Fruit Dessert

We like Granny Smith apples for this tart, but you could substitute a number of other varieties, including Macoun, Cortland, or Jonagold.

This dessert is more interesting when prepared with a variety of stone fruits, but if you can’t find one particular type, substitute more of another. You could also use apricots in place of any of the other three fruits.

Often reserved for breakfast, crumb is just as satisfying when served for dessert. Replace the blueberries with other berries or sliced apples or plums, if desired.

Not only is this one of the simplest desserts to prepare—it’s also low in calories and virtually fat-free. Because it is so light and refreshing, it’s a perfect ending to a heavy meal.

A ginger-infused simple syrup flavors slices of store-bought pound cake in this easy but spectacular summer dessert. The recipe is versatile: feel free to substitute other berries, or try slices of peaches, plums, or apricots.

You may not have thought of cooking peaches before, but they are delicious hot off the grill and topped with dollops of sweetened sour cream and crumbled cookies.

Rhubarb is a vegetable, although it is typically used in jams and desserts; its tart flavor makes it the perfect companion for fresh strawberries, or in this case, strawberry ice cream.

These treats aren’t fancy; they’re just plain good and full of memories. You can prepare the strawberries up to a day ahead, but wait until just before serving the dessert to assemble it.

These turnovers are delicious! Plus, they’re quick to make and everyone loves them. When you’re making them, be sure to put only a few cherries and a little bit of sauce in each one; otherwise, they’ll be really hard to close and they’ll leak all over the place.

We can’t write a cookbook without including something with a crumble topping; they’re just too good. That’s why we came up with this vegan version of crumble, which wasn’t even really that hard (all we had to do was change the butter to margarine—so if you want to make a dairy version, switch back to butter). Serve a nice warm slice with a scoop of ice cream (vegan if you like) and you’ll be in heaven!

In this Cambodian treat (that is also a favorite in Vietnam), bananas are covered with coconut-infused sticky rice, wrapped in banana leaf, and grilled.

The Vietnamese adore bananas, arguably the country’s national fruit. Many kinds—small, large, stubby, sweet, starchy—are available, and people know the seasonal and regional differences. A giant herb related to lilies and orchids, the entire banana plant (leaves, fruits, blossoms, trunk, and roots) is used in cooking. In Vietnam, my mother regularly bought a full bunch (about a hundred fruits) from a vendor. After we arrived in America, bananas continued to be one of our favorite fruits, but we ate fewer of them since they are costlier here. Whenever we had overripe bananas, we made this easy and delicious cake, which is among the most popular sweet banh preparations. Thin banana slices decorate the slightly caramelized top, and the cake itself has a puddinglike texture because of the large number of bananas in the batter. For the best flavor, use fragrant, extremely ripe fruit with deep yellow skin marked with lots of brown spots.

If you have never tried a Vietnamese che (sweet soup), this one is a good place to start. The perfume of the banana comes through wonderfully, and the tapioca pearls, enrobed in coconut milk, cook up to resemble large orbs of clear caviar. Once the tapioca pearls have fully expanded and set, the texture of this mildly sweet treat is like that of a thick Western-style tapioca pudding. Small, creamy bananas, such as the Nino variety, also known as Finger or Baby, are traditionally simmered for this sweet soup. They are sold at Asian and Latin markets. If they are unavailable, substitute regular bananas. Regardless of the variety, use ripe but firm, blemish-free fruits.

The apple tart is France’s answer to American apple pie. (Or maybe it’s the other way around, but really, who’s keeping score?) The light and buttery crust is a delicious home for overlapping slices of lightly seasoned apples. Rolling the dough over a bed of sugar fuses the granules to the crust, creating a sugary layer that caramelizes into a tantalizingly crisp outer shell as the tart bakes. I like to serve this with crème anglaise—a silky vanilla-infused pourable custard—flavored with apple’s favorite spice, cinnamon. It adds just the right amount of richness to the elegant tart. A little ice cream on the side—vanilla or caramel, for example—wouldn’t hurt either.

This recipe is from Laura Emma, the mother of my friend Sohnne Hill. Sohnne says it was one of her mother’s favorites. After testing it, I know why. Packed with an abundance of fruit, hiding a tender layer of crust in its midst, and topped with a crisp, golden brown top, it is the ultimate comfort dessert.

I stumbled across this idea when I was making one of my regular summertime batches of hibiscus tea, while also wishing that the peaches in a paper bag on my countertop would hurry up and ripen already. I peeled a peach, let it steep in the hot tea for a while, and there you have it. Not only did the peach soften, but it also took on the loveliest color from the hibiscus, not to mention that addictive flowery tang. I later gilded the lily by boiling down a little more of the tea to make a glaze. The best part: I still had my tea, which I later cut with sparkling water and spiked with tequila.

Whereas my second son was born without a volume control dial, my first son was born without an equalizer. The little one bellows and howls at the ceiling, pounds and slams on the floor. The big one rolls his eyes, giggles, and plays mind games, then lavishes you with smiles. Not surprisingly, their loves and fears and wants are nearly opposite, though not in the way you might expect. The big one, when he isn’t politicking, just wants to create elaborate dioramas of war and space travel. The little one, when he isn’t fighting, just wants to climb into your lap for a cuddle. The younger one loves to cook, the elder is a formidable epicurean. They are made from completely different machinery, as if one was crafted by a Swiss watchmaker, the other by a Tasmanian shaman. But they both love flambéed bananas with smoked salt. Cyprus hardwood smoked salt lends woody glints of bacon to the dish, while the salt’s unique massive crystals lend a perfect crunch. Either way, the dish has everything. Banana sugars caramelizing in hot butter, bourbon exploding into fire, and a globe of ice cream—the whole thing set into a smoky haze, like a carnival entering a battlefield.

They say we use only 10 percent of our brains. That assessment is immensely appealing. We are all potential supergeniuses with telekinetic and mind-reading powers, and could easily enjoy Heidegger or Joyce for light reading over coffee and donuts in the morning . . . if we only tried. But there is an easier way to experience the unbridled horsepower of our full consciousness: try roasted peaches in bourbon syrup with smoked salt. Your first bite will expand the boundaries of sensation separating your mouth from the rest of your body, and you’ll be feeling spiciness in the warmth of your hands and smokiness in the tingling of your toes. And by the third bite your mind will have moved on to peel the black backing off the edge of the universe, filling the unending space beyond with your pounding heart.

Lovage looks like a young celery branch with leaves, and in fact tastes like a slightly spicy celery. Most farmers’ markets have it in the spring and summer. Substitute a celery branch for the lovage stem in a pinch.