpected, but delicious, twist when tossed into a fruit dessert such as Apple-Blackberry Crisp (page 101). This candied orange peel is thicker and more substantial than Soft-Candied Citrus Peel (page 253). In addition to being used an an ingredient or garnish, it can be enjoyed on its own as a confection.

This very glossy, deeply colored sauce is especially good with Vanilla Ice Cream (page 143), but it also shines brightly alongside a fruit tart or a summer fruit galette.

This sauce bridges two seasons—it marries the citrus fruit of winter and spring’s rhubarb. Its delicate color and bright flavor makes it the ideal accompaniment to Ricotta Cheesecake with Orange and Aniseed (page 55).

Even when they’re in season, fresh apricots aren’t always easy to find, so I turn dried apricots that are available everywhere and at any time of the year into this delightfully tangy apricot sauce. I always use California dried apricots, which have a much deeper flavor than imported ones, and I highly recommend you do the same.

During the brief cherry season when fresh cherries are abundant (and inexpensive), I make as many batches of candied cherries as I can, as they keep beautifully in their syrup for months in the refrigerator. I’ll add a handful of candied cherries to a fruit crisp before baking, or drain them well and fold them into a batch of just-churned ice cream. They are particularly good spooned over lemon desserts, such as Tangy Lemon Frozen Yogurt (page 174) and Lemon Semifreddo (page 65), and are delicious used in place of the chocolate-covered peanuts in White Chocolate-Ginger Ice Cream (page 149). Or, if no one’s looking, I just pluck one from the jar and pop it into my mouth.

Although fresh raspberries are terrific in this sauce, frozen raspberries also work very well—especially good news when the berries aren’t in season. I can’t think of a lemony dessert that this sauce doesn’t complement.

This is my all-time favorite chocolate sauce and the one I’ve been making for almost three chocolate-filled decades. Don’t let the fact that it doesn’t contain any cream or butter make you think that this sauce is lacking in any way—it gets maximum intensity from ramped-up amounts of chocolate and cocoa powder. I do prefer to use Dutch-process cocoa powder here because of its stronger flavor and darker color, but you can use natural cocoa powder if that’s what you prefer or have on hand. Since it has no cream or butter, I don’t feel any guilt liberally pouring this sauce over desserts like Anise-Orange Ice Cream Profiteroles (page 172) or a wedge of Pear Tart with Brown Butter, Rum, and Pecans (page 91).

One day while cooking some blueberries, it occurred to me that the sharp taste of a sizable shot of gin would nicely complement the berries, so I reached for the bottle and poured some in. Gin’s herbaceous flavor does indeed marry nicely with blueberries—it can hardly be tasted once cooked, but somehow it just rounds out the blueberry notes. Now, whenever I cook with blueberries, a bit of gin finds its way into the mix.

The best strawberry sauce is made from the ripest strawberries. Look for ones that are red from top to bottom and all the way through to the core. If you take a sniff, they should smell like, well, ripe, sweet, strawberries. I don’t always strain out all the seeds since I sometimes like their texture and appearance in the sauce.

Mangoes, like most tropical fruits, will tip you off to their ripeness with their aroma. A good, ripe mango has a heady, syrupy scent, and when you hold it in your hand, it should feel slightly soft and a bit too heavy for its size. Although the plump, sweeter varieties, such as Hayden and Tommy Atkins, are the most tempting, slender and wrinkly Champagne or Manila mangoes that you might come across will surprise you with their gentle nuances. Depending on which variety you choose to use in this sauce, start with the smaller amount of sugar and add more if necessary. A spoonful of mango sauce is a nice complement to Coconut and Tropical Fruit Trifle (page 70) or scoops of Toasted Coconut Sherbet (page 152) nestled in cookie cups made with Sesame-Orange Almond Tuiles (page 212).

I make this sauce with blood oranges when they’re available because I like the deep, vivid color their juice adds. One of my favorite and simplest of desserts is a platter of chilled navel and blood orange slices scribbled with this tangy-sweet sauce and sprinkled with chopped pistachios. But this sauce is also good drizzled over a neat slab of Gâteau Victoire (page 32) or a serving of Ricotta Cheesecake with Orange and Aniseed (page 55).

This thin sauce with a fiery personality adds a direct hit of liquor, tempered by caramel, to any dessert that it’s drizzled over. I particularly like it made with Armagnac, Cognac’s rowdy cousin, and paired with Creamy Rice Pudding (page 138). If you wish, you can use bourbon, rum, or any favorite liquor in place of the Cognac.

