Recipes

Dan Pelosi · NYT Cooking

While there are endless sweet and savory flavor combinations out there, the pairing of honey and mustard is among the most popular. It shows up in a dressing for salads, a dip for finger foods, a spread on sandwiches—and here, as a way to enhance a weeknight pasta dinner with ingredients that are often on hand. In this dish, the savory tang of Dijon mustard and the floral sweetness of honey are added to a garlicky white wine cream sauce that perfectly coats every strand of pasta. For added zing and texture, top each serving of pasta with crushed honey mustard pretzels along with chopped fresh parsley and grated Parmesan, if you like. This recipe starts with browning chunks of chicken, but they can easily be left out to make it vegetarian-friendly. Save a bit of extra pasta water to help bring any leftovers back to their original creamy, saucy state. Watch Dan Pelosi make this dish in this video.

Dan Pelosi · NYT Cooking

In Italian, “agro” means sour and “dolce” means sweet, making traditional agrodolce sauce a balanced combo of both tastes. The most basic of agrodolce sauces are a thickened mix of vinegar and honey, though most welcome additions like garlic, raisins and pine nuts. This recipe swaps out the raisins for dried cherries, which are rehydrated as the agrodolce cooks, and bring extra sour to the sauce with their sweet-tart flavor. The sauce can be made in a skillet directly on top of your grill grates, if desired, following after simply seasoned pork chops and wedges of fennel, which are grilled until crispy and caramelized. The pork chops, fennel and agrodolce are delicious served over warm polenta, mashed potatoes or even slices of grilled bread. If inspired, try using dried cranberries or golden raisins instead of dried cherries, swapping red wine vinegar for balsamic, or adding toasted pine nuts to the agrodolce.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Anyone looking to try one’s hand at playing around with a recipe can’t do better than to start with rice pudding. I began making rice pudding with our son’s babysitter, a Frenchwoman named Marie-Cécile, who cooked au pif, meaning she followed her instincts and would riff on just about everything she made. Moi? I followed Marie-Cécile’s lead and have been making my own version of rice pudding regularly, but rarely with the same flavorings. Sometimes I’ll stir chocolate into the pudding right before it’s cooked, and often I’ll top the pudding with roasted fruit. For apples, cut 2 unpeeled apples into ¼-inch wedges. Cook ½ cup sugar in a nonstick skillet until amber (stir only after the sugar starts to color), add 2 tablespoons butter followed by the apples. Cook, turning the wedges, for 6 to 8 minutes, until translucent.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Guillaume Portier, a pastry instructor at La Cuisine Paris cooking school, encouraged me as I was trying to recreate Biscuits Rose de Reims, pink sugar-topped cookies that were once dipped into champagne, the most famous export from the French city of Reims. I kept making delicious cookies, but none of my batches matched the storebought, which used ammonium carbonate (best known as smelling salts) to give them crackle and shelf-life. Guillaume told me to stop striving for a replica, reminding me that if what we baked at home lasted forever, we’d be deprived of the pleasure of making pastries again and again. These cookies will hold for a week or so if you keep them in a sealed tin. After that, you can look forward to the pleasure of making another batch. A word on piping: If you don’t have a piping bag, use a zipper-lock plastic bag. Fill with batter, seal and cut a 1-inch diameter opening in a corner.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

My grail is a simple dessert that both satisfies and surprises. This tart, adapted from a recipe that was originally given to me by Jean-Marie Desfontaines of the Paris patisserie Rollet Pradier, has all that I look for in a dessert. The filling is the surprise — it’s made with every part of the lemon except the seeds, and so its flavor is exuberantly full. It’s also easy to make — it all happens in the food processor. It bakes to a creaminess that teeters between custard and pudding. Alone, it’s interesting, but with the sweet crust (think butter cookie), it’s deeply satisfying. To get every lick of flavor and the best texture out of the crust, don’t roll it too thin and make sure to bake it well — you want the color to be truly golden brown.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

This recipe, my trusted go-to, turns out a cookielike crust — sweet, golden and more crisp than flaky. Typically French — it’s a pâte sablée — I use the recipe for my whole lemon tart as well as for the less French bakewell tart. I make the dough in a food processor using very cold butter, and while it sounds like culinary heresy, I roll it out as soon as it’s made. Sandwiched between parchment or wax paper, the dough is a cinch to roll at this point — just make sure to chill it before you bake it (better yet, freeze it once it’s in the pan). I also like to partly bake the crust before I fill it, a step you can skip, but prebaking will give you a crisper bottom crust.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

