Chocolate

Lapsang souchong, the variety of tea called for in this recipe, is made by smoking tea leaves over a cypress or pine wood fire. Steeping the tea in the milk mixture gives the dessert a subtle smokiness. Find Lapsang souchong at tea shops, specialty foods stores, and online at englishteastore.com. If you don't care for the taste of smoked tea, use Earl Grey instead.

To neatly and evenly transfer the cake batter to the ramekins, Fleming likes to use an ice cream scoop, but if you don't have one, the batter can just as easily be poured.

An entirely new kind of sundae: A light ice cream flecked with crunchy, bitter cocoa nibs is topped with a creamy chocolate-caramel sauce and a sprinkling of spicy, tangy peanuts.

Grapefruit and chocolate make a surprisingly delicious pairing. Star anise adds an underlying spiciness to the tender cookies.

The combination of crumbly cookie crust, chocolate filling, and crunchy brittle is reminiscent of a candy bar. The smooth, rich filling is a blend of bittersweet chocolate and carob, which is made from the pods of the carob tree. The addition of carob cuts the richness of the chocolate and adds an appealing earthy flavor.

The airy ricotta filling—with chocolate chips and flecks of candied orange peel speckled throughout—makes for a perfect marriage of Italian and American.

A decadent candylike dessert that tastes like a Snickers bar, all grown up.

No, it's not a mistake. This cake really doesn't contain any eggs. The oil in the batter makes the cake moist; the rest of the ingredients provide enough structure to give the cake a great crumb.

A fun take on the crowdpleasing cream cheese brownies.

Serve the puddings in clear dishes to show off the distinct layers.

Soufflés are usually associated with extravagant meals, but they're cheaper to make than you may think. A soufflé is made primarily of eggs, a very budget-friendly ingredient.

This is called a meringue buttercream because its foundation is egg whites, not the more traditional yolks. That makes it very light, satiny, and easy to spread—a plus if you're making a many-layered cake like the one in the preceding recipe. The base for this buttercream yields two different-flavored frostings: espresso coffee and bittersweet-chocolate mocha.

After tasting this American classic during a visit to Walt Disney World Resort, Payard gave it a twist by adding bitter cocoa to balance the sweetness.

This drool-worthy dessert is a chocoholic’s dream come true. There are 2 grams of fiber per serving…from the cocoa! Swap candied orange for the ginger to dial down the spiciness.

What better way to celebrate the holidays than with something fabulous? In this elegant European-style cake, thin layers of different flavors come together in each bite. Fine-textured spongecake, soaked in espresso syrup, plays off of crisp hazelnut meringue, while the coffee and mocha buttercreams intensify the richness of a collapsed chocolate soufflé. The faint, bitter edge of dark coffee essentially saves this dessert from itself.

An upscale hybrid of antipodean ANZAC biscuits and chocolate digestives from Britain, these crisp cookies are positively elegant. They were an unexpected favorite in our test kitchen, with cooks and editors descending in droves when the cookies’ warm, nutty aroma filled the air.

We dressed up this chewy classic for the holidays with a festive, to-die-for drizzle of chocolate. Oats replace part of the coconut to make this a lowfat yet still satisfying goody.

A life of piety and chastity has to call for something sensual occasionally. Yes, you can enjoy the seductive chocolate flavor and thick creaminess of this Italian hot chocolate without fearing the loss of other worldly pleasures, but this confection is sure to elicit a moan from all who partake. Drinking any of the great Italian-style hot chocolates is almost a religious experience. Over and over again, people who taste this drink for the first time say, "Oh, my God." Is that enough encouragement to give this one a try? Don't overlook the importance of the orange zest or the arrowroot. The oil from the zest gives the chocolate a fresh kick, and the arrowroot thickens the mixture.

Marble cakes are both homey and festive. A marble cake looks slick when you slice into it and reveal the delicate pattern created when the two batters are swirled together. My first experience working with this type of mixture came about as the result of a marbled chocolate terrine that appeared first in the pages of the old Cook's Magazine, and then in my chocolate book. Everything about it was right—the texture, the flavor, the quantity of mixture in relation to the mold—everything, that is, except the marbling. Even when I barely mixed the white and dark chocolate mixtures, what I got was a few streaks of dark and white, and mostly a muddy combined color. After several frustrating attempts, I realized that I had too much dark chocolate mixture and I recast the recipe so there was twice as much white chocolate as dark and the terrine marbled perfectly. So this marble cake is proportioned in the same way: Rather than dividing the base batter in half, I like to remove about one third of it and add the chocolate. Thanks to my old friend Ceri Hadda, who shared her mother's recipe years ago.

If you don't want to go to the trouble of roasting and peeling hazelnuts, you can substitute chopped walnuts here. Simply toast them briefly in a dry pan (and let them cool) to unlock their full flavor. This recipe offers a choice of finishing touches; if you serve the fritters in hot batches straight from the fryer, you can invite guests to dust their own with their choice of topping.