Electric Mixer

This is my son Bobby’s own recipe for pimento cheese. It is a definite favorite.

I’ve heard this was our governor and later president Jimmy Carter’s favorite cheese dish. His First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, has been credited for making this a famous Southern favorite.

Torta al vino is a traditional wine-country cake with white wine in the batter and seedless grapes (or any kind of berry) folded in. The acidity of the wine and the whole juicy fruits—baked grapes are luscious!—give this easy cake a delightful complexity of flavors and textures in each bite.

Filled with nuts and meringue, this lattice-topped tart is quite lovely, quite easy, and typically Italian. In Andria, Carlo Tottolo gets almonds from the area of Toritto, some of the best in all of Italy.

Pasticcerie, pastry shops, also referred to as Catlisch (a name inherited from the Swiss), are a grand tradition in Palermo. The city was greatly influenced by the French and Swiss in their pastry-making. When I am in Sicily, cannoli and desserts made with citrus are my favorites. In Palermo, I always enjoy desserts and a great cup of espresso at my dear friend’s pastry place, Pepino Stancanpiana’s Catlisch. My Sicilian chef at Felidia, Fortunato Nicotra, makes an elegant version of this, Sicily’s favorite dolce, with deep-fried disks of cannoli pastry stacked high with layers of ricotta cream in between. I like to fry squares of pastry in a skillet—no deep-fryer needed—and build a crispy, creamy cannoli napoleon. In Sicily, cannoli filling is made with sheep’s-milk ricotta, which has a distinctive flavor that can’t be matched by ordinary processed ricotta. Fresh cow’s-milk ricotta, which is widely available now, is what I use. Be sure to drain it well, sweeten lightly, mix with chopped bitter chocolate, candied orange, and toasted almonds for real Sicilian cannoli and add a touch of Grand Marnier for additional flavor.

Of all the wonderful ricotta torte and crostate I have made, this one is so moreunpretentious and delightful that I urge you to put it in your dessert repertoire. The cake is moist and sweet, with a hint of orange and the crunch of toasted almond slices in each bite. In Rome, this cake is made with sheep’s-milk ricotta, giving it an additional layer of complexity, and if you do have access, by all means use sheep’s-milk ricotta and follow the same procedures. Top with a dollop of whipped cream, or, to make it fresher, fold into the whipped cream an equal amount of sour cream. Top all with berries in season, or some halved ripe figs when available.

Sacher torte is known around the world as a specialty of Vienna (at the Hotel Sacher) but is commonly found in pastry shops and in home kitchens of Trieste. It is sure to delight the chocolate lovers in your household. It will keep well for a few days in a cookie tin without refrigeration, but for longer storing time do refrigerate. You can also bake and freeze the cake layers in advance. Defrost and assemble and glaze the torte before serving.

This is another cake that I developed when I worked at Rosa Mexicano, and it quickly became one of the most popular desserts. We used to serve it with caramelized bananas, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce, all on the side. I have since tweaked the recipe a bit, by adding some chocolate to the tres leches mixture itself, instead of having a separate sauce, and by layering the cake with whipped cream.

Imagine a sticky, messy, sweet, syrupy, crunchy ball. It’s the kind of sweet dentists warn you about (my dad has endured many painful visits to such because he absolutely loves them). They are sold by street vendors outside bus and subway stations, churches, and movie theaters; in parks, at festivals, and occasionally in candy shops. I never met anyone who actually makes these, and I found very few recipes, because, as with many sweets in Mexico, we tend to buy from people who have made a particular candy for generations. I want to thank Jose Luis Curiel, a wonderful professor and historian, for giving me this recipe.

Whenever I think of meringues in Mexico, I think of big crunchy pillows adorned with sliced almonds and imagine my shirt filled with crumbs as I hold it in my hand, eager to reach the center that cradles little threads of chewiness. These meringues are a direct import from the French with no real adaptations. In the Mayan region (Quintana Roo, Yucatan, and Campeche) however, the meringues are a more delicate matter. They have a slightly crunchy exterior and a very soft, cottonlike interior perfumed with lime zest and sweetened with a lot of sugar. I was very curious about how these particular meringues were made and visited the home of Geny Beatriz Camal Ruiz, a candy artisan in Bacalar, Quintana Roo. Beatriz begins preparing her candies at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning so that she is ready by 9:00 A.M. (after she has fed her children and husband, showered, and cleaned her house) to fill her cart and go to the center of Chetumal and sell her sweet treats. Geny, like many other candy makers of the region, uses lime zest to avoid an unpleasant eggy taste that often occurs because of the heat. Spoonfuls of batter are gently placed on top of an aluminum tub with a little water to prevent sticking. She then places a comal on top of the tub and hot charcoal on top of it. This way, the meringue cooks from top to bottom, leaving the center soft and seemingly uncooked. The coal provides a wonderful smoky background but does not distract from the vibrant lime zest. I tried to do these in a home kitchen with terrible results and am very grateful that Nick Malgieri, a wonderful and sweet pastry chef, was able to help me out and achieve the texture I was looking for. You will need five baking sheets for this recipe, so borrow some if you don’t have enough.

As weird as it may sound, whenever I think of these, I think of the trunk of a car. You see, parked around the streets of Mexico City are numerous cars filled with towers of corn breads. Their trunks are open and there is a cardboard sign announcing the delicacies for sale. This particular recipe takes only a few minutes to prepare (plus baking time, of course) and the result is very tasty and moist. Enjoy a slice with a cup of cold milk or coffee.

You can find all sorts of corn flour (masa harina) in Mexico, and their colors can seem almost fake. The best place to find them is the food mills, and they are commonly found near markets. Whenever I can, I like to make this dish with pink or blue corn because it enhances the color in a natural way and it somehow seems more fun.

These cookies are fragile and it is almost impossible not to get crumbs all over the place when eating them, but that is precisely their beauty! The Arabs brought polvorones to Spain during their occupation, and the Spaniards, in turn, brought the cookies to Mexico when they settled in the land. The recipes differ in several ways, but the main difference is the Arabs used butter and the Spanish used lard. Nowadays, you can find both kinds in Mexico and others made with shortening or margarine. I tested many, many recipes, because I wanted the most crumbly, meltin-your-mouth cookie with the least amount of human error possible. I ended up with this recipe, which is a hybrid of the two and may be made with or without nuts.

Although the name of this dessert says it’s a cream, it’s really more of a creamy gelatin with a caramel sauce like that made for flan. The orange blossom makes this simple dessert quite sophisticated. It is best made a day in advance so the flavor really comes through and it is easier to unmold.

These cookies are unusual because you must make caramelized almonds, grind them, and then add them to the dough. But it’s worth it because it gives them a lovely and unexpected crunch.

These cute shot glasses fit the bill perfectly. You can buy them in bulk at your local restaurant-supply store, or online for a discounted price. Get them engraved, or make labels with your wedding date, or write a note and tie it to the glass with a decorative ribbon. Serve these with small demitasse spoons—because guests will want every last bit of that rich chocolate. When you think about it, special occasions don’t come much bigger than this. So why not give them something to remember the occasion by?