From Better Homes and Gardens

The pizzelle (peets-TSEH-leh), a crisp waffle cookie, is one of the oldest cookie recipes known. These large crisp Italian cookies are made with a pizzelle iron.

Pizzelles

From Better Homes and Gardens

Cannoli are the quintessential Sicilian treat. With sweetened cheese, bittersweet chocolate, zippy orange peel, and rich pistachio nuts, this version brings together many beloved flavors in every bite.

Cannoli

From Better Homes and Gardens

These moist bars have the light texture and classic flavor of traditional Italian cheesecake.

Italian Cheese Bars

From Betty Crocker

Prize-Winning Recipe 2008! Bring a delicious and sweet part of Italy into your home with a classic almond cookie rolled in pine nuts.

Italian Pignoli Nut Cookies

From Better Homes and Gardens

These rich sandwich cookies, filled with dark, satiny ganache, are adapted from an Italian celebration cookie called Bocca di Dama--or Lady's Kisses. At Christmastime, we think they should be called Bocca di Nonna--or Grandmother's Kisses.

Earl Grey Bocca di Nonna

From Better Homes and Gardens

An almond paste mixture makes a yummy filling for this Italian dessert. Crown this showpiece with the best-looking fruit at the market.

Marzipan Tart with Fruit Tumble

From Food & Wine

Torrone is an Italian nougat made with honey, egg whites, sugar, and nuts. It can be soft and chewy or hard and crunchy. The recipe here calls for folding crunchy store-bought nougat into whipped cream and honey, then freezing the mixture. What emerges is an utterly delicious, wonderfully simple ice cream-like dessert.

Torrone Semifreddo

From Better Homes and Gardens

The heart and soul of this decadent layered sponge cake is zabaglione, an airy dessert sauce that includes marsala. Adding chocolate and whipping cream makes this cake an even tastier sensation.

Chocolate-Zabaglione Cake with Cherries

From Better Homes and Gardens

These delicate fruit-and-nut cookies are coated with both semisweet and white chocolate for a decorative finish.

Florentines

From Better Homes and Gardens

A frothy delight, Zabaglione is one of Italy's most prized desserts. Here it crowns a springy chocolate sponge cake; another time, try it simply spooned over sliced fruits.

Layered Chocolate-Zabaglione Cream Cakes

From Parents

A banana bread mix and dried cranberries make these Italian cookies easy to prepare.

Biscotti Gone Bananas

From Better Homes and Gardens

Berries, pastry, and cream--who can resist? The pastry cream is laced with mascarpone cheese, a soft cheese similar to cream cheese but smoother and more buttery tasting.

Italian Cream Tarts

From Food & Wine

Sweet Potato Panna Cotta

From Food & Wine

Pastry chefs are coming up with fantastic new ways to use herbs in desserts. Elizabeth Dahl of Chicago's Boka makes a brilliant olive oil cake that's tender, moist, and delicately flavored with fresh thyme. She tops it with lush figs tossed with sugar, black pepper, and more thyme; as the fruit sits in the sugar, its juices thicken to form a luscious syrup.

Olive Oil-Thyme Cake with Figs and Black Pepper

From Food & Wine

Watermelon is a great source of vitamin C. Here, Marisa Churchill turns it into a fat-free granita, which she drizzles with a fragrant cardamom syrup.

Watermelon Granita with Cardamom Syrup

From Food & Wine

Simple, fun icebox cake is made by layering wafers with whipped cream and refrigerating them until the wafers soften into a cakelike texture. Kim Schwenke creates a dazzling version by alternating a creamy mix of mascarpone and Marsala with layers of homemade chocolate-graham wafers. The finishing touch is fluffy espresso meringue.

Zebra Icebox Cake

From Food & Wine

"Eddie makes a mean pound cake," Damien Schaefer says admiringly of chef Eddie Russell, a fellow member of The FourCoursemen. Russell garnished slices of his tender, crumbly cake with fresh figs he picked from a nearby tree, but it's equally good without them.

Polenta Pound Cake with Mascarpone and Rosemary

From Food & Wine

This knife-and-fork dessert from Bottega pastry chef Michael Glissman is a fantastic showcase for seasonal fruit at its peak; caramelizing the fruit on the grill intensifies its flavor. The grilled bread served alongside soaks up the sweet juices.

Grilled-Fruit Bruschetta with Honey Mascarpone

From Food & Wine

Chef Tom Colicchio, the head judge of Bravo's Top Chef, has made his restaurant Craft into a huge brand, which has helped his colleagues share in the limelight. Karen DeMasco, who cowrote The Craft of Baking with cookbook author Mindy Fox, is the former pastry chef at Craft and is known for recipes that are classically elegant yet approachable, like this supercreamy almond semifreddo ("half-frozen") topped with warm caramelized apples.

Almond Semifreddo with Caramelized Apples

From Food & Wine

For this rich tiramisu, Jason McCullar first makes a ginger-spiced cake using a recipe from Steen's syrup, a Louisiana cane syrup (steensyrup.com). Then he soaks the cake in a reduction made with chocolate stout (Rogue brewery makes a good version) before layering it with mascarpone cream.

Chocolate-Stout Tiramisu

From Better Homes and Gardens

Granita, (grah-nee-TAH),Italian for ice, perfectly describes this refreshingly fruity drink. Make and freeze the well-chilled scoopable beverage, with or without the alcohol, to serve to a group.

Sweet Zinfandel Granita

From Family Circle

The Italian desert recipe, Zabaglione is a custard made with wine. This velvety smooth rendition is enriched with cream and fresh blueberries.

Blueberry Zabaglione

From Food & Wine

This lovely dessert or late-breakfast dish is made by toasting coarse semolina and almonds in butter, then simmering them with sweetened milk and dried apricots. The result is crumbly, aromatic, and pilaf-like. It's called helva in Turkey, though it's not to be confused with another Turkish dessert called halvah, which is made with tahini and is fairly common in the U.S.

Sweet Semolina and Dried-Apricot Pilaf

From Food & Wine

A classic Italian panzanella (bread salad) combines juicy tomatoes and bread cubes. Here, Chris Cosentino swaps in stone fruits like apricots and peaches for the tomatoes. Then he pushes the dessert over the top by dolloping the "salad" with an airy zabaglione, a frothy sauce of egg yolks whipped with sweet dessert wine.

Stone-Fruit Panzanella with Zabaglione

From Food & Wine

The arborio rice in Joe Bastianich's lightly sweet pudding provides complex carbohydrates for energy. Since the pudding keeps well in the refrigerator, Joe Bastianich makes it in big batches, then reheats portions for quick breakfasts.

Soy Milk-Arborio Rice Pudding with Poached Figs