Back of the Bookshelf: The Last Course

Enlarge Credit: Tim Mazurek When I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old, I went to a neighbor's house for dinner. It was my first solo outing as a dinner guest, and at the end of the meal my hosts presented me with dessert: an apple. They acted like this was a perfectly normal and acceptable way to end a meal, but I returned home and relayed my horror at what had happened to my mother, who quickly agreed they were weirdos and gave me some cookies. In our family, not serving dessert was not an option—and an apple was not dessert. We are people who look at the dessert menu first so that we know how to organize the rest of the meal. We plan travel around particular bakeries or pastry chefs. We care deeply about dessert. I think Claudia Fleming would agree with us that while an unadorned apple may be wonderful, it is not dessert.

The Last Course, Fleming's magnum opus, was one of the first cookbooks that I truly fell in love with. I bought my copy before I knew anything about her, or Gramercy Tavern, the Manhattan restaurant where she made a name for herself. I was simply excited to find a book dedicated entirely to seasonal desserts. The book is divided into chapters centered around ingredients, mostly fruits and vegetables, but also spices, dairy and even flowers. The well-tested recipes range from the basic, like a lemon-poppy seed shortbread cookie, to slightly more complex projects, such as a grape focaccia with rosemary. And the final chapter of the book offers suggestions for combining the previous recipes to create beautiful composed desserts, like those served at Gramercy Tavern—masterpieces like Rose Meringues with Summer Berries, Raspberry Sorbet, and Goat Yogurt-Rose Mousse.