This sweet straddles East and West. Its name plays on French mille-feuille (mille-feuille means 1,000 leaves), but its structure follows the lines of Middle Eastern baklava. It’s got layers of buttered and sugared phyllo dough and a filling made with tahini and vanilla halvah. The mixture is similar to frangipane, but not like any I’ve ever tasted — it’s completely original and wonderfully good. A word on the phyllo: If the sheets are smaller than 12-by-17-inches, don’t worry — the dessert will bake the same way, but the middle layer will be slightly thicker and the yield will be less. For the most delicious pastry, use clarified butter: Bring the butter to a boil in a medium saucepan. Lower the heat and simmer until most of the solids fall to the bottom of the pan; the bubbling will have subsided. Slowly pour the butter through a coffee filter or a strainer lined with cheesecloth; discard the solids and reserve the liquid. You can make the butter weeks ahead and keep it refrigerated.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

This is the birthday cake I’ve made for my son since he was about 11. After boxed cakes, ice-cream cakes, a cake in a Darth Vader mold (that year, the party’s theme was “May the Fours Be With You), this cake hit the spot and remains a favorite. It’s a double-layer devil’s-food cake made with cocoa and bittersweet chocolate, the same pair that makes the frosting so luscious. You can make the layers ahead of time, wrap them and freeze them for up to a month. As for the frosting, it’s best spread between the layers and over the cake when it’s just made. Once assembled, the cake can be refrigerated overnight. It cuts most easily when it’s cold but tastes best when it’s at room temperature, which is about what it will be once the candles are blown out and the slices put on plates. Ice cream alongside is unnecessary but nice. Hey, it’s a birthday!

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Everything about these biscotti tends toward crunch – their signature double bake, of course, but also the addition of almonds and some cornmeal, which doesn’t lose its appealing roughness under heat. (Don’t think, as I mistakenly once did, that using a polenta-type cornmeal will improve these cookies — it will only make them gritty; choose a fine-grain meal.) The chocolate chips are there to reinforce the deep chocolate flavor the cookies get from being made with cocoa. I like these very crunchy, but if you prefer them less set, give them a shorter second bake. And after the first bake, when the logs have cooled for about 20 minutes, use a long serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion to slice them into cookies about ½-inch thick. Hold on to the inevitable crumbs and any little bits that might break off — you’ll be happy to have them over ice cream.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Of course this cake is good at lunch, at dinner, after school, afternoon or after midnight, but I call it a breakfast cake because it reminds me of a lemon cake I had with coffee every morning that I was in Rome. The cake is tall and golden, lightly lemony and most like a sponge cake — it’s soft and stretchy: Pull it gently, and it will tug itself back into shape. If you have a tube pan, use it; if you don’t, choose a Bundt pan with as few curves, crannies and crenellations as possible (fewer nooks make unmolding easier). When there are berries in the market, I fold them into the batter at the end. During the rest of the year, I go with straight lemon, although you could certainly make this cake with orange or a mix of citrus. Like so many of my favorite recipes, this is one that you can play with.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

This custard, a mix of French and Chinese techniques and tastes, comes from the New York pastry chef Daniel Skurnick. Because Mr. Skurnick is responsible for the desserts at the French restaurant Le Coucou and the pan-Asian restaurant Buddakan, this kind of blending comes easily to him. Here, he uses just five ingredients to make a dessert that is packed with the flavor of ginger and has the quintessential jiggle and litheness of custard. It reminds me most of an oven-baked French crème caramel, but it’s steamed, the way many Asian desserts are. If you have a bamboo steamer that fits over a wok, this is the time to use it – its flat bottom is perfect for this job. If all you have is a steamer insert, don’t despair – just make the dessert in two batches. Once chilled, the custards are lovely plain, but for a bit more polish, pour over a few spoonfuls of spiced caramel syrup.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

While this syrup was created by the pastry chef Daniel Skurnick to pour over his Franco-Chinese steamed ginger-milk custard, it’s a good recipe to have handy when you want something to pour over cooked fruit, ice cream or pudding – I like it paired with vanilla, chocolate or butterscotch. It’s a quickly made syrup flavored with peppercorns, cloves, nutmeg and ginger. Mr. Skurnick says you should cook the caramel until its color is “Irish-setter red” before adding the spices – it’s a perfect description of what you’re looking for.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

