David Lebovitz, page 1
Copyright © 2010, 2025 by David Lebovitz
Photographs copyright © 2025 by Ed Anderson
Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. Please note that no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in hardcover and in somewhat different form by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2010. Certain recipes in this work, some in different form, were originally published in Room for Dessert (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999) and Ripe for Dessert (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lebovitz, David, author. | Anderson, Ed (Edward Charles), photographer.
Title: Ready for dessert: my favorite recipes / David Lebovitz; photography by Ed Anderson.
Description: Revised edition.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024039596 (print) | LCCN 2024039597 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593836293 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593836309 (ebook).
Subjects: LCSH: Desserts. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX773 .L383 2025 (print) | LCC TX773 (ebook) | DDC 541.86—dc23/eng/20240910
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024039596
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024039597
Hardcover ISBN 9780593836293
Ebook ISBN 9780593836309
Editor: Julie Bennett
Production editor: Joyce Wong
Art director and print designer: Betsy Stromberg
Print production designers: Mari Gill and Faith Hague
Print production: Jane Chinn
Food stylists: George Dolese and Elisabet der Nederlanden
Copy editor: Heather Rodino
Proofreaders: Rachel Holzman, Miriam Garron
Indexer: Elizabeth Parson
Publicist: Kristin Casemore
Marketer: Allison Renzulli
Ebook production manager: Eric Tessen
tenspeed.com
penguinrandomhouse.com
Revised Edition
The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland.
rhid_prh_7.1_153157671_c0_r0
contents
introduction
ingredients
equipment
cakes
pies, tarts, and fruit desserts
custards, soufflés, and puddings
frozen desserts
cookies and candies
basics, sauces, and preserves
caramelization guidelines
resources
acknowledgments
index
about the author
_153157671_
_153157671_
recipes list
cakes
Marjolaine
Chocolate pavé
Chocolate orbit cake
Devil’s food cake
Racines cake
Gâteau victoire
Chocolate-cherry fruitcake
Maple-walnut pear cake
Date-nut torte
Persimmon cake with cream cheese icing
Guinness-gingerbread cupcakes
Irish coffee cupcakes
Plum-blueberry upside-down cake
Nectarine-raspberry upside-down gingerbread
Buckwheat cake with cider-poached apples
Spiced plum streusel cake with toffee glaze
Cherry gâteau basque
Kumquat sticky toffee puddings
Fresh ginger cake
New York cheesecake
Pumpkin cheesecake with pecan crust and whiskey-caramel topping
Ricotta cheesecake with orange and anise
Pistachio-cardamom cake
Polenta cake with olive oil and rosemary
Coconut cake
Passion fruit pound cake
Banana cake with mocha frosting and salted candied peanuts
Lemon semifreddo
Peach-mascarpone semifreddo
Bahamian rum cake
pies, tarts, and fruit desserts
Butternut squash pie
Mixed berry pie
Lime-marshmallow pie
Banana butterscotch cream pie
Concord grape pie
Peanut butter and jelly linzertorte
Apple-quince tarte Tatin
Apple tart with whole-wheat puff pastry and maple-walnut sauce
Apple-frangipane galette
Apple tart Normande
Pear tart with brown butter, rum, and pecans
Chocolate ganache custard tart
Caramelized macadamia tart
Apricot-marzipan tart
Freestyle lemon tartlets with white chocolate sauce
Easy jam tart
Cashew, date, and fresh ginger tart
Tartlettes au sirop d’érable
Fresh fig and raspberry tart with honey
Cherry-almond cobbler
Apple-pear crisp with rum-soaked raisins and polenta topping
Peach-amaretti crisp
Pineapple, rhubarb, and raspberry cobbler
Nectarine-berry cobbler with fluffy biscuits
Baked apples with ginger, dates, and walnuts
Very spicy baked pears with caramel
Peaches in red wine
Blackberry–brown butter financiers
Summer pudding
Champagne gelée with kumquats, grapefruits, and blood oranges
Pavlova
Tropical fruit soup with coconut sherbet and meringue
custards, soufflés, and puddings
Bittersweet chocolate mousse with pear and fig chutney
