Chapter 9 · Dolci

Eight desserts, ranging from two ingredients to something closer to a three-day project, which feels like an honest place to end a book that's spent this long insisting some things simply cannot be rushed.

• Tiramisù This is the dessert every tourist already thinks they know before they've eaten a proper version of it, and the proper version is almost always lighter and looser than… ◆ includes a story from the dining room
• Panna Cotta The name means nothing more mysterious than cooked cream, and that's genuinely most of what's happening here -- the only real skill in this dish is getting the gelatin… ◆ includes a story from the dining room
• Cannoli Siciliani Fill these too early and you'll have a perfectly good dessert that's stopped being a cannolo -- the shell needs to still be audibly crisp when you bite it, and ricotta…
• Torta della Nonna The name simply means grandmother's cake, which in this family causes a minor annual argument over whose grandmother it's actually referring to, since more than one of…
• Zabaione This is the same technique the tiramisù a few pages back borrows its base from, just served on its own instead of folded into anything -- egg yolks and sugar and…
• Sfogliatelle Real sfogliatelle take three days and a level of patience most professional Neapolitan bakers develop over an entire career, and I am not going to pretend this book can…
• Affogato al Caffè Two ingredients, made correctly only if both of them are good and one of them is hot enough to still be steaming when it hits the other.
• Torta Caprese Legend says this cake exists because a baker on Capri forgot the flour entirely, realized partway through that there was no fixing it, and served the cake anyway. ◆ includes a story from the dining room