For this type of chocolate mousse cake, baked cake layers are filled with chocolate mousse.

The tart is a baked ganache, scented with orange zest and rum, topped with chopped hazelnuts, in a sweet pastry crust. A final drizzle of chocolate makes a simple decoration.

Green vegetables and leafy greens are perfect in a moist and tender bread pudding like this.

These ethereal chocolate tarts come from my friend Lesley Chesterman, restaurant critic and food writer at the Montreal Globe, Quebec’s premier English-language newspaper. You can also make a single large tart—you may have a little more filling and/or ganache than you need.

Famed as a small resort right outside the city of Vienna, Bad Ischl was a favorite gathering place on members of the imperial court from Vienna during the nineteenth century. Of course, for Viennese aristocrats vacation meant strolling around and enjoying sweets. This was one of their favorites: walnut butter cookies, sandwiched with raspberry preserves, streaked with chocolate icing, and topped with whole blanched almonds.

This was a specialty of my teacher chef Albert Kumin, who used to make it with a Grand Marnier flavored mousse at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York when he was the head pastry chef, about 50 years ago. I like to use this light chocolate mousse to fill it, and I’ve retained the orange liqueur as a flavoring.

I love swirls of chocolate threading though any kind of a plain cake. This marbled brioche is fairly straightforward to prepare since you mix everything in the food processor. Marbling the plain and chocolate doughs together requires a little patience, but the reward is a beautiful loaf with an alluringly different flavor achieved by adding grated lemon zest and rum to the dough.

These ethereal chocolate tarts come from my friend Lesley Chesterman, restaurant critic and food writer at the Montreal Globe, Quebec’s premier English-language newspaper. You can also make a single large tart—you may have a little more filling and/or ganache than you need.

This is an original and amusing presentation for plain old devil’s food cake. It’s sliced vertically and layered in a bowl with whipped cream. You can even sprinkle on a little dark rum and/or a handful of raspberries along the way.

Using melted chocolate gives this a much richer flavor than using cocoa would. A slice of this bread is delicious toasted and buttered for breakfast or in the afternoon with a cup of tea or coffee.

Green vegetables and leafy greens are perfect in a moist and tender bread pudding like this.

Nothing could be simpler—or better—than this tart.The flavor of the filling is of course entirely dependent on the quality of the chocolate you use, so hang the budget and get the best available—you only need a single pound.

For this type of chocolate mousse cake, baked cake layers are filled with chocolate mousse.

The tart is a baked ganache, scented with orange zest and rum, topped with chopped hazelnuts, in a sweet pastry crust. A final drizzle of chocolate makes a simple decoration.