Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #250961 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-01
• Released on: 2003-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Booklist
More substantial dessert fare shows up in David Lebovitz's Ripe for Dessert . This volume from Alice Waters' pastry chef at Chez Panisse shows dedication to using the finest available seasonal fruits. The many variations on poached pears highlight the fruit's versatility whether poached in white wine, honey, or Marsala. Instead of everyday profiteroles, Lebovitz stuffs anise-orange ice cream into puffs before crowning them with chocolate syrup. Crepes overflow with Grand Marnier butter and then get a topping of butterscotch sauce. For the kids, Lebovitz cleverly offers Jellied Tangerine Juice in lieu of ordinary boxed gelatin. Lebovitz also uses dried fruits, his butterless date-nut torte the most unusual of his creations. Dedicated dessert cooks will be tempted to try every one of Lebovitz's inspired recipes. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
David Lebovitz was pastry cook at Chez Panisse for twelve years with a few brief forays into the outside world, including a stint as pastry chef at Bruce Cost's Monsoon, a critical favorite. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Customer Reviews

Quinces and Gravensteins and Rhubarb, oh my
David Lebovitz' new title `Ripe for Dessert' is a word play on his subject of fruits in dessert. The teacher and former pastry chef with Paul Bartoli and Alice Waters at Chez Panisse has done a book composed exclusively of dessert recipes, which include fruit in some fashion.

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.

Delicious!
I am a big fan of David Lebovitz's "Room For Dessert", but was skeptical to try "Ripe for Dessert" because I am not a huge fan of fruit desserts. this book, however, proved me wrong. The recipes are delicious. My favorite was the Lime Marshmellow Pie (although I did use whip cream and storebought graham crackers). A lot of the recipes have fruit on the side and would be delicious without the fruit. I have enjoyed the Chocolate Bread toasted with cream cheese. This is a great book for someone who loves baking and pastry and is looking to get creative. I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner because the techniques are not well explained if you don't understand them already.

An Outstanding Book
When I ordered this book I was very excited about it. I love fruit, and using it in cooking for me is always fun. When I use fruit in savory dishes I do it to be innovative and for something "new," but when I use fruit it dessert, it's for elegance, and style.

This book did not dissapoint. There are recipes for almost every fruit imaginable, most available in any grocery store, along with some beautiful photos of some of the finished and plated desserts.

The book starts with the authors, Mr. David Lebovitz, acknowledgments, and continues with a foward by Ms. Deborah Madison. This is the first book of Mr. Lebovitz's I've owned, and seeing how great this one is, must now get his other, Room for Dessert.

Then there is an introduction from Mr. Lebovitz, including some tips, techniques, and a section on different types of fruits.

There are then seven chapters, seperated by fruit catergory, full of recipes.

Apples, Pears, Quince, and Rhubarb - Included are fourteen recipes, mostly for apples and pears. The quince and rhubarb being included in this chapter, since they don't really fit anywhere else. There are six recipes for apples, one being a tempting spiced apple charlotte with cider sabayon. There is one recipe for quince; quince marmalade with manchego cheese. Then six recipes for pears, including; stilton shortcakes with honey-poached pears and cornmeal shortcakes with spice-baked pears. This is followed by a single recipe for rhubrab; rhubarb tart with almond nougatine.

A chapter for tropical fruit follows with ten recipes. There's a papaya recipe for papaya cake with coconut glaze, then a tropical version of baked Alaska, reightly re-named here, a baked Hawaii. There's two mango recipes, and three pineapple recipes, including one for a caramelized pineapple flan. There are two banana recipes, and a recipe for mango and lilikoi butter.

Next is a chapter full of citrus fruit desserts, with nineteen recipes, nine being for oranges, or one of their counterparts. The orange recipes include orange allspice cake with brown sugar glaze and ricotta cake with candied orange. There are then three lime recipes, the best being the lime-marshmallow pie, a single grapefruit recipe; pink grapefruit champagne sorbet, and six lemon recipes including; lemon-ginger creme brulee and gingery lemonade.

There is a whole chapter for dried fruits, which I believe are under-used in America. Mr. Lebovitz has managed to take these under-rated fruits, and come up with fifteen recipes including them. Most recipes include more then one fruit, so it's impossible to seperate them by fruit, like in the other chapters. Some examples of recipes included are; pear and fig chutney with bittersweet chocolate mousse, date ginger and candied pineapple fruitcake, and peppery chocolate-cherry biscotti.

There is then another chapter of more misc type fruits, that seem to hard to group with any other fruits; Figs, Grapes, Melon, and Pomegrantes. There are only seven recipes, two of them being; fig and raspberry tart with honey and a duo of wine grape sorbets. This is not a bad chapter, but is weaker compared to the other chapters.

There is then a chapter of stone fruits with fifteen recipes, with four cherry recipes including chocolate bread with sauteed cherries, four peach recipes, including the cover recipe; peaches poached in wine syrup, an apricot recipe; apricot and marzipan tart, two tempting nectarine recipes, and four plum recipes, including a spiced plum streusel cake.

The last chapter is devoted to my favorite fruits; the berries. Fourteen recipes are included. There are four strawberry recipes, which seem to be a favorite of everyone, including; strawberries in red wine syrup with almond meringue baskets, a boysenberry recipe, two blackberry recipes, only one blueberry recipe, and two recipes for mixed berries. There's also a recipe for tomatoes.

The only fruit that I find to be missing in the whole of the book is raspberries. Though it is used as a supporting ingrediant in some recipes, it deserves a stand alone one that all other fruits have been given.

Mr. Lebovitz has also included two indexes, one which lists the recipes by type, i.e. cakes and pies, which is handy since the book is divided by fruits, and another general index.