Intoxicating Desserts

This richly flavored cake features quintessential Irish ingredients such as dark porter beer, dark brown sugar and whiskey.

This beautiful, upscale version of a classic icebox cake benefits from a chocolate filling that is spiked with Marsala wine.

While restaurants traditionally make the buttery, orange-flavored sauce for this famous dessert tableside from start to finish, Pépin finds it easier to prepare largely in advance when entertaining. He flambés the liquor in front of his dinner guests and pours it over the platter of crêpes while still flaming.

Absinthe adds a subtle anise flavor to these puddings, which are delicious with berries.

For this rich tiramisu, Jason McCullar first makes a ginger-spiced cake using a recipe from Steen's syrup, a Louisiana cane syrup (steensyrup.com). Then he soaks the cake in a reduction made with chocolate stout (Rogue brewery makes a good version) before layering it with mascarpone cream.

Jacques Pépin flavors truffles with many ingredients, but he is especially fond of the coffee-rum combination in this recipe.

"Above all, sorbet should taste—and feel—almost like eating fresh fruit," says ice cream maker Jeni Britton, who makes this sorbet with an old-fashioned style of Belgian beer called lambic, which is made with wild yeasts.

This dessert, created by pastry chef Cory Barrett, is an ode to Michael Symon's father, Dennis, who loves beer, pretzels and chocolate. The ice cream has a strong, malty Guinness flavor that goes supremely well with the salty, milk chocolate–covered pretzels. If you don't want to make the chocolate-covered pretzels, they're easy enough to buy.

Michael Glissman's tart is like a dark-chocolate truffle in a crisp, flaky cocoa crust. Bourbon adds a wonderful smokiness; be sure to heat it carefully with the sugar so it doesn't ignite.

Chef James Holmes of Olivia, in Austin, topped raw oysters with this sweet-savory sorbet before deciding it would make an excellent cocktail with Prosecco. A good-quality, store-bought raspberry sorbet is a fine shortcut.

New Orleans Chef John Besh says he is crazy about winter fruit and loves using it in this brown butter-custard tart. He sometimes swaps the pears for apples or even quince.

Thick mascarpone cheese mixed with honey makes a luscious topping for cherries poached in red wine. You can serve the dessert either warm or cold. We love it both ways.

Nichole Birdsall tops these crêpes with strawberries, a superfruit high in vitamin C and potent antioxidants, and a creamy, orangey sauce sweetened with a splash of Bonterra Muscat dessert wine instead of sugar.

Jacques Pépin flavors truffles with many ingredients, but he is especially fond of the coffee-rum combination in this recipe.

An easy mousse is topped with a spicy caramel sauce made with thyme, black peppercorns, red wine and ruby port.

"We get these crazy organic pears that are ugly as sin," says Tory Miller of the Moon-glow variety he uses throughout the cold winter months. Peeling them, though, reveals a fruit so beautiful and juicy that he prefers a minimalist approach, either serving them raw or poaching them in wine, such as the Riesling he uses here.

A recipe in Anne Willan's 2001 Cooking with Wine inspired this fluffy, not-too-sweet cake, which uses just enough wine in the batter to give it a slight boozy flavor.

Inspired by French travel cakes (small sweets meant for bringing to parties, picnics and other events), William Werner created these miniature desserts. He calls them "gussied-up pound cakes."

Kat Kinsman tops her rich brownies with bacon and pecans. To enhance the smoky flavor, she mixes some of the bacon fat into the batter.

At Spire in Boston, Gabriel Frasca makes his own bourbon ice cream and cherry syrup for this clever riff on a Manhattan. For his superquick version, he blends vanilla ice cream with bourbon and uses a high-quality black cherry soda like Stewart's or IBC.

Tim Love freezes all kinds of cocktails on sticks for backyard parties, but his cucumber-mint version is especially good on a blazing-hot day. To prevent the pops from melting too quickly, he adds gelatin to the mixture.

A classic British dessert of pureed fruit folded into whipped cream, a fool is one of the first things Peter Ting learned to make after moving to England in 1976. To give this one a little extra sophistication, he macerates (soaks) half the blackberries overnight in Calvados, then tops the fruit with dollops of whipped cream he's mixed with blackberry puree. The leftover macerating liquid would make a delicious drink mixed with sparkling water or champagne.

This is an excellent grown-up version of an ice cream sundae, made with lush nectarines cooked in bourbon. The best part: the crisp, buttery pound-cake croutons.

At NYC's Vandaag, chef Phillip Kirschen-Clark uses beer in everything from cocktails to desserts. Kriek—lambic beer fermented with cherries—intensifies the fruit flavors in these crisps.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten takes advantage of the first strawberries of summer to make this perfect alfresco dessert. As the red wine–infused sorbet melts, it forms a tart sauce for the sweet, tender berries, which also get topped with crunchy bits of meringue, a splash of aged balsamic and fresh whipped cream.

Using fresh-squeezed ruby red grapefruit juice makes all the difference in these sweet-and-tart pops.