Learn to COOK - Ripe for Dessert: 100 Outstanding Desserts with Fruit--Inside, Outside, Alongside

David Lebovitz loves fruit. From the richness of a summer blackberry to the mellow sweetness of a juicy mango, fruit inspires and delights this celebrated pastry chef. In Ripe for Dessert, David shares his passion for fruit and his treasure trove of inspired, innovative, and luscious dessert recipes.

These sweets celebrate fruit in all its diverse glory, as David's intensely flavorful and imaginative recipes show off the best of every season and reward every dessert lover's fancy. The seven chapters, with more than 130 recipes in all, are organized by category, with an eye to the seasons. They feature apples, pears, and quince from the fall harvest; citrus and dried fruits from winter; stone fruits and berries for the height of summer; figs and melon for its waning days; and David's signature tropical fruits desserts, which will surprise and delight your sweet tooth year round.

Such light, elegant dishes as Pomegranate Granita and golden Honey-Poached Pears let the fruits' flavors shine, with minimal fuss or adornment. But David is no spartan. His recipes go all out, with rich cakes and creamy custards, pastries, frozen desserts, and soufflés, accented and enlivened by complex fruit flavors. A luxurious Lemon-Ginger Crème Brûlée puts a tart, fruity twist on a classic sweet, while a Candied Orange and Rosy Rhubarb Sauce raises a perfect, anise-scented Ricotta Cake to a new level of sophistication. For chocolate lovers, David presents pairings that will surprise and satisfy, including Anise-Orange Ice Cream Profiteroles with Chocolate Sauce, Pear and Fig Chutney with Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse, and a Chocolate Soufflé Cake with Prunes, Cranberries, and Kumquats in Port. David even offers a fabulous, thirst-quenching Gingery Lemonade.

With Ripe for Dessert's bounty of easy, user-friendly recipes, you can transform your favorite fruits of every season into dishes that will impress and delight all the dessert lovers in your life.

The chapters divide the recipes into a slightly quirky seven different types of fruit, where type is not determined by botany but by a combination of season (apples, pears, quinces), terroir (tropical), and preservation (dried). The seven chapters are:

Apples, Pears, Quince, and Rhubarb
Tropical Fruits
Citrus Fruits
Dried Fruits
Figs, Grapes, Melon, and Pomegranates
Stone Fruits
Berries

The most striking thing about the collection of recipes is that there seems to be not a single classic fruit recipe such as simple Apple Pie or Strawberry Shortcake or Peach Melba or Peach Cobbler. Almost every recipe is original with the author or based on a suggestion made to the author. Many are certainly based on classics, but each and every one has some modification. For example:

Apple Crisp becomes Gravenstein Apple and Blackberry Crisp
Tarte Tatin becomes Apple and Quince Tarte Tatin
Rhubarb Pie becomes Rhubarb Tart with Almond Nougatine
Key Lime Pie becomes Lime Marshmallow Pie
Linzertorte become Peanut Butter and Jelly Linzertorte
Peach Crisp becomes Peach and Amaretti Crisp

There is definitely a place on many bookshelves for this kind of book. But it is important to know that this is what the book is all about before buying it. The author is so fastidious as a baker that he does not use generic pastry crusts. Rather, the crusts are customized to the job at hand. I count this as a major plus in a serious work on baking, but his may not be your particular bowl of cherries. I can see this book being justly popular with people who entertain a lot and need something new for dessert once or twice a month, especially since the book is organized to make finding a particular type of dessert very easy. I can certainly see that this book should be popular with restaurants and caterers and all professional bakers.

One important fact to know about the recipes is that many ingredients are not restricted to their proper chapter titles. Shredded coconut, for example, is something like the grated Parmesan cheese of the dessert world. It gets sprinkled on lots of different recipes.

These recipes are all very good. But, they reminded me of a comment on a TV documentary on a pastry competition where a team lost out because their tastes were just too unfamiliar to the judges.

The few pictures in the book are competent. The style of the book is a bit garish. I would have been happier with a nice sedate Alfred A. Knopf treatment to the book design rather than the hot pink and orange colors they chose. I am always pleasantly surprised by a bibliography in cookbooks. This would have been just a little better done as footnotes. The double table of contents by fruit and by type (cakes, tarts, cookies, etc) is wonderful. More cookbooks should do this.

If I were looking for a good general-purpose book on desserts including fruit, I would go with Wayne Harley Brachman's new `American Classics' volume. Highly professional treatment of familiar favorites.
This book is good for the right audience.

I have a suggestion for the author's next cookbook. He should all it READY FOR DESSERT and include only quick and easy recipes for those of us who are (a) very busy, (b lazy, (c) poor-- some of these recipes would cost bunches--(d) all of the above.

But if you are looking for very exotic recipes with lots of contrasting flavors, this cookbook is for you.