Baking

Ciro Verde of Da Ciro restaurant in New York makes great thin, crispy-crust pizzas. One Saturday at i Trulli restaurant Ciro gave us a pizzamaking lesson. He told us how he had learned to make pizza in Naples and gave us pointers on how best to use a wood-burning oven and how to improve our technique. A highlight of this session was Ciro's recipe for this tasty pie stuffed with robiola cheese and drizzled with truffle oil, which he claims to have invented. First, the dough is flattened with a rolling pin to elminate air pockets. Then the dough is pierced with a docker, an instrument that punctures the dough and helps to prevent it from puffing up too much in the oven. The flattened disk of dough is baked without any topping. When it is partially done, it is removed from the oven, split in half, and spread with cheese, then baked a second time until brown. Just before serving, the pie is drizzled with truffle oil. Since it is so rich, we like it best cut into wedges as an appetizer. Robiola is creamy cow's milk cheese. Soft fresh goat cheese is a good substitute. If you don't have truffle oil, which is available at many gourmet shops, the pizza will taste great anyway.

This recipe was created to accompany Bacon and Blue Cheese Salad with Caesar Dressing .

Pumpkin adds beautiful color to the all-American cheesecake while pecan praline makes a southern-style topping. Begin preparing this cake a day ahead.

The 1970s saw perhaps the biggest change in cooking in this century. That's when a group of talented young chefs in France came up with "nouvelle cuisine," emphasizing fresh ingredients, elegant presentation, and interesting and unusual combinations of foods and flavors. American chefs quickly imported it and made it into something uniquely their own. For our take on this landmark in contemporary cooking, we've shaped purchased puff pastry into individual tartlet, filled them with pistachio frangipane and sliced pears, and topped it all off with a sweet-wine glaze.

Unlike the topping on German chocolate cake, which is soft and gooey, the coconut-pecan crust on this cake-like brownie is baked, making it crisp.

Here's a quick, modern version of an old-fashioned favorite.

Perfect at the end of a fall meal. Top the dessert with sweetened whipped cream, or team it with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

New York City's classic dessert gets a luxurious lift from chestnuts.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The German plum harvest is celebrated every year with a festival in Bühl in the southwestern part of the country. In this simple German dessert, cake batter is covered with wedges of fall plums; a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar bakes into a crunchy topping.

These ice cream sandwiches are served at Hula Grill in Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii.

Apricot and berry jams are especially nice filling for these cookies.