Poires belle Hélène is a classic French dessert of poached pears served with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. This recipe adds a decadent twist by oven-poaching the pears and stuffing each with a luscious hunk of almond paste, then further guilds the lily by adding a dollop of Provence lavender honey to the chocolate sauce, its subtle floral notes enhancing the flavor of the pears.
Vanilla sugar is ridiculously simple to make, and ridiculously good. It makes a great gift: fragrant, unexpected, keeps forever, and can be used in any recipe in which you’d use vanilla extract. Buy plump, slightly soft vanilla pods for this recipe — it’s harder to get them chopped up properly if they are hard and dried up (they will still flavor the sugar nicely, though).
Ginger and vanilla combine with bittersweet chocolate to create truffles with a spicy-hot kick. Serve the truffles at room temperature, to bring out the full flavor of the spices.
Triple the pleasure with creamy Delice de Bourgogne! This triple cream cow’s milk cheese melts on the tongue like whipped butter. The cookies are extremely light and fluffy, fragrant with sweet basil. With fresh ripe strawberries in simple vanilla syrup, not only is this cheese course beautiful, it is easy to make and absolutely delicious.