Baking

These tartlets from Sam Mason are great with or without the Edamame Ice Cream. Any extra marmalade is delicious on toast.

Use a V-slicer (a simple, inexpensive version of a mandoline available at cookware stores) for the paper-thin pear slices.

From chef Alex Seidel at Fruition Restaurant in Denver, a beautiful tarte Tatin with plums standing in for the apples. This can also be served with vanilla ice cream instead of the orange crème fraîche.

In Mexico, a quesadilla is more like what we think of as a grilled cheese sandwich, but with tortillas instead of bread. In Guatemala, these sweet little cheese things are like buttery cupcakes, and they are baked as special-occasion treats for children who've had a good report card or lost a tooth.

The soft, slightly sweet bread called pulla is made with plenty of butter, which results in tender pieces that can be pulled apart, bite by bite.

They look like the loaded chocolate-nut cookies of your youth, but a bite will reveal their luxurious upgrades: chewy sour cherries that play off the crunch of chopped pecans and the creamy sweetness of milk chocolate chunks. Your adult palate will appreciate the complexity.

These rich, clean-tasting crackers showcase the complexity of coarse sea salt, along with gentle heat from the black pepper. They go beautifully with the soup, simply dipped in or crumbled right on top.

Guests are always tickled by their own individual desserts, and after a light summer meal, these tartlets are just the thing. A flaky crust cradles plump crescents of fruit accented with almonds and Amaretto.

Kids (and more than a few adults) will almost certainly shriek with joy at the sight of this fantasy dessert. Golden, buttery cake layers sandwich chocolate cookie crumbs and are topped with a custard frosting that calls to mind soft-serve ice cream. Crisp wafer cones are filled with batter and baked into their own little cupcakes, then crowned with swirls of ice-cream-style frosting.

The charm of this simple dessert is obvious: It takes sweet summer fruits and cooks them down so that everything good about them becomes even better.

Perfect for a Sunday-afternoon baking project, these light, crisp crackers take an hour to make (okay, maybe longer if you have a little helper).

A Meyer lemon is a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange. If you can't find any, substitute regular lemons. This pie's decadent cream filling is made from protein-rich tofu.

Top with ice cream, lightly sweetened créme fraîche, or whipped cream.

This recipe makes plenty of cookies, so bundle up extras (with green ribbon, of course) to send home with guests.

Bourbon lends depth to the sauce and extra sweetness to the cream filling, but this dessert is fantastic even without it.

This chilly treat may well make your freezer more popular than the neighborhood ice cream truck. The lemony ice cream center is a bright contrast to the surrounding chewy coconut macaroons — and the sandwiches are easily held by eager little hands.

This creamy semifreddo captures the heady flavor of ripe summer peaches. It's also a gorgeous showpiece that's perfect for entertaining, since it can be made well in advance of a dinner party.

This recipe makes lots of big cookies, but don't even think of saving half the dough for another day, because you won't want to stop eating them. Food editor Paul Grimes, who tested the recipe, has already slipped it into his personal recipe file. "Next time I need a peanut butter cookie," he says, "I'm turning to this." Happily, the recipe works with either conventional or natural creamy peanut butter.

Cornmeal gives these crisp rounds a sandy texture that makes them an ideal cookie for ice cream sandwiches. They're also delicious all by themselves, or with a tall glass of iced tea or lemonade.