Baking

The base is chewy chocolate cake. Make this terrific dessert a day ahead.

Cloves, ginger, and turbinado sugar make this a cake you'll adore. Plus, try the frosting on a variety of baked goods for a taste of the tropics all year.

Chef-owner Michael Mina of Michael Mina restaurant in San Francisco created this recipe for Epicurious's Wine.Dine.Donate program. He recommends using local strawberries whenever possible.

An amalgamation of chopped nuts adorns this deep golden butter-rich cookie that offers an intense caramel-like flavor.

The texture spectrum of these pies is just as bold as their appearance: A crisp, flaky layered crust gives way to lush, creamy lime curd and juicy glazed berries.

Eating one of these individual pies is quite different from your basic fork-and-plate experience. A bite through the crisp pastry, sparkling with sugar, reveals a thick filling of sweet-and-tart fruit.

If you've never had pie made from wild blueberries before, you'll be bowled over by the intensity of this one. The light, tender crust provides a sublime foil for the deeply flavorful fruit. Take heart if you can't find fresh wild blueberries in your area—frozen ones also yield excellent results.

This mildly spiked dessert is so easy to put together, it will quickly become one of your summer-entertaining standbys.

This smooth and creamy chiffon pie is utterly dependent on the fruit; be choosy and select only perfectly ripe, aromatic nectarines to produce the ambrosial flavor you're after.

The beauty of plums becomes all the more evident when they are displayed in a galette. Accompanied by sweetened Armagnac crème fraîche, this one makes a wonderfully sophisticated dessert.

The beauty of this bread is in its simplicity—mixing, kneading, even part of the rising are all done in a food processor. The end result is like a warm, crusty slice of Paris.