Almonds

Not a traditional Florentine, this lacelike biscuit is the kind you just can't leave alone. Although its crisp lightness is quite extraordinary, you could brush one side with melted dark chocolate if you like, to justify the name and give it a more substantial texture.

The beauty and delight of this dish is that it is so fresh and clean — and it is a cinch to make. It’s important to make the pesto with the best ingredients then just toss in the hot cooked spaghetti to coat it and enjoy.

My friends Pat and Denny have adopted this as a standard, but they put the cilantro on the side, and so can you if your family is polarized on the cilantro front. Pat and Denny also use low-sodium soy sauce, which is a great idea if you tend to have it around and handy. Even better is tamari sauce, which leaves the nuts sticky and shiny but not crusted to the pan (a drawback of soy); also, it's gluten-free. My friend Zarmik had this to say about the nuts: "Soy-glazed almonds were a revelation. I suspect I would think the same of soy-glazed cardboard. In fact, for the next few days, if it does not move, it stands a good change of getting soy-glazed."

Good to Know: A mix of sugar and honey in these citrusy cookies satisfies a sweet tooth, yet each thin, delicate cookie has only forty-four calories. Go ahead, have two.

Although they're called "horns," these cookies are shaped more like a horseshoe. They can be piped into any shape, however, such as the familiar rosette with a little piece of maraschino cherry in the center. The almond paste and egg white combination gives them a wonderful chewy texture.

For the pastry shy, this tart is salvation. It looks like jewels set in amber, with its candy bar mosaic of five kinds of nuts embedded in buttery caramel slicked over a tender crust, which is where salvation comes in. There is no rolling pin in sight. You pat the crust into the tart tin with your fingers.

Vietnamese restaurants taught us to love the fresh roll-up—a cup of lettuce, some cunningly spiced meat, raw vegetables and leaves of basil and fresh coriander—what a way eat, especially now. You can stretch a little bit of this and that into a generous, lovely little feast of Asian-style finger food.

These are picnic-worthy not just because of their sugar-encrusted goodness, but because you can make them days ahead of time and serve them as soon as you arrive at the picnic site, before the rest of the food is unpacked. Hey, and if you serve them in the car on the way to the picnic, that's okay, too, though technically that's not a picnic. Admittedly, it's a smallish recipe, but there's a reason for that: the almonds are so good that people would fill up on them if given the chance. Feel free to double the amount.

This rich ice cream, adapted from one by Alice B. Toklas, is a sublime combination of honey, pistachios and roasted almonds, ingredients of the classic nougat candy made in the South of France.