Set up a table of stunning pies, cakes and pastries for the most wonderful time of year.
For centuries, sugar flowed into cakes and pastries only on rare occasions, and the holidays were the season for elaborate bûche de Noël, panettone and gingerbread houses. In this age of daily little treats, it’s harder to capture the same awe that must’ve accompanied once-a-year confections. But this dessert table absolutely does.
It evokes the abundance of Renaissance still-life paintings, with updated takes on European classics and modern creations inspired by flavors from across the globe. What makes these showstoppers especially satisfying is how anyone can make them.
The cookbook authors Nicola Lamb and Yossy Arefi have been baking professionally for decades — and turning their pastry chef wonders into recipes straightforward enough for novice bakers. They’ve delved into the stories of cherished desserts and carried them along their evolution with brilliant new flavors and formats.
Meant for slicing and sharing, these big rounds can all be assembled for one spectacular dessert table, or you can prepare whichever ones you want and add your own sweets to the spread. Setting them on gilded platters, vintage or modern, and at different heights with the help of cake stands or stacks of books or blocks, will create a dramatic tableau for any gathering.
Nothing says celebration quite like a towering slice of cream pie.
Dressing up a classic dessert is a great way to get it ready for a party. Here, rich tiramisù-flavored cream and classic coffee-soaked ladyfingers are layered into a dark, crisp Oreo crust and covered with chocolate curls. Tiramisù has achieved legendary status in the dessert canon despite being a relatively recent invention: Its exact origin remains disputed, but after emerging in Italy in the 1970s, its popularity has consistently grown. Perhaps surprisingly, the tradition of cream pies in the United States predates it by a century — it is only right that the two should finally meet. NICOLA LAMB
Dubai chocolate, now the shorthand term for the trio of chocolate, pistachio cream and kataifi, is delicious as a layer cake.
In 2022, Sarah Hamouda created a chocolate bar to quash a pregnancy craving — even though she had never made chocolate confections before. In her home in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, she tinkered with pistachios, cream and a shredded variety of phyllo known as kataifi, eventually creating her signature Can’t Get Knafeh of It bar. A year later, an influencer called it Dubai chocolate in a TikTok video that went viral, and the rest is history. Now, countless variations have spread around the world. In this recipe, Yossy Arefi tops a tender chocolate cake with a creamy-crunchy pistachio kataifi layer. To give it the glimmer it deserves, she cloaks the two-toned stack with a silky chocolate ganache and adorns it with a crackling necklace of nuts and more kataifi. GENEVIEVE KO
Crumpling sheets of generously buttered and sugared phyllo around apples creates a dramatic pastry.
Apple pie has a French cousin, and its name is pastis Gascon. Hailing from Gascony in southwestern France, it doesn’t have a definitive genesis but most likely dates back to the Middle Ages. Also known as croustade aux pommes or tourtière, pastis Gascon is the meeting of several divine things: apples, Armagnac (another Gascon specialty) and phyllo. This meeting is facilitated, of course, by butter — and plenty of it. The result is a crispy crown of pastry filled with soft, yielding Armagnac-scented apples. Golden Delicious are popular in classic French recipes, but using any flavorful variety that holds its shape well when cooking will work. NICOLA LAMB
The distinct floral citrus aroma of yuzu juice makes for a lovely creamy tart filling.
Over the past century, there’s been a mutual admiration and influence between Japanese and French cuisines, with a shared reverence for training chefs in the craft of fine dining. That’s especially evident in pastry and the exchange of ingredients across the globe. Yuzu, a floral citrus fruit popular in Japan, has found its way into buttery tarts, like this update on a classic lemon tart. Yossy Arefi has incorporated its distinct aromatic juice into a velvety, creamy curd set in a tender crust. Fresh yuzu remains difficult to find, but bottled juice delivers its signature complexity. GENEVIEVE KO
In this updated take on Mont Blanc, a mountain of meringue, whipped cream and chestnut purée sits on a base of chocolate coffee cream.
A classic dessert, the Mont Blanc was named for its resemblance to the tallest mountain in Western Europe. Since its first appearance in 19th-century France, it has undergone various transformations — in its simplest form, sweetened chestnut purée piped into noodles meets a mountain of whipped cream. The now-famous addition of meringue was popularized by the Parisian tearoom Angelina, whose version helped cement the dessert’s modern identity: a crisp meringue base covered in whipped cream and chestnut strands. Here, the Mont Blanc is piled in maximalist fashion: Layers of cream and meringue are stacked high and cascaded with chestnut purée. A secret layer of chocolate and coffee crémeux is nestled within the meringue foundation, adding a grounding bass note. NICOLA LAMB
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