Desserts 1-2-3: Deliciously Simple Three-Ingredient Recipes [Hardcover]

Rozanne Gold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2002

Desserts 1-2-3: Deliciously Simple Three-Ingredient Recipes is the sweet finale to Rozanne Gold's award-winning 1-2-3 cookbook series. The "diva of simplicity" treats us to more than 150 new three-ingredient desserts that indulge all the senses. From seasonal fruit sensations to decadent chocolate extravaganzas, this is a book designed to please everyone. The simple yet amazingly flavor-filled treats include Roasted-Strawberry Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberry Sauce, White Chocolate Pots de Creme, and Lemon Curd Tart with Chocolate-Crumb Crust. More surprising still, more than one third of these tempting recipes are fat free or low calorie.

Gold has helped launch a new movement in cooking by encouraging home cooks and professional chefs alike to "keep it simple." By paring down the number of elements in a dish, she lets the inherent flavors of the best ingredients -- in this case seasonal fruit, fresh cream, and premium chocolate -- speak for themselves. As a result, Gold's recipes achieve remarkable clarity and balance.

The elegantly simple and delightfully seductive recipes cover every category: cookies and tarts; souffles, custards, and flans; ice creams and sorbets; and an entire chapter of chocolate confections. More than 30 fresh-fruit desserts are also featured. Precise serving instructions help the home cook achieve finished dishes that are as beautiful as they are delicious.

-- Simple: Each recipe uses just three ingredients

-- Comprehensive: All dessert categories are covered, including cakes, tarts, cookies, ice creams, chocolate creations, and fruit and cheese combinations

-- Delicious: Recipes range from healthy -- more than one third are fat free or low calorie --to decadent

-- Gold writes regular cooking columns for Bon Appetit and Modern Maturity and is a frequent guest on national television (NBC's Today show, Good Morning America, Live with Regis and Kelly, and many more)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Believe it or not, delectable desserts can be made with just three ingredients (and no, one of them is not cake mix). Desserts 1-2-3 joins the ranks of Rozanne Gold's wildly successful 1-2-3 series (Recipes 1-2-3, Entertaining 1-2-3, and Healthy 1-2-3), proving that limiting ingredients does not translate to limitations on creativity or flavor. While Gold does "cheat" a bit by using a few prepared ingredients such as puff pastry, chocolate wafers, and even Nestlé Crunch bars, the results are so impressive that anyone--even a professional chef--would undoubtedly be proud to serve them. The seeming simplicity of these dishes is disarmingly charming, yet the results are, in many cases, extremely sophisticated. Strawberry-Lemongrass Consommé with Cut Berries, for instance, could hardly be called mundane and yet it is made from nothing more than lemongrass stalks, strawberries, and sugar. Likewise, Maple Chiffon--an ethereal, mousse-like custard--impresses with eggs, maple syrup, and cream. Other dishes, like Pecan Fudge Terrine or Ice Cream Profiteroles with Mint Chocolate Sauce, elevate comfort food to a genteel experience. Gold displays an especially impressive knack for combining the three ingredients in different ways for playful visual and taste combinations: Cinnamon Ice Cream with Cinnamon Brittle, Warm Chocolate Soufflé with Bittersweet Chocolate Sorbet, or Blueberry Coeur a la Crème with Honeyed Blueberries. Inspired, elegant dessert recipes using just three ingredients each--what's not to like? --Robin Donovan

About the Author

Rozanne Gold is one of America's most prominent chefs and authors. She is a three-time winner of the James Beard Award for her best-selling cookbooks. Her most recent book is Healthy 1-2-3: The Ultimate Three Ingredient Cookbook.

Gold is chef-director of the Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co., best known for having created New York's glamorous Rainbow Room, and, sadly gone, Windows of the World

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang; First Edition edition (April 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584790997
• ISBN-13: 978-1584790990
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #237,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rozanne Gold, renowned chef, author and international food and restaurant consultant, began her career at age 23 as first chef to New York Mayor Ed Koch. Considered one of the most prominent women in the food world, she is a four-time winner of the prestigious James Beard Award and winner of the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award.

As Chef-Director of the restaurant consulting group, the Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co., she helped re-create New York's magical Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center (where she was co-owner and consulting chef for 15 years), the legendary Windows on the World, and three of New York's three-star restaurants.

The author of 12 acclaimed cookbooks, Ms. Gold has been the entertaining columnist for Bon Appetit magazine where her "Entertaining Made Easy" column was read by five million fans. She has written and produced stories for The New York Times (her work can be found on the Op-Ed page, the Dining Section, and Sunday Magazine), and has written for Oprah, Gourmet, Cooking Light, More, FoodArts, Modern Maturity and The Montessori Magazine.

As Chef to Mayor Koch, Ms. Gold cooked for President Jimmy Carter, Prime Minister Menachem Begin and dignitaries from all walks of life. Business Week named her a "Mover and Shaker"; Cooking Light magazine named her one of "America's Top 5 Enlightened Chefs"; Chef magazine nominated her "Innovator of the Year"; the Food & Beverage Association of America honored her as 'Hospitality Professional of the Year" and Drexel University deemed her Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Known as the "diva of simplicity", she has set the Gold Standard for a style of cooking that has inspired professional chefs and home cooks alike to "keep it simple" with: Little Meals: A Great New Way to Eat and Cook (1994), Recipes 1-2-3: Fabulous Food Using Only Three Ingredients (1996), published in four languages; Recipes 1-2-3 Menu Cookbook (1998), Entertaining 1-2-3 (1999) and Healthy 1-2-3 (2001). Desserts 1-2-3 (2002) landed on the L.A. Times "Hot List" and was chosen one of the year's best cookbooks by Food & Wine Magazine. Cooking 1-2-3 (2003) was chosen as one of the year's best 10 books on NBC's Today Show.

