Chocolate

Serve this immediately; it is not a beverage that can sit around.

I take my graham crackers extremely buttery and very crunchy, so that’s what you’re getting with this recipe. In fact, this graham cracker is so decadent, you may want to double the recipe so you can deliberately have leftovers. There’s tons of mileage to be gained out of these. Like piecrust, for one! Or donut toppings, for two!

When I lived in San Francisco, my friend Mark introduced me to the city’s greatest contribution to the dessert course: It’s-It frozen cookie sandwiches. These little numbers are practically perfect—two oatmeal cookies with a thick scoop of ice cream in between, all thinly coated with semisweet chocolate. Mark preferred the kind with mint-flavored ice cream and so do I, but you can nix the mint in this recipe if you must. To sweeten this with agave, replace the natural cane sugar with 2/3 cup agave nectar, add an extra 1/4 cup all-purpose gluten-free flour, remove the chocolate chips, and use Agave-Sweetened Chocolate Glaze (page 124).

I grew up as that weird kid who disliked frosting and cake in general. But if it meant I could get one of those massive Valentine’s Day cookies in the window at Mrs. Fields, I was willing to endure any amount of frosting, icing, or similar childhood misery. You can use any cookie recipe in this book to make this fantastical creation, obviously, but I went ahead and developed a third chocolate chip version (in addition to the bakery standard in the first book and the Chips Ahoy! in this one) to mimic what is found in Mrs. Fields’s venerable kitchens. It’s big and it’s bold and it’s buttery. It’s practically a Toll House cookie, if that helps you imagine.

For the longest time, I might have been the only person in the tristate area completely oblivious to the beautiful oversize black-and-white cookies found in every bodega from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Have you had one? Me, I was never allowed because of my food sensitivities, of course. So when I went to the kitchen and started brainstorming ideas for iconic cookies, this was one of the first ones I tackled. Prepare to be bathed in the sweet comfort of vanilla-chocolate overload.

I’m a lady who unabashedly prefers her cookies thin, chewy, and intoxicatingly buttery. If I want a hunk of cake, I go for the cake section. This isn’t to say, however, that the preeminent cookie of my youth was not the mighty and comparatively meaty Chips Ahoy! And not those late-issue, M&M–flecked monstrosities, either. I’m talking the real-deal original flavor, in all their dry and crumbly wonder. This is my version of that wonderfully named cookie.

I’m Catholic by birth. Winter to us means Lent, which, to be honest, is about all I remember beyond the school uniforms. Anytime winter/Lent rolled around, the only thing we could count on was the house-wide hostility that would mount as we spent several weeks avoiding sweets and desserts in all their overindulgent forms. The colder months, you might recall, make up Girl Scout cookie season. In a unique show of torture, rather than simply not placing an order with the Scouts, our family bought a bunch, tossed them into the freezer, and stored them until Easter—about two months later. This recipe is for all you lifetime gluten-free folks who have never been able to enjoy a winter of Girl Scout Thin Mints—and for all you weak-willed kids who can’t help but break the Lenten period of atonement. Bless your hearts!

A plate of fudge passed around the table at the end of a meal is as good a dessert as any. A simple way to form the fudge is to take the box the sugar came in and line it with a plastic bag or use the paper inside the box. Spoon the fudge into the box and let it set—then it is all boxed up and ready to give as a gift!

Born in 1915 in Shaw, Mississippi, David “Honeyboy” Edwards won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. He is perhaps the last of the true Delta Bluesmen. Despite his age he keeps on the road touring the world and flirting with the ladies, crooning his hit “Who May Your Regular Be?” This dense chocolate cake covered with bittersweet honey ganache could be just the thing to win over a loved one’s heart or to cure the blues of a broken heart.

This is everything you want a chocolate cake to be. A simply prepared batter bakes up into a delicious cake with layers that have a tender crumb and good chocolate flavor. The frosting is beaten into billowy clouds of shiny chocolate goodness that spreads like silk.

These individual molten chocolate cakes come from my ArtBites “Dining in the Aztec Empire” class, where I learned that chocolate is indigenous to Mexico, and for centuries nobles and priests used it to make an unsweetened drink.

If ever a dessert earned the adage “more is more,” this is it. Each and every time I serve this chocolate pie, piled high with chocolate-drizzled strawberries that hide a cloud of sweetened, vanilla-laced whipped cream, it elicits enthusiastic oohs and ahhs from my guests. They have no idea how incredibly easy it is to prepare.

Brownie mixes are easy, I know, but what you gain in time you lose in flavor. This recipe comes together quickly and yields fudgy brownies with more chocolate taste than you’ll ever get from a mix.

With melted chocolate blended into the batter, chunks of chocolate throughout, and a shiny outer chocolate layer, these really should be called “triple” chocolate chunk cookies. My nieces and I love to make these together. They do the very important—and fun!—job of dipping the cookies in the melted chocolate and arranging them carefully on wax paper to dry.

I totally owe this one to the brilliant simplicity of Hedy Goldsmith. A dessert panini? Why didn’t I think of that?! Now, dessert panini might not be your first thought, but this recipe brings a sweet new definition to the sandwich, tasting like a warm banana split in a cocoon of rich bread. If you own a panini press, then you already know that it invariably turns a regular sandwich into something irresistible. The texture contrast between the crunchy exterior and the soft, gooey interior is a big part of the sex appeal. The fleur de sel makes this dish; without the salty balance it would be way too sweet. This panini also rocks for brunch.

This decadent milk chocolate cremoso—a silky puddinglike dessert—is drizzled with olive oil for an unexpected pop of flavor. Some people are like, whoa . . . olive oil and chocolate? But the combo really works. The hazelnuts and chocolate bring forward a Nutella-like flavor, and the salt cuts the sweetness. The slight sourness of crisp sourdough bread and smoky flavor of espresso deepen the complexity of the dish. A recipe is only as good as its ingredients, and this is no exception. Use the best-quality chocolate—it makes all the difference between a waxy, vaguely chocolaty flavor and intense chocolatiness. Valrhona, Lindt, and Scharffen Berger are premium chocolates I like. Most of this dessert can be made ahead, so it’s perfect to serve for a dinner party.

These two sauces are useful whenever you need to make a dessert in a hurry. Made in minutes, they can turn plain ice cream or store-bought poundcake into something special.