One of the many pleasures of having a pastry chef as a best friend is, well, take a look. This is (part of) the dessert spread at Nick’s Christmas Day table. A Bûche de Noël, lower left, with wonderful coffee-flavored buttercream icing and marzipan mushrooms and pinecones. A fig-and-chocolate-filled Sicilian buccellato, upper left, sprinkled with i diavoletti. A center platter of his Truffle Brownies and (a favorite) pecan squares. And you can just see his panettone, upper right, and a plate of his checkerboard sablé cookies, extreme right. And the golden crown, lower right, is his take on his friend Rosa’s mother’s (from Macao) fruitcake recipe that is out of this world. You can find recipes for all of these in Nick’s books (and many are on his website, too), but it’s much nicer to arrive at his home and find them already prepared and smiling at you. (I also have a photo taken after people had sampled "just a small piece" from each of these sweets. You can just imagine. Think Dresden, 1945.)
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