Sweet Hereafters

Review of Ready for Dessert:  My Best Recipes by David Lebovitz

Has the time come for you to move outside the safe zone of your standby cookbooks for dessert recipes?  Are you ready to move beyond the beloved but common “Better Homes and Gardens” or “Joy of Cooking?”  Do you find the array of dessert cookbooks confounding or overwhelming?  Do you want one go-to dessert cookbook, rather than a dozen specialized?

Ready for Dessert is a good candidate if your answer is yes to any of these questions.  It runs the culinary gamut from brownies to fruit soup to pies, soufflés, cakes and ice cream.  Some recipes are deep and complex, such as “Coconut and Tropical Fruit Trifle.”  It requires four separate components – custard, fruit filling, toasted coconut, and sponge cake – and it sure sounds tasty.  Some recipes are very quick and simple to make.  The “Chocolate Orbit Cake” is a flourless chocolate cake.  My preparation and cleanup time totaled only 30 minutes.  Lebovitz suggests serving it with crème anglaise because it’s so rich.  It is intensely chocolaty and rich, so like Dolly Parton, I served it over ice cream to cut the sweetness.

Everyone will find recipes to enjoy, and plenty of variety.  Given the scope of the book, relatively few tools, utensils and pans are required but it is not a given you already own them.  For example, my 9-inch cake pans do not have 2-3” high sides and Lebovitz uses this in several recipes.  In addition, some of the ingredients are not staples and you may buy some just for making a dessert.

I recommend this as a gift to yourself, if you’re ready to take that leap, or as a gift to someone you know who loves desserts.