The hands-down dessert pace setter is a chocolate carmel mirage ($6), a big ball of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce crowning two layers of chocolate cake and a layer of nut cream with whipped cream galore.
(Layers of nut-laced meringue, ganache, vanilla butter cream and praline butter cream. Yes, it's in the book, and yes, you can make it, but it may take some practice, as well as a more detailed cookbook).
To make this even more fancy, put a thin layer of crushed nuts under the pastry cream; blanched almonds are best.
Sprinkle coconut over the layer of chopped nuts and chocolate chips.
Blend until the mixture is white and creamy and there is a layer of crushed nuts at the bottom.
A rather serious trifle (£6.50) uses the last of the season's rhubarb in a smooth, rich layering of crushed nuts, cream, custard and sherry-soaked sponge.
I keep another pile on my bedside table, knowing that if I wake in the middle of the night I can pick one up and drift off into a soothing dream of Joël Robuchon's mashed potatoes or Claudia Roden's pumpkin dumplings or Marcella Hazan's red-and-green polenta torta, with a layer of onions, pine nuts, and ground pork between the spinach and the tomato.
Even in urban America, you'll see the squirrels scurrying frantically through the summer and fall, building up small hoards of nuts (and layers of body fat) that will get them through the cold winter.
It would be a layer of that, think like a dense, yogurty marshmallow, with a thick layer of spinach jerky and maybe a layer of chia seeds and yes, some kind of nuts too.
Each biscuit will have a central heap of nuts with a thinner layer of darker mixture around it.
