Chocolate

For the crispiest cookies, slice the dough no thicker than a half inch. The biscotti keep well and look great wrapped in tinted cellophane tied with a silk ribbon or raffia, or packed into pretty holiday bags.

Gianduia is a classic Italian combination of chocolate and hazelnuts. If you can't find foil candy cups, buy twice as many paper ones and use two (one inside the other) per candy. (Doubling the paper cups makes a sturdier form.) Arrange the confections in holiday tins, or place on decorative trays, wrap in cellophane and tie with gold ribbons.

If you have an extra minute, garnish the pie with chocolate shavings and cookie halves.

Cream cheese enhances the texture of the custard in this tart. To create the pretty wave pattern, use an icing comb, available in cookware stores. Begin making the dessert a day ahead.

This classic chocolate cake gets its unlikely moniker from its color--the same as the deep, rich soil that lines Old Man River. It's usually made in a single-layer rectangular baking pan, but we dressed ours up and fashioned it into a layer cake.

Kevin Prothal of Albany, New York, writes: "While we in upstate New York don't usually get a lot of press about our restaurants, we are still very well fed. I think the best place for any meal is McCarthy's Restaurant in Canton. The service is friendly, and the chocolate chip pie is, by itself, worth a trip up from New York City." This dessert is amazingly easy to prepare.

This moist orange-flavored soufflé is rich with white chocolate. Offer snifters of orange liqueur to sip alongside.

In this terrific take on the classic Linzer-torte, an almond-cinnamon cookie crust is the delicious base for layers of chocolate and raspberries with raspberry jam. Cookie-crust stars top the whole thing off.

Although they are baked, these intensely chocolaty bar cookies resemble fudge more than brownies. To retain the creamy texture, keep them in an airtight tin at room temperature for up to a week. If the bars are refrigerated, their texture will become more dense.

"I was at a conference in West Vancouver, British Columbia, when I discovered Salmon House on the Hill," writes Beth D'Ambrosio of Pittsford, New York. "The one thing more breathtaking than the restaurant's view was dessert: a slice of impossibly rich chocolate cake topped with raspberry sorbet." This dense and fudgy flourless chocolate cake isn’t baked—it’s steamed on top of the stove. The cake will puff up while it steams and fall as it cools.

You'll need a candy thermometer to monitor the fudge sauce and the marshmallows.

The classic twosome presented in the perfect after-dinner mint.

A rich chocolate-raspberry truffle filling highlights this updated Linzertorte.