Joanne Chang

This featherlight Japanese cheesecake is often called cotton cheesecake, and you can see how it gets its name from its incredibly delicate, wispy texture.

Full of both dark chocolate chunks and bits of unsweetened chocolate, this cookie is rich and chewy—perfect for dunking into a glass of milk.

Creamy coconut tapioca pudding with glazed pineapple is one of the desserts I obsessed over when I lived in New York City and worked for François Payard. All of the cooks at Payard Patisserie spent our free time talking about the places we dreamed of going and the dishes we couldn't wait to try. One of the cooks told me about how Claudia Fleming, at the time the pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern, had created a dreamy tapioca that could not be missed. He was right—on one of my last nights in NYC, I was finally able to try it, and thereafter every time I went to visit NYC, I made a point of going back to order it again. Sadly, it's no longer on the menu, but I've channeled it here in this version. It's light and refreshing and uses the natural sugars of mango, pineapple, and apple juice to complement the richness of the coconut milk.

When I started working at Payard Pâtisserie in New York City, I had already been a pastry chef in Boston for a few years. I couldn't wait to see what this French guy could teach me. On my first day, I was handed a stack of recipes—all in French—and immediately realized it would be a challenging year. I spoke and read basic French, but I was pretty hazy on much of the baking vocabulary, and there were many words I'd never even seen before. Pithivier was one of them. I didn't even know how to pronounce it. (It's pee-tee-vee-YAY .) "Watch and learn," Chef Payard told me. He sandwiched a mound of rum-scented almond cream between two large squares of homemade puff pastry and then quickly scalloped the edges of the pastry to look like a sunflower. Slash-slash-slash went his paring knife over the top pastry as he etched sun rays into the surface. The whole thing went into the oven and emerged golden brown with a glorious starburst pattern on top. It put every other pastry I had ever made previously to shame. At Flour, we give our own spin to the pithivier by omitting the rum and adding a thick layer of caramelized apple butter atop the almond cream. It's a spectacular dessert.

The first time my parents came to Rialto, site of my first pastry chef gig, my mom laughed out loud when she saw the dessert menu. Every dessert featured ice cream, and one dessert had two. My dad and I are both complete ice creamaholics, and once I was in a position to make my own ice creams, they showed up everywhere I could put them! I made fruit ice creams, nut ice creams, spiced ice creams. You name the ingredient and I made it into an ice cream. This was one of my favorites. Originally it was a honey-vanilla ice cream, but this variation popped up one day when my vanilla supplier missed a shipment. Needing to make a quick ice cream base for that evening's service and stuck without vanilla beans, I turned to the spice larder, selected a few cinnamon sticks, and a new flavor was born. I like the way the warm cinnamon flavor melds with the natural earthiness and roundness of the honey. An added plus is that honey is a sweetener that lends itself to extra-creamy ice creams, which you'll notice immediately when you taste this one after churning.