Quintessential desserts from America's favorite food city. This gift cookbook is a collection of favorite delights from world-renowned New Orleans restaurants and chefs. The 45 recipes compiled include examples of signature New Orleans dishes invented or raised to their highest level in this city. Legends, lore, and musings accompany each recipe, topped off with delicious photographs. Selections include bread pudding from Bon Ton Café, bananas Foster from Brennan's, cherries jubilee from Broussard's, sweet potato pie from Dooky Chase, crème caramel from Galatoire's, pecan pie from Camelia Grill, crème brûlée from Arnaud's, turtle cookies from the once-ubiquitous McKenzie's bakeries, pralines from the Poor Clares, and banana cream pie from Emeril's.
Kit Wohl is a cookbook author, photographer, graphic designer, and artist. She has worked with chefs, restaurants, and hotels across the country as the CEO of Wohl & Company, and she drew from her passion for the culinary arts to produce Arnaud's Restaurant Cookbook. After she completed that cookbook in 2005, Wohl produced New Orleans Classic Desserts for Pelican. The series has grown, and each of Wohl's volumes covers a different aspect of New Orleans's traditional cuisine. New Orleans Classic Gumbos and Soups was chosen by Gourmet Magazine as their February 2009 Cookbook Club selection. For each of her cookbooks, Wohl chooses recipes from the repertoires of a wide range of restaurant kitchens and professional chefs. All recipes are tested and adapted to home-kitchen standards, and each is illustrated with one of her photographs. "Cooking is an art and a form of creative expression," she says. "Food is distinctive in form, color, texture, and flavor. The selection, preparation, and presentation of a meal are as creative as any art project. Best of all, it nurtures both the body and the spirit." Her energy and artistic talent have resulted in numerous awards for design and production in various fields, including a Clio Award, the advertising industry's equivalent of the Emmy. She was a longtime board member for the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and has been active in many of the city's civic, educational, and charitable organizations. Wohl and her husband, Billy, live in New Orleans with a trio of Abyssinian cats.