A pop-up sweet stop

Bon Appetit is running with the pop-up shop trend. Since last week, and through Friday, they're hosting a "Supper Club and Café" on 57th Street where you can park it at a communal table (or loungey seat) and nosh a $9 Charlie Trotter salad or $8 Batali sandwich, all the while watching, say, Cat Cora do a cooking demo. It's a decent deviation from your everyday routine.

The savory bits looked good but, naturally, I went for the sweets.

They've imported seven desserts from Claudia Fleming (North Fork Table and Inn), Johnny Iuzzini (Jean Georges), Pichet Ong and Francois Payard. I sampled two.

I've never been to Jean George, but I can now lay claim to fandom for Johnny Iuzzini. (For his sweets, not his sexiness.)
His pineapple polenta cake with ginger does that delicious merging of sweet and savory. The firm, spiced cake has marbled caramelized edges and ginger-y pineapple. Beautiful.

Claudia Fleming's triple chocolate brownie cookie ain't so bad either. (How could it be with a name that includes chocolate, brownie and cookie?) Indeed, it's shaped like a cookie, fudgy like a brownie, and three times as chocolaty as it has any business being. It's another heavenly case of throwing in some nuts to balance out the chocolate intensity. Get the recipe here.

221 West 57th near Broadway

5 best (boo!) pumpkin treats

If you don't want to stuff your gullet with candy corn and mini Snickers this Halloween, get in on these rich, spiced baked goods.

Pumpkin cupcakes at Amai and Batch:
You can't go wrong with either Kelli or Pichet's elegant recipes.

Pumpkin scone at Alice's Tea Cup:
The sisters usher in autumn with their caramel-glazed moistest scone.

Pumpkin pie at City Bakery:
A rich and spiced slice from a man who knows his pies and tarts.

Pumpkin cheesecake bar at Baked:
Creamy, savory, heavenly.

Pumpkin custard at Dessert Truck:
Topped with maple syrup, marshmallows and caramelized pecans. Enough said.

A tart for a cookie

Maury, do you know what it’s like to look forward to peanut butter cookies all weekend and then to show up at City Bakery, and they’re not there? It’s cruel. So cruel.

But at least I was prompted to try something new: the open apple lemon tart. Which enabled me to rebound from my bitter disappointment.

Piled high, the tart, lemony apples have just a little bite, yet are soft and chewy. Big crunchy crystals of sugar are the yin to the tart apples’ yang. And beneath it all is a beautiful thin crackling crust.

Alex took solace in a wonderfully sweet oatmeal raisin cookie. I wouldn’t say either of us was forgiving the denial of a much needed peanut butter cookie fix but, like true champs, we made due.

The Mixing Bowl: Jerome Chang

Most Sweet Freaks know the Dessert Truck makes a mercilessly rich and deliciously spongy chocolate bread pudding. But here, Jerome Chang tips us off to a new mobile must-eat—figs with lavender syrup and marscarpone (omg!)—and shares his tools for making the magic happen.

Growing up, my favorite sweet was:
Trix cereal. They were round when I was growing up, and they bummed me out when they switched to the fruit shapes. But I think they’re round again.

My favorite sweet now is:
The figs from our chef Bill’s yard in New Jersey, with lavender syrup and mascarpone.

My personal Dessert Truck favorite:
See above

What I love about being mobile is:
Driving the truck on the wide, open highway with everything rumbling around inside… just like a video game.

Truffles or pralines:
Truffles for long conversations. Pralines for quick snacking.

White, milk or dark:
I won’t choose. Milk and dark chocolate can work amazingly in concert. White chocolate can be awesome with certain fruit flavors.

Caramel, ganache or cream:
Cream can be essential to both.

I'd love to create a flavor for:
My girlfriend

Kitchen essentials:
Immersion blender, Vitamix blender, scales.

Style essentials:
Shower daily.

Pastry chefs I admire:
Any whose egos don’t get in the way of putting good flavors on the plate.

I'm most inspired when:
Autumn rolls around.

How much is too much?
When you start getting an ulcer.

Favorite movie snack:
Junior Mints

Guilty pleasure:
Eating a boatload of soup dumplings.

Other favorites:
I love Philly & most of Spain.

Bananas foster french toast

This is just… wrong!

Eschewing the 90-minute wait for brunch at Prune, Bennie and I journeyed down to newcomer JoeDoe. I think I have a new favorite restaurant.

The space is tiny, the staff, friendly, and every bite smacks of rich flavors. I changed my order to the french toast after seeing the guy next to me tuck into his whipped cream- and syrup-saturated plate of carbs (Seriously, granola? What was I thinking?). It was heaven, delivered on a plate.

I hate to say it, but watch your back, Prune.

45 1st Street b/w 1st and 2nd Aves
212.780.0262

Chocolate chip heavyweight

I'm back on the chocolate chip cookie hunt. I really want to find someone who can take down City Bakery and Levain. Not that I have anything against them. God, no. But it just seems so obvious that these are the best. Certainly, there are other contenders?

Today, I hit up Petrossian. With its Armenian/French heritage, it seems an unlikely candidate. But they are not kidding around with the American classic.

The edges are nice, thin and crispy. The middle, and it's a giant one, is chocolaty, caramely and nutty—you might as well be eating a Tollhouse pie. And you can taste the eight pounds of butter.

There's no way to eat this monster without getting your fingertips covered in chocolate—the whole bottom of the cookie is melted chocolate, hardened again. And it's high quality, rich as all hell.

I'm normally not into nuts, but I understand why they add pecans: for the faint of heart, they cut the chocolate excess. It may not be the best in the city, but this cookie is no joke.

911 Seventh Ave b/w 57th & 58th
212.245.2217

Doughnut heaven

Having just enjoyed the fist-sized apple cider doughnuts with maple whipped cream at Hearth (hurt me), I was thinking that fried dough with some form of creamy accompaniment just might be the most amazing thing in the world. Or at least one of them.

But a girl can only eat so many doughnuts. That's why I was thrilled to see Kathy Chan's Guide to the Best Doughnuts in New York, in which she enlisted a second gullet to devour and rate a crazy number of options throughout the burroughs.

I can't decide if I start with the ricotta fritters at Abraco, or the raspberry jelly doughnut from Park Slope's Trois Pommes. The list is pretty exhaustive and will take awhile. At least I have Doughnut Plant and Balthazar taken care of already.

Peanut butter. And some jelly.

I was pretty sure that Violette & Ruby made a pb & j cookie and that Baked had a pb & j brownie. Either one of those would have kicked Hill Country's pb & j cupcake. (Oh my, remember that??)


But, sadly, I was mistaken. Still, I can't get pb&j off the brain. At least there are other rich, savory snack situations. To wit…

Peanut butter sandwich cookies from the Treats Truck and Bouchon Bakery.

Peanut butter brownies at Baked, and peanut butter hot cocoa at Jacques Torres (um, since apparently it's winter already).

Peanut butter cupcake (with a chocolate ganache center) from Sweet Revenge.

And the best ever: City Bakery's peanut butter cookie.

To tart up the nuttiness, there are even jammie treats. Like Chocolate Bar's raspberry jam Retro Bar. And the raspberry brownie from the Treats Truck.

And for the truly gluttonous: fried pb & j at Mama's Mudsliders.