Chocolate pots de crème
Butterscotch flan
Orange-cardamom flan
Lemon-ginger crème brûlée
Black currant tea crème brûlée
Banana soufflés
Super-lemon soufflés
Chocolate-caramel soufflés
Buttermilk panna cotta with blueberry compote
Riz au lait with salted butter caramel and nougatine
Orange-almond bread pudding
Coconut tapioca pudding
Coffee-caramel custards
Île flottante
frozen desserts
Vanilla ice cream
Caramel ice cream
Chocolate gelato
Mexican chocolate ice cream
White chocolate–ginger ice cream with chocolate-covered peanuts
No-churn chocolate-banana ice cream
Milk chocolate chip–amaro ice cream
Butterscotch-pecan ice cream
Chocolate-coconut sherbet
Fresh mint sherbet with figs roasted in Chartreuse and honey
Toasted coconut sherbet
Pink grapefruit–Champagne sorbet cocktail
Simple cherry sorbet
Wine grape sorbet
Blood orange sorbet surprise
Sangría sorbet
Chocolate-tangerine sorbet
Passion fruit–tangerine sorbet
Meyer lemon sorbet
Margarita sorbet with salted peanut crisps
Strawberry-mango sorbet
Blackberry sorbet
White nectarine sorbet with blackberries in five-spice cookie cups
Red wine–raspberry sorbet
Anise-orange ice cream profiteroles with chocolate sauce
Frozen caramel mousse with sherry-glazed pears, chocolate, and salted almonds
Tangy lemon frozen yogurt
Berries Romanoff with frozen sour cream
Blanco y negro
Frozen nougat
Frozen sabayon with blood orange soup
Kiwifruit, pineapple, and coconut baked Alaska
cookies and candies
Chocolate chocolate-chip cookies
Chocolate chip cookies
Buckwheat chocolate chip cookies
Chocolate crackled cookies
Flo’s chocolate snaps
Black and white cookies
Peanut butter cookies
Brown sugar–pecan shortbread
Gingersnaps
Nonfat gingersnaps
Zimtsterne
Robert’s ultimate brownies
Cheesecake brownies
Palets bretons
Cranzac co
Chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons
Orange–poppy seed sandwich cookies
Green tea financiers
Mexican wedding cookies
Croquants
Amaretti
Sesame-orange almond tuiles
Pecan-butterscotch tuiles
Lemon quaresimali cookies
Almond and chocolate chunk biscotti
Peppery chocolate-cherry biscotti
Chocolate-port truffles
Almond ding
Spiced candied pecans
Quince paste
Pistachio, almond, and dried cherry bark
basics, sauces, and preserves
Tart dough
Pie dough
Galette dough
Sponge cake
Frangipane
Pâte à choux puffs
Pastry cream
Crème anglaise
Champagne sabayon
Whipped cream
Salted butter caramel sauce
Cognac caramel sauce
Orange caramel sauce
Tangerine butterscotch sauce
Bittersweet chocolate sauce
Rich chocolate sauce
White chocolate sauce
Orange-rhubarb sauce
Raspberry sauce
Mango sauce
Strawberry sauce
Blackberry sauce
Blueberry compote
Candied cherries
Candied ginger
Soft-candied citrus peel
Candied orange peel
Seville orange marmalade
Pineapple-ginger marmalade
Quince marmalade
Plum-strawberry jam
Fig jam
Apricot jam
Nocino
Vin d’orange
introduction
Back in 1999, I hit a button on my computer and launched what may have been the very first food blog. It was ingeniously called davidlebovitz.com, and the first thing I posted on it was this message: “Welcome to my web site. I hope you come back often.”
I started the site when my first book, Room for Dessert, was about to be published, and I thought it would be a good way for people to get in touch with me in case they had questions about the recipes. Julia Child and Marion Cunningham famously kept their telephone numbers listed in the phone book, but with this newfangled thing called “the internet,” I thought I’d make it even easier for people to get in touch with me.
Two decades, 2,261 posts and recipes, 130,185 comments—and many (…too many) tech-related nervous breakdowns—later, that chapter of my life can now be filed under the “Be Careful What You Wish For” category.
At the height of its popularity, my blog was getting 1.8 million visitors each month. During those same years, I also wrote several cookbooks as well as two memoirs about my exhilarating, but sometimes disorienting, life in Paris. Unfortunately, none of my books ever sold 1.8 million copies, but my first book did well enough to get me a contract to write another, and then another, and then another.