These are the cookies that stopped me in my tracks. I was wandering along a side street in Paris’s 11th Arrondissement, saw these cookies on a counter in the back of Mokonuts, a small restaurant, and walked right in to buy a few. The baker Moko Hirayama has worked on her recipe with so much care and invention that it’s almost difficult to see any family resemblance to cookie's inspiration: the classic American chocolate-chip cookie. Her cookies have chunks of fine chocolate (not store-bought chips), dried cranberries, rye flour and a good measure of poppy seeds, for color, crunch and surprise. Plan ahead: Once the dough is made and formed into balls, it should be refrigerated overnight before baking. Fresh from the oven, the cookies are fragile; they firm as they cool. They’ll keep for about three days at room temperature or they can be frozen for up to two months; in either case, they should be wrapped well.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Here’s a cake that comes together with the push of a button — butter, sugar, eggs and cocoa as well as dark chocolate, almonds and amaretti cookies are blended in a food processor. Although it looks like a brownie, the cake tilts toward a nut torte. It’s low and sleek, simple, sophisticated and packed with flavor. The original recipe appeared in my debut cookbook, “Sweet Times,” in 1991, and when I made it for Julia Child that year, I got her thumbs up. Over time, I haven’t fiddled much with the recipe’s basics, but these days I finish the cake with a glaze and a sprinkling of crushed amaretti for style and crunch. I prefer amaretti di Saronno by Lazzaroni for the cake, but other amaretti work well too. And don’t be distressed if the cake develops a mound during baking (it happens now and then). Press it down with a spatula — it doesn’t diminish this cake’s deliciousness.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

This is not a traditional Eton mess, the renowned British dessert usually comprising meringue, whipped cream and strawberries. I made one like that and loved it, but the elements just begged to be played with. For this, my favorite mess for the fall-into-winter season, I’ve added spice-cookie crumbs to the meringue for more flavor and a bit of surprise, made two add-ins — a quick-cook cranberry jam and a lemon curd — and stirred in some fresh raspberries (more tang, more color). Of course, I kept the whipped cream — it’s essential to a mess. Going with cranberries and curd make this a good choice for the holidays. You can serve the mess family style or in bowls, coupes or even canning jars. And if you want a bit more texture and another flavor, speckle the top with chopped pistachios.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Lemon curd sits in that elusive space between soothing and exciting. Its texture is smooth and comforting and its flavor is zesty, a delicious contradiction. Curd is easy enough to make, just stand by the pot — it calls for attention. Once made, the curd can be packed in a closely covered jar or container; it will keep well in the fridge.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

The only thing better than a plate of cookies is one big cookie meant to be shared by everyone around the table. It’s the kind of dessert that will encourage your friends and family to linger at the table and to keep the conversation going. It’s a brown-sugar cookie redolent of ginger, honey, cinnamon and clove that carries the scent of the season and tacks between crisp and slightly chewy, between gingersnap and gingerbread. That it has ground coffee in it marks it as a sweet for grown-ups. It’s a roll-out cookie, but not a fussy one – any shape works and ragged is better than perfect. I usually sprinkle the cookie with sanding sugar, but you can drizzle it with melted chocolate or frost it, if you’d like. For extra fun, put out chocolate or caramel sauce (or both) and invite everyone to dip.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

I first had a strawberry tart like this one more than 10 years ago at the Paris cafe La Palette, and I’ve been making my own version of it ever since. It’s simply a crust slicked with some jam and then topped with an abundance of berries; whipped cream or crème fraîche is optional. The recipe is straightforward, but the construction is genius. You bake the crust, which is both crisp and tender, to a beautiful golden color and then set it aside. (Use the scraps of dough to make cookies; sprinkle with sugar before baking.) When you’re ready for dessert, you cut and finish only as many servings as you need, ensuring that the crust will always have great texture and the berries will always be fresh and bright. You could use a store-bought crust, but there are so few components in this dessert, it’s good to make each one count.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