Gold's books have garnered starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and chosen as Editor's Selections in the New York Times Book Review. Her seminal book, Healthy 1-2-3 won the coveted IACP award, was nominated for a James Beard award, and chosen as "one of the year's best books" by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Known as a food-trends pundit, Ms. Gold invents concepts that give restaurants and food companies their competitive edge. An early proponent of American regional cooking, she helped create American Spoon Foods, the first specialty food company to focus on regional ingredients. She invented Hudson River Cuisine, turning the idea into a three-star restaurant, the Hudson River Club; and was responsible for developing New York's first pan-Mediterranean restaurant (Café Greco), featuring "Med-Rim Cuisine".

Ms. Gold is a frequent guest on national television, including four recent appearances on the Today Show and is a regular guest on National Public Radio. A recent appearance on WNYC's "Leonard Lopate Show" won her a fourth James Beard Award.

A graduate of Tufts University with honors in psychology and education, Ms. Gold studied cooking in Italy and France. She is past President of Les Dames d'Escoffier, New York, and is a trustee of Arts Horizons, a nonprofit organization that brings the arts to city schools. She is a major proponent of the movement to help teens eat more healthfully and has just published her 11th book -- "Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs" (Bloomsbury USA, October 2009.) Gold lives with her husband and teenage daughter in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Her son Jeremy Whiteman lives in Silicon Valley.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple but not Easy June 20, 2002

By Seattle Magnolia

Format:Hardcover

This is my first encounter with the wonders of Ms. Gold's kitchen, and it is an impressive collection. Now, I collect cookbooks, and I cannot recall having described any of the others in those terms. This book really made a positive impact on me.

That being said, I think the reader should be aware that just because the book is called "1-2-3", doesn't mean "as easy as 1-2-3". These recipes may be simple in terms of the number of ingredients, but they are not simple in preparation (with a few exceptions). The methods Ms. Gold uses are classic chef techniques: custards in a double boiler, toasting and grinding nuts, hand-slushing granitas. Nothing weird, but they can be very demanding and time-consuming.

Think elegantly simple, rather than child's-play simple.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Creativity for Non-Baking Cooks February 13, 2008

By Lynn Hoffman, author:The Short Course in Beer VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

A lot of people who cook aren't very good with baking. It's understandable, the personality traits that make you good at one of those endeavors tend to make you bad at the other.
None the less, cooks often have to make dessert. This sweet little book is chock full of good simple ideas that are also structures that will in your cook-like way, suggest a lot of other simple, unbakerly recipes. There are excellent instructions for no-fuss custard, lots of ideas for re-purposing ice cream and a great low-calorie section. This is one of the two dessert books that I consult regularly.

Lynn Hoffman, author of the sweet bang BANG: A Novel and the creative New Short Course in Wine,The

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars great for a weekend afternoon October 31, 2005

By NYer family

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Beautifully put together desserts, that do require attention to detail. The recipes I've done have all been fairly easy and very successful. Having just three ingredients means you're more likely to have everything on hand or not have to spend three hours shopping. The Lemon Buttermilk sorbet is outstanding and easy. Enticing photography.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great! June 26, 2006

By Stella

Format:Hardcover

Desserts 1-2-3 is a creative, well put-together cook book. The book is broken into 5 recipe categories: "Fresh Fruit Desserts", "Custards & Souffles", "Cakes, Cookies, and Tarts", "Chocolate", and "Ice Creams & Frozen Desserts". There are many beuatiful photographs, on avaerage I'd say about every 3 pages or so.

Be sure to read the introduction at the beginning of the book. At first, I was a little bugged that some photographs presented lovely extra embellishments, but no instruction on how to make them. For example, the picture of the Cinnamon-Baked Apples with Apple Butter looks great, with a fancy little caramel candy design stuck into them. I couldn't be sure it was in fact that, though, becuase there was no explination besides how to make the apples. In the introduction I found that they were indeed simply melted sugar, hardened into a fancy little swirl. The rest of the extra embellishments are pretty much self-explanitory, but author Rozanne Gold explains a few more in her introduction as well.

This book also includes a "Fat-Free and Low-Calorie Recipes" section and a conversion chart in the back. The fat-free/low-cal section is actaully just one and a half pages that lists the names and page numbers of previous recipes that are low in fat, or that can be lowered in fat if ingredient subsitutions are made, and it lsits what ingredients those are. These pages also list which recipes are low in calories, and the amount of calories they have per serving. I haven't needed these pages, but they are well-organized and look very helpful.

After each section, there are one or two pages of extra ideas relating to that topic.... For example, after the Fresh Fruit Desserts, two pages hold a bunch of extras, such as "1-2-3 Apple Ideas", "1-2-3 Berry Ideas" and so on.

So far, I've found this book to be really great. It exceeded my expectations. I checked it out of the library, which is great because I get to use it now all I want for 21 days and can see if I'd like to buy it, or even just check it out again :) I suggest doing the same to see if you like it enough to purchase. Enjoy! :) Read more ›

4.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Recipes for Unexpected Company January 17, 2013

By Patrica A. Gardner

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Just love Rozanne's books. I think I have all of them. Always favorable, always simple number of ingredients so you are more likely to have most of them on hand. I usually make her recipes and find hey are a good jumping off spot for "doctoring up" with additional ingredients, an extra spice here or there, switching one ingredient for another I have on hand.