* * *
—
While a lot has happened during these decades, the last few years have been a head-spinning time for food and cooking. Social media serves up rapid-fire clips of food, such as the rolling, baking, and ripping open of a croissant accompanied by audio-enhanced, ear-splitting crispiness (a trend that was gladly brief), or an eight-story wedding cake being assembled, thanks to time-lapse photography, in a mere ten seconds. As someone who’s spent half of his life writing recipes, I marvel at the sheer number of recipes available online. I once asked a friend who headed up a major social media food account, one that posted more than a dozen recipes daily (condensed into twenty-second clips), how they came up with all those recipes. He laughed and said, “David, none of those recipes work.”
Call me naive, but it never occurred to me that you would share a recipe that wasn’t meant to be made. Sharing recipes is one of the great joys of being a baker, and over the years, I’ve been happy to share my favorite recipes, and have others share their favorite recipes with me. Baking is about sharing—no one bakes a cake or batch of cookies just for themselves. We do it to share with others. And that’s why my best friends are bakers.
* * *
—
My life has certainly changed from when I was rolling pastry, slicing strawberries, juicing tangerines, and melting chocolate in the pastry kitchen at Chez Panisse. I moved to France, wrote cookbooks, and adapted to life in another country and culture. I never dreamed life would bring me to where I am today. (Although I still can’t grasp all those tricky French verbs.) The occasional language gaffes, challenges navigating the intricacies of French politesse, an inability to get on top of the piles of (un?)necessary French paperwork, which native French people also struggle with, and my passport are all proof that I’m officially French, too.
I’ve also changed how I shop, cook, and bake since my move. French people don’t bake at home with the same ferocity as people in the United States do; they leave the bread-baking to their local boulanger or boulangère. In fact, there’s no term for “home baker” in French. We hit the bakery in the morning for croissants and brioche, a baguette or slice of quiche for lunch, a buttery Palet breton (this page) or bag of chouquettes (sugar-crusted cream puffs) for an afternoon goûter (snack), and a gâteau Opéra or tarte au citron (lemon tart) for after-dinner dessert. This is one of the rituals of daily life in France, and people wouldn’t dream of trying to outdo their local pastry shop.
* * *
—
Like most French people, I now bake more simply at home—but I do get a kick out of surprising French friends with something like a Devil’s food cake (this page) on their birthdays. Few can resist the chocolate ganache frosting, which is more than just the icing on the cake. It’s my way of bridging both cultures.
French people are particularly delighted when their host makes dessert for them. They don’t expect professional-level perfection from their friends and family, and sometimes cakes will come to the table a little lopsided, the edges of a tart might have shrunk in the oven, or the profiterole puffs didn’t rise as lofty as expected. It’s all okay; flaws are considered part of the charm of a homemade dessert. People are just thankful that someone baked for them, no matter how humble the dish.
* * *
—
For this new edition of the book, I’ve updated many of the recipes, retested and tweaked a few, and added some new standouts, including my all-time favorite French bistro dessert, Île flottante (floating islands; this page), so you too can enjoy it—without buying an airplane ticket. I simplified my gâteau basque (Basque cake; this page) recipe so it’s easier to make at home. And I retoggled my Chocolate chip cookies (this page) to be even softer and chewier. I just couldn’t resist making an already good thing even better.
Although lots of things have changed over the years, my tastes remain the same. I want a chocolate cake that has the intensity of dark, bittersweet chocolate. I want to bite into a coconut macaroon (this page) with a crisp exterior and chewy, coconutty interior. (And why not add a swipe of dark chocolate on the bottom?) I don’t think candy needs to be complicated, and Almond ding (this page) pings all the right notes: crunchy, caramelized nuts with a touch of butter and a soupçon of sea salt.
You’ll find that one of my favorite flavors, caramel, makes its way into many of the desserts in this book, from creamy Coffee-caramel custards (this page) to Very spicy baked pears with caramel (this page). And because some of you may need a little help making caramel, you’ll find a tutorial under Caramelization Guidelines (this page) that’ll guide you to sweet success.
I was so happy to move a few years ago, just down the street from one of my favorite Paris bakeries, and am even happier to share my version of their Tartlettes au sirop d’érable (maple tarts; this page). And while you may have tasted rice pudding in the past, I have learned some pro tips to making a Riz au lait (this page) that is so good that even my partner, Romain, who has refused to eat rice pudding because of the many mediocre versions he was served in school cafeterias growing up, always scrapes the bowl clean. (The nutty nougat and salted butter caramel sauce to accompany it also helps.)
I hope you enjoy this compendium of my favorite recipes, ones that I turn to again and again. I was thrilled to have the chance to revisit these dishes in my Paris kitchen and couldn’t be happier to, once again, share them with you. Bon appétit!
