Impressive enough for any pastry chef to present after a really elegant meal, the recipes in the book are also- thanks to Gand's clear instructions - perfectly work-able for the home chef looking for something a cut above the average dessert. It includes lots of retro-inspired recipes that will take you back to your childhood, with (Caramel-Orange Rice Crisps) or without (Peppermint Stick-White Chocolate Bark) a twist. Among the other recipes are Cannelés, Blackberry Brown-Butter Financiers and Banana Brûlée Spoonfuls.

Chocolate and Vanilla is the newest cookbook from Gale Gand, who is the pastry chef/owner at Tru in Chicago and the first celebrity pastry chef from the Food Network show Sweet Dreams. The book is relatively short compared to some of the encyclopedic volumes that publishers have been putting out lately and has only 144 pages and 60 recipes. This not only makes the book a little bit more manageable for the reader who doesn't want to haul around a 20-pound cookbook, but really allowed Gand to narrow the focus to the two most important flavors in pastry: chocolate and vanilla. The book is divided into two sides, the "yin and yang of the dessert world." In the vanilla section, Gand goes into recipes that use vanilla extracts as well as vanilla beans, bringing out the flavor that underlies just about all others. In the chocolate section, the recipes are divided up according to the type of chocolate they use, making it easy to select a recipe that uses a favorite and easy to try a wide range of chocolate flavors in recipes. You can take a look at a sample recipe for Chocolate-Praline Cake in a Jar before you check out the whole book.

Recipes for home cooks tend to be formulated for a specific numbers of diners, usually 2, 4 or 6, which are all fairly common family numbers. Most recipes are easy to double, so you can turn a chicken dinner for four into a meal for eight quite easily. Recipes for entertaining and parties, however, are different. You generally want small or bite-sized portions and need a single recipe that will feed a house or yard full of people. Fortunately, there are several cookbooks on the market that can help you out here by providing you with lots of recipes that a specifically geared towards pleasing crowds. These are some of my favorites. Some are more traditional and some are more current, but all are great additions to home libraries.

• Party Food by Barbara Kafka
• Entertaining by Donna Hay
• Williams-Sonoma Entertaining
• Joy of Cooking: Party Foods and Drinks
• Just a Bite by Gale Gand

This isn't a complete list, by the way. What are your favorite entertaining cookbooks?

[Photo by Nicole Weston]