Chocolate

For a nice touch, fold fresh raspberries into the mousse and garnish it with additional berries.

This luscious cake has two chocolate mousse fillings and a rich dark-chocolate topping.

Parisians love chocolate, and cooks in Paris might make this with Valrhona, one of the best French brands. Begin preparing the dessert a day ahead.

From Charleston Grill, Charleston, South Carolina.

This crisp and creamy dessert pairs pistachio praline meringues with lemon buttercream. The unique praline is also used to garnish the sides of the cake. Assemble it a day before serving to allow the buttercream to set and the flavors to come out.

Tinted white chocolate icing is used to make the festive plaid pattern that decorates these tasty sugar cookies.

There's enough espresso cream to top 6 cakes for a quick, elegant dessert. The leftover 6 are great to keep for snacks.

Sicily, Italy In Sicily, gelato usually doesn't contain any cream or eggs. The coffee and chocolate-almond flavors here are true to tradition; the zabaglione is enriched with eggs.

"The Farm of Beverly Hills has the most incredible, delectable giant brownies!" says Cindy Grand of San Francisco, CA. "They taste more like fudge with a light, crunchy surface. Would you help me get the recipe?" These are probably the fudgiest brownies we've ever tried—in fact, they seemed too rich to serve in giant squares, so we've cut them smaller. They taste even better the day after they're baked.

This brownie, baked in a tart pan, gets its moistness from cream cheese and its fudginess from the best-quality cocoa and chocolate. Little puddles of ganache are poured into holes made in the brownie, after it has baked, with a the handle of a wooden spoon. Chocolate doesn't get better than this.

English toffee puts the finishing touch on this scrumptious tart. For especially good results, use strongly flavored coffee ice cream.

Start this recipe six hours to one day ahead.

Thick hot fudge sauce spiked with raspberry brandy covers scoops of vanilla ice cream — or any other favorite flavor. The sauce thickens further when it hits the cold ice cream, creating a dessert reminiscent of the one served in old-fashioned ice cream parlors.

Terrific with cappuccino or ice-cold milk.

The pleasingly chewy biscotti are coated on one end with white chocolate. In our test kitchen, imported white chocolate, such as Perugina or Lindt, yielded the best results.

Speculoos, a specialty of Belgium in which flat gingerbread cakes are cut into different shapes, are the inspiration for this recipe. Similar cookies called speculaas are made in Holland, Germany and Austria. These are decorated with melted white chocolate and some pretty red sugar.