Desserts & Chocolate

When Jay, the Verizon tech (and ex-chef), was fixing my internet, he described these Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter-Coconut-Honey-Caramel Balls as part of his Thanksgiving menu. I thought, “I’m totally stealing that idea.” They will forever be known as Jay’s Sweets.

A dense chocolate flan covered with chocolate sprinkles and served with crème anglaise. From Brazil, it resembles the famous Brigadeiros chocolate candy balls.

Add green tea, a classic Japanese flavor for sweets, to desserts, ice cream, and drinks.

A sweet slightly thick vanilla cream sauce to serve with desserts like puddings, pies, cakes, and more

Pudim Molotov is a gluten-free Portuguese dessert with an egg white flan base that’s often served with a caramel sauce. I put a Japanese spin on my version.The link to egg white flan recipe I used and my additional ingredients are below.

Choux pastry is used for making cream puffs, éclairs, and other hollow pastries that are filled with various savory and sweet fillings.

A dark chocolate bark encrusted with toasted black & white sesame seed and a sprinkle of sea salt.

A classic vanilla custard that’s used as a filling for éclairs, doughnuts, pies, cakes, parfaits, etc. I also mix it with stabilized whipped cream for desserts like Merveilleux, Heavenly Pie and my Crêpe Terrine Cake.

I found about Merveilleux after the bakery Aux Merveilleux de Fred opened in New York City. I checked them out, tasted one, decided they could be better and made them for Easter dessert.

Caramelized Millet Puffs make a fast, crunchy garnish for any desserts or to add to cereal, trail mix and more. They taste very reminiscent of the breakfast cereal Suga Pops.

Everyone has their go-to pie crust recipe, this is mine. I don’t know if it’s fool-proof because I’ve never given it to a fool to make. I think that people take making pie crust way too seriously. The most important this is to not be afraid of it. You dough should be mottled with bits of butter that are large enough so you see streaks and blobs in it. If you can’t see the butter, you’ve overmixed the dough. Before that happens stop cutting in the butter.

A recipe for cute little hand pies filled with apples, cherries and candied ginger.

I like to add candied nuts on top of desserts, salads, a cheese board, and more. This is a quick way to make them.

I adore the combination of coconut and lemon. I added coconut flour and substituted coconut oil for some of the butter for flavor. I added rice flour to give it the texture of a Scottish shortbread.

If you want a fast, only slightly tricky, candy recipe that will guarantee yours and the people you may or may not share it with’s GLEE, this Salted Chocolate Cappuccino Buttercrunch Toffee is it!

These shortbread cookies are very fine, due to the confectioner’s sugar. They are delicious plain or used as the base of a filled cookie

The flavors of fall in the Northeast abound in these Maple Sugar and Pink Salted Cranberry Orange Walnut Chocolate Clusters.

Creamy peppermint centers, dipped in chocolate and they’re vegan to boot!

Homemade peppermint cream chunks, crushed candy canes and crisp rice in dark chocolate clusters that look just like coal.

I bought this hilarious “Praise The Lard” t-shirt from Prather Meats at the Ferry Building in San Francisco (you can’t buy them online, but if you go there grab one—it’s a conversation piece), but I’ve never used it much for cooking. Strange for a gal who worships at the Church Of Pork Fat… We were at a Cherry Grove Farm in New Jersey, last month and they had leaf lard so I bought some and rendered lard for the first time this month. This recipe is for an old fashioned lard pie crust. It makes three single crust or one double crust and a single crust. There’s no point to making only one pie crust. if you don’t need the extra ones, freeze them.

There’s nothing like the smell of browned butter and I’ve been making this recipe ever since I was a catering cook in Australia at Black Tie Catering.They were always a highlight of our petit fours and cookie platters. I prefer them with a tart dried fruit, but you could use fresh berries, stone fruit slices, baby figs, anything you like

I used stabilized whipped cream and opposed to unstable whipped cream in any recipe where I need the whipped cream to be molded or piped, hold it’s shape, not to weep or to stabilize another ingredient like lemon curd, as in my Heavenly Pie.

Freshly made crêpes cakes seem like the uppity cousins of pancakes, but it’s almost a ruse since they are so easy. They’re thin and elegant like a fashionable French socialite and promiscuous in their ability to easily go with so many sweet and savory dishes.

Elderflowers add honey and lychee floral notes to traditional lemon curd. I make my elderflower syrup with oranges and lemon so it’s delicate, but complex. I rolled it in the crêpes and drizzled in on the whipped cream for my elderflower lemon crêpeterrine cake recipe.

My lemon curd goes POW! It’s a delicious balance of sweet and tart for making tarts, filling cookies and cakes and crêpes, adding to parfaits and more. Or you could just eat it on toast!

If I can get fresh passionfruit, this is my favorite dessert of all time. If not, it has to take second place to a perfect peach pie served warm with vanilla ice cream.

These are chocolaty chocolate cupcakes. I top them with chocolate ganache frosting that’s made simply from chocolate and cream and only as sweet as the chocolate you use in it.

These chocolate truffles are made from ganache, which sounds “fancy”, but is just the French word for an emulsion of cream and chocolate.

I drew the illustration for the pudding RECI-TEE before I ever made chocolate pudding from scratch. It was so CUTE! I had to come up with a recipe. This chocolate pudding makes people swoon and it’s so simple to make!

This is one of the first recipes that I made repeatedly which is why it inspired the first RECI-TEE t-shirt I designed. In the Stone Age, as I refer to my youth, I thought it was very clever of me to chop up Hershey’s milk and dark chocolate bar and mix them into the batter for these.

I suggest you use the finest ingredients you can to make these because it adds to the “deliciousity”. That said, no one will refuse them if you use supermarket butter and cream.

This was the pie that I served as part of a platter of six desserts, in my show “The Fried Chicken Theory According to Jackie Gordon: an evening of sultry soul food and sweet soul music.”. It is how I earned the nickname “The Pimp Of Pie”.

The first time I had this pie was at the first Pie Party Potluck LIVE! My friend George brought it, and I took one taste and I was hooked. It’s like an inverted lemon meringue pie where the crust is meringue. Don’t call it gluten-free because it’s so beyond that… but know that there’s no gluten in it and no one will wonder where it went.

After being in the chocolate fountain business for ten years, I’ve gotten sick of strawberries. I can only eat perfectly ripe, sweet organic ones, preferably just picked. But there’s an exception and that’s when there’s rhubarb to pair with them. I will eat this combo anytime. That said, it tastes best with perfectly ripe, sweet organic strawberries, preferably just picked. I made this strawberry rhubarb compote to go with cheese blintzes on Mother’s Day for my mom.

Here’s the cool thing about throwing events. You don’t always have to cook to bring delight to a party or potluck or even a holiday meal. Gathering the right ingredients and making your food interactive will make it FUN. Set up a banana split bar so your guests can make their own. Who doesn’t LOVE a banana split? If you’ve got a fussy friend or two, don’t invite them. Just kidding, there’s plenty of options for them too. They can just have ice cream or just bananas or eat their weight in maraschino cherries. Everybody’s happy! You don’t need all of the items under ingredients… unless you enjoy a bit of overkill like me. Use your favorites or try one of the less processed, artisan-made alternatives I’ve listed below. For a potluck, ask each guest to bring something from the list!

This pie recipe is perfect for using up leftover dried fruits that seem to accumulate in your cupboards. You can use any type and combination of dried fruits. They will plump up when you cook them with fresh apples or pears by absorbing their juices so the pie needs no thickeners.