Bittersweet Chocolate Caramel Pecan Tarts

These Bittersweet Chocolate Caramel Pecan Tarts are decadent and delicious. They are seriously elegant, and perfect for a small party or a romantic dinner for two.

This recipe for chocolate caramel pecan tarts makes two 4 inch tarts. It's up to you as to how many servings that is. I like a quarter piece, and Mr. Kitchen can easily polish off half a tart (he has the skinny gene). The recipe can also be easily scaled and adapted for a muffin tin or a larger tart. Just bring your geometry skills.

Coconut Panna Cotta with Fresh Berries

This coconut panna cotta with fresh raspberries is so light and delicious. It's a wonderful make-ahead guilt free dessert.

This coconut panna cotta with fresh berries is a lightened up version of the amazing delicious dessert of dairy thickened with gelatin. It's origins are Italian, and the name is loosely translated to "cooked cream."

Ukrainian Caramel Honey Cake

This Caramel Honey Cake is loaded with chopped pecans and frosted with an amazing Dulce de Leche Buttercream.

This Caramel Honey Cake is six layers of honey sponge cake loaded with chopped pecans and almond flour that are brushed with a sweetened condensed milk and cream mixture and then frosted with the amazing buttercream.

Mint Chocolate French Macarons

These mint chocolate French macarons, elegant little almond cookie shells filled with a mint chocolate ganache, are such huge crowd pleasers. 

This month, the Fantastical Food Fight members are sharing recipes with the theme of chocolate mint. I originally attempted making chocolate mint brownies for the theme, but they were a complete fail, so instead I decided to make macarons.

My Top Five Desserts for 2018

These are my top five favorite desserts for 2018. 

All of these desserts were so good!

Cranberry-Almond Shortbread Tart

This cranberry-almond shortbread tart features a shortbread crust flavored with almonds and cornmeal, and filled with a tart homemade cranberry jam brightened with lemon juice and apricot jam.

This cranberry tart is easy to make ahead. First, you can make the dough and refrigerate it up to two days or freeze it for up to two weeks.

Fresh Cherry Clafoutis with Almonds

This Fresh Cherry Clafoutis with almonds is a tasty custardy dessert. Clafoutis (pronounced cla-foo-tee) is totally elegant, yet very easy to make. 

Cherry Clafoutis is a traditional French dessert. In fact, the traditional way it is baked is with un-pitted cherries. Evidently the thinking is that the cherry pits impart an almond flavor to the dessert.

Espresso Chiffon Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

This Espresso Chiffon Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting is both light from the chiffon layers, and rich from the fudge buttercream.

I don't make cakes very often, mostly because I'm pretty bad at frosting them (and stacking the layers so they don't look like the leaning tower of Pisa).

Palets de Dames, Lille Style | Tuesdays with Dorie

Palets de Dames, Lille Style, are small, cake-like vanilla cookies, lightly glazed with a sweet icing.

They are the first recipe the Tuesdays with Dorie group is making from Dorie Greenspan's new book, Baking Chez Moi, Recipes from My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere. When I first found out about this book, I preordered it, sight unseen. I am such a fangirl. In this book, Dorie Greenspan has compiled a collection of simple dessert recipes that represent the various regions of France, where she has lived for almost 20 years.

As always, Dorie makes what might seem complicated completely accessible.

Palets de Dames are a favorite cookie in the patisseries in Lille, a city in northern France, according to the book. They also have various iterations across the country, but the ones in Lille have this lovely pale icing.

These little two-bite cookies are so easy to make and so worth it. Perfect for afternoon tea.

The recipe can be found here.  To check out how other Tuesdays with Dorie participants liked the recipe, visit here. You can buy the book here.