Claudia Fleming

This ginger-stout cake from famed pastry chef Claudia Fleming gets generous layers of buttermilk frosting, with the sides of the cake left au naturel.

Try pastry chef Claudia Fleming’s all-time favorite chocolate chip cookies.

You can make this tart, which is accented with fennel and Pernod, with cow’s milk ricotta or small-batch sheep’s milk ricotta, which tastes even better.

The dough for these blackberry shortcakes contains hard-boiled egg yolks—an old trick for making a rich and tender biscuit.

These orange beauties with thin, edible skins are a tasty winter treat. Make candied kumquats to garnish any cake.

Classically French, prune‐Armagnac ice cream is one of the most graceful ways to serve a prune. Whereas most fruits become hard and icy when frozen, these prunes remain chewy and soft.

Creamy, nutmeg-spiced eggnog is one of my favorite holiday indulgences, and has been since I was a child. Now I’ve turned my favorite holiday cheer into a compelling ice cream.

When purchasing rack of lamb, ask your butcher to remove the chine bone as well as any excess surface fat and to "french" or clean, the rib bones. To create a really flavorful spice coating for the lamb, Hayden recommends using high-quality coffee and dark, strong Valrhona cocoa. For the salad, Fleming likes to use a spicy Tuscan olive oil to give the vinaigrette an extra kick of flavor.

To neatly and evenly transfer the cake batter to the ramekins, Fleming likes to use an ice cream scoop, but if you don't have one, the batter can just as easily be poured.

Serve this elegant Euro-style treat with a sweet late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc.

You’ll need a 7 3/4-inch-diameter trifle dish that is at least 4 3/4 inches deep. The recipe makes an extra gingerbread cake; have it for breakfast the next morning. If you prefer to make 12 individual trifles, use all three gingerbread cakes and cut each in half horizontally. Using a pretty glass as a guide, cut out 4 cake rounds from each cut cake layer. Alternate 2 cake rounds with 2 to 3 layers of the mascarpone cream, a few candied kumquats, and some poached cranberries in each glass.

Armagnac adds a festive and slightly boozy flavor.

Flan is amped up with holiday spices and a crispy cookie crust.

The cake is layered with dark chocolate ganache and white chocolate cream, then topped with marshmallowy peppermint frosting.

A big, beautiful soufflé with a festive chestnut flavor. You’ll need to bake the dessert right before serving, but you can make the soufflé base (minus the egg whites) two hours ahead, then fold in the whites up to one hour before baking.

Use any leftovers as a spread for scones.

In this gorgeous pie, blueberry meets its perfect match: lemon.

This vibrantly colored crisp is the perfect combination of sweet, tart, and spicy flavors.

Frozen puff pastry helps these come together easily, and the tart goat cheese cream balances their richness. If you can't find sour cherries, double the amount of sweet ones and up the lemon juice to 1 1/2 tablespoons.