This feather-light sponge cake recipe was given to me by the always-gracious food writer Shirley Sarvis. When I asked her the reason for adding water to sponge cake batter, she replied, “For moisture, of course!” It is indeed a wonderfully moist sponge cake, and I use it in many desserts, including Coconut Layer Cake (page 59), Lemon Semifreddo (page 65), and Coconut and Tropical Fruit Trifle (page 70). The cake can be baked in a baking sheet with sides, often referred to as a jelly-roll pan, or in a 9-inch (23-cm) round springform pan.

With all the recent interest in Spanish cuisine, it’s no surprise that membrillo—Spanish quince paste—has become a global hit. Anyone who has tasted it paired with Manchego cheese and a glass of sherry understands why it’s become so popular the world over. But that popularity doesn’t come easy: it takes at least 30 minutes of almost-constant stirring to make quince paste. I always wear an oven mitt while stirring with a wooden spatula because the hot mixture occasionally pops and sputters as it thickens.

If there’s an easier candy out there, I haven’t found it. When I worked as a pastry chef, I think I made a batch of these every day. And since they’re so easy, why not? (Actually, I pretty much had to since I discovered all the other cooks in the kitchen couldn’t resist dipping into the container when I wasn’t looking.) Great nibbled on their own, these nuts are also good used in place of the toasted nuts in Chocolate Chip Cookies (page 188) and Robert’s Absolute Best Brownies (page 196), or in place of the almonds in Pistachio, Almond, and Cherry Bark (page 223). They can be chopped and folded into just-churned ice cream, or sprinkled on top of scoops of ice cream that are sauced with a ladleful of warm Rich Caramel Sauce (page 241).

It was a happy day when an enterprising midwesterner decided that the surplus of sour cherries could be dried instead of left neglected on the trees. And thus, one of my favorite baking ingredients was born. But this recipe is eminently adaptable and you can use any kind of dried fruit or toasted nuts that suits you. Diced apricot pieces and cranberries, walnuts and toasted pecans, and roasted cocoa nibs have all found their way into various batches of this bark. I even got really crazy once and crumbled candied bacon into a batch. That one met with a few raised eyebrows, but was gobbled up by all.

These barely sweet crisp little cookies are the definitive Italian nibble. Not only do I serve them as perfect bites alongside a ristretto (a “tight” espresso), but I also crumble them up and use the bitter almond-scented crumbs in desserts. They make a perfect topping for Lemon Semifreddo (page 65) and give a decidedly Italian touch to Peach-Amaretti Crisp (page 102). True amaretti are made with sweet apricot kernels rather than almonds, but since apricot kernels can be difficult to find and not everyone’s keen on eating them (they contain cyanide), I call for almonds in this recipe.

This recipe is the result of a 12-year obsession. I first fell for these wispy cookies when I bought a startlingly pricey pack of them at an upscale gourmet store in America. When I moved to France, I was surprised how common these crackly cookies are. I was so excited—they were everywhere! Have I mentioned that I’m obsessive? It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that I just had to come up with a recipe for the cookies myself. I checked the ingredients list on as many packages as I could get my hands on, and they certainly seemed simple enough. What followed was years of duds as I searched for ways to combine the mere handful of ingredients into the lightly caramelized croquants of my dreams. Then, suddenly, one day, after a lot of trial and just as much error, I got it right. I wasn’t the only one pleased with the results: I left a sack for the highly opinionated French woman who cleans my apartment, and arrived home later to find a little note that read “EXTRA DELICIEUX. Merci, David!”

Many consider the area behind the Gare du Nord in Paris rather dubious. Yes, it’s home to the Paris headquarters for the Hell’s Angels. But lots of amazing ethnic foods can also be found there, for which I’m happy to brave the bikers and travel a bit out of the way. Of the various cultures that have opened restaurants and grocers in that part of Paris, Indian is the most prominent. At night, the blue neon–illuminated stands of the Indian épiceries feature all sorts of odd-looking produce that remain a mystery to me. But I do know mangoes. During their season in late spring, I head to that neighborhood and buy them by the case. I use them in everything, from tropical fruit salads to mango daiquiris (which I’m sure aren’t as popular with the Hell’s Angels as they are with my crowd). But a few invariably get churned up into a batch of this sorbet, along with a basket of strawberries from my local market and a dash of rum, which even the gruffest biker couldn’t resist.