Dessert/4 recipes

Persimmon cream pie with a custard of egg yolks, cream, and ripe persimmon pulp, crowned with a sticky pecan praline crumble. The fruit must be jelly-soft for the right honeyed flavor.

Lemon raisin cookies made with cake flour, fresh lemon juice, and lemon zest for a bright citrus flavor and tender crumb. Rolled thin and cut, ready in 40 minutes, makes 2 dozen.

Pineapple cloud pie with a crispy rice cereal crust and a frozen filling of cream cheese, pineapple, and whipped topping. A no-bake, light-as-air freezer pie ready in three hours.

Buttery macadamia nut biscotti with half the nuts ground into the dough and half left whole. Twice-baked for a crisp, crunchy cookie with rich tropical flavor.

Chocolate meringue pie with a silky cooked custard filling and a billowy sweetened meringue topping baked golden. The diner-counter classic done from scratch with unsweetened chocolate for that unmistakable old-fashioned cocoa flavor.

Choux pastry puffs studded with chocolate chips and dusted with powdered sugar create elegant French-inspired cookies that look harder to make than they are.

Chocolate truffle pie with a chocolate wafer crust and a no-bake filling of unsweetened chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, gelatin, and whipped topping. Dense, silky, and make-ahead friendly.

Classic Italian aniseed cookies (anisbroetli or anise drops) made with whipped eggs, powdered sugar, and ground anise, dried overnight before baking for the signature crisp shell and soft middle.

Chocolate malt shoppe pie is a frozen dessert with a chocolate cookie crust, vanilla ice cream layer studded with crushed Whoppers, and a fluffy malted whipped cream topping. Tastes like a chocolate malt in pie form. No baking required.

Berlin Doughnuts (Bismarks) are classic German jam-filled yeasted doughnuts with rum extract and orange juice in the dough, deep-fried and sugared. Makes 12 pillowy doughnuts.

Warm pudding cake studded with chopped apples, served with homemade cinnamon butter sauce. The cake bakes up tender with brown sugar and spices. Drizzle the hot sauce over each slice.

A flourless-style chocolate cake with ground almonds, rum-soaked currants, and pine nuts on top. Bittersweet chocolate and whipped egg whites create an intensely fudgy, gluten-light torte.

Crumb-nut cheesecake crust made with finely ground pecans, vanilla wafer crumbs, powdered sugar, and melted butter. A rich, nutty base for any cheesecake.

Maple chiffon pie sets a light, mousse-like maple custard into a baked pie shell using gelatin, beaten egg whites, and whipped cream. The flavor is pure Vermont sugar shack in cloud form.

Semi-homemade marble cake with swirls of cinnamon and melted chocolate, drizzled with a glossy cinnamon-chocolate glaze. Starts with a pound cake mix for easy baking.

Red velvet pound cake baked low and slow in a tube pan with cocoa, shortening, and seven eggs for a dense, velvety crumb. Topped with cream cheese icing.