In her book, “Poilâne, The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery,” Apollonia Poilâne, who heads the legendary Parisian boulangerie, describes the sweets in her shop as pâtisseries boulangères, bread-bakers’ pastries, which are typically less sweet, less fussy and less fussed over. These corn shortbread-style cookies, known as sablés in French, fit into that category perfectly. They’re made with all-purpose flour and corn flour – corn ground so fine that you can barely feel a bit of grit when you rub a little between your fingers. (Do not use cornmeal or cornstarch.) Baked, the cookies have the characteristic sandiness of sablés and the beautiful golden color of corn. To get the best texture, make sure your butter is soft and creamy. The dough is a pleasure to work with and, because it holds its shape when baked, a good choice for fanciful cutouts. At Poilâne, the cookies are always cut into simple rounds, so that, as Apollonia says, “they look like minisuns.” Dorie Greenspan

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

I don’t remember my mother at the stove. When asked what childhood dish was my favorite, I’d stammer and come up empty. And then, walking down the stairs in my Paris apartment, I got to the third floor and said out loud to no one: baked apples! My mother made baked apples. Her apples were big Cortlands or Rome Beauties, and she cored and stuffed them with raisins, because my father loved raisins. I also bake with Cortlands or Romes when I can get them, Fujis or Galas when I can’t. I’ll often stuff them with raisins, but I think they’re especially nice filled with bits of dried apple and candied ginger. And I like to baste them with apple cider and honey. They’re good hot or cold, but best served warm and topped with something creamy. Cinnamon (my mom always used too much) is optional.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

On my first day in Lisbon, I became a statistic: I lost all my credit cards to a talented thief on the No. 28 tram. After “the incident,” I wanted to leave Lisbon, but instead, my husband Michael and I decided to tackle our must-taste list. It was on our last day in Lisbon that we tasted the cake at Landeau Chocolate. It was intense, but not overwhelming; truly chocolate, but somehow each layer’s chocolateness was different. I returned home and made this cake, my version of the cake that cured my pickpocket blues. It’s a dense-but-not-heavy, brownielike cake topped with a whipped chocolate ganache (think: mousse) and a substantial dusting of cocoa. Because this cake is completely about the chocolate, choose one you love.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Cédric Grolet, the pastry chef of Le Meurice hotel in Paris, is famous for his Instagram feed, which has nearly a million and a half followers, his tattoos and his title: Best Pastry Chef in the World. Mostly, and most rightly, he’s famous for his elegant pastries, so I was surprised when he asked me if I’d tasted one of his simplest, his madeleines. Small sponge cakes baked in shell-shaped molds (metal pans give you the best color and crust), madeleines are known for the impressive bump that develop on their tops. These madeleines, adapted from a Grolet recipe, are made with brown butter and flavored with Earl Grey tea and honey. Like all madeleines, they benefit from a rest in the refrigerator before they’re baked. (Good for the mads, convenient for the baker.) If you can arrange it, serve the madeleines just minutes out of the oven — it’s when their fragrance and texture are at their peak. Dorie Greenspan

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Fika is the Swedish custom of stopping twice daily for coffee, conversation and a little something sweet; the word was created by flipping the two syllables in kaffe. Minutes after I had a fika in the Stockholm studio of the pastry chef Mia Ohrn, I started thinking about what I’d serve at my own first fika. This cake, so much easier to make than you’d guess by looking at it, has become my favorite. The recipe turns out a moist, buttery, tender cake, which would be lovely as is. But when the cake is half-baked, I cook a mixture of butter, sugar, flour and sliced almonds, spread it over the top (a homage to Sweden’s famous tosca cake), put the pan back in the oven and wait for the mixture to bubble, caramelize and create a shell that is a little chewy, a little crackly and very beautiful. It’s a perfect cake for fika, and great for brunch.

Dorie Greenspan · NYT Cooking

Homemade marshmallows should have their own dreamy name, something that makes it clear that they’re different from the supermarket stuff. When you make this recipe by Christine Moore of Little Flower Candy Co., you get puffs that are soft, tender, languidly stretchy and delicately sweet, and a lesson in the transformative power of heat and air. To make these, you beat together roiling-hot sugar syrup and gelatin, and watch as the mixture goes from murky to opaque, from beige to white, from thin to billowing. For this magic to happen, it takes almost 15 minutes, plus a very large bowl and a sturdy mixer. (I use a 5-quart stand mixer.) You need no special skills, just patience — you have to wait a few hours for the whipped mixture to dry — but you’ll be rewarded with singular sweets good for toasting, s’mores, snacking and wrapping up as gifts. Dorie Greenspan