[Photographs: Max Falkowitz]

You can find fresh tofu pudding—douhua—here and there in New York's Chinatowns. Most of the vendors are small, curbside operations with limited options, often just a sweet syrup, maybe laced with ginger, to pour on top. You pour the syrup on, scoop up some wobbly tofu, and dig in.

The six-month-old Amaz Soya in Flushing is also a curbside operation—it's just inside a small micro-mall on Roosevelt, about five feet away from some cell phone accessories—but it offers a more luxe version of the simple dessert for $1 to $4 depending on size and toppings.

Amaz Soya's tofu is made daily, and it's creamy, nutty, and fresh in all the right ways. But the real draw here is the toppings bar, a spread of fruit and herb jellies, spherified passion fruit juice, shards of young coconut, and the like. There are over a dozen to choose from, along with two options for a syrup (ginger and brown sugar) and two serving temperatures of tofu (hot and chilled).

Shown above is grass and floral jellies as well as those pearls of passion fruit juice. You press them against the roof of your mouth and they pop open, sending juice everywhere. The pearls are a fine foil for the tofu, and perhaps the cheapest way to get some modernist cuisine in your dessert diet.

The ginger syrup isn't as potent as it could be, but it amps up milder toppings like these stewed peanuts. They're boiled, not roasted, so their bean-y side comes out to compliment the bean-y custard.

Amaz Soya also deploys its toppings on shaved ice, which I'll have to hit up on a return visit. Once I finish the extra tofu I took home.

Amaz Soya

136-37 Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing, NY 11354 (map)
amazsoya.com

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

If you live in New York and you like sweets, you owe it to yourself to try Levain Bakery's famous chocolate chip cookie. But what about their other, less well known dessert products? Is Levain a one trick pony? To find out, I bought a slice of their Sour Cream Pound Cake ($3.50).

As soon as I placed my order, it became clear that this place knows their customer base: they asked me if I wanted an "end" or a "middle" slice—how's that for customer service?

The slice itself is huge and very dense. It has a thin vein of cinnamon and brown sugar running through it that tastes especially fresh. But the crust is the most unique part of the cake, not just on top but throughout. It's dark at the edges, almost burnt, but then mellows out to a miche loaf-like gold.

I recommend pairing the cake with a scoop of Adirondack Creamery vanilla ice available at the nearby Best Yet Market.

If you visit, don't forget to check on the line status at both the UWS and Harlem stores via the live "cookie-cam."

Levain Bakery

2167 Frederick Douglass Boulevard, New York, NY, 10026 (map)
646-455-0952
http://levainbakery.com/

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

In recent years, some very popular New York bakeries have used savory ingredients in their cookie doughs to cut the sweetness. Good examples include Momofuku Milk Bar's cornflake cookie and ChickaLicous Dessert Club's chocolate chip cookie with pretzels, known as "The Situation."

But sometimes the baker goes in the exact opposite direction. For their Crème brûlée cookie ($3.50), Sugar and Plumm's Pastry Chef and Operations Manager extraordinaire Pichet Ong starts off with a sweet cookie base and adds an even sweeter vanilla custard to the middle—and it works.

The cookie doesn't have a caramelized sugar crust as you would find on an actual crème brûlée dessert. Instead, the custard provides a nice texture contrast to the baked cookie dough. There's not so much custard inside that the cookie's integrity suffers, nor does it run all over the place if you take a big bite. The custard clings to the cookie in the same way raspberry filling clings to a good Linzer torte.

Sugar and Plumm

377 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10024 (map)
212-787-8778
sugarandplumm.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photographs: Niko Triantafillou]

If you've never visited Print restaurant due to their slightly off-the-beaten-path location, here are a few reasons to give them a try.

Print's farm-to-table menu offers dishes that please both serious carnivores, like braised pork belly, and vegetarians, such as lacinato kale salad. Interestingly, they also employ a full-time forager to source their ingredients. But from my perspective the best reason for a visit is to try some of pastry chef Geoff Koo's great comfort-style desserts.

The Meyer lemon tart with blood orange sorbet, praline, and creme fraiche chantilly ($9) is a solid choice. The lemon filling strikes a nice balance between sweet and tart, and the blood orange sorbet is low in sugar, letting its flavor come through clearly. The made-to-order churros ($8) are also excellent and are served with a dark chocolate chili dipping sauce.

However, my favorite dessert is the chocolate cake with butterscotch and vanilla bourbon ice cream ($9). This tiny dessert packs a ton of dark chocolate. The entire cake is like a single layer from a rich, moist, chocolate layer cake without the filling. It stands in contrast to more common molten chocolate ganache-style cakes, where you get a whole lot of butter and sugar, but no flavor. The vanilla bourbon ice cream is an interesting bitter-sweet combination that cuts the sweet from the cake and butterscotch sauce. A delicate disk of dark chocolate sits on top of the cake like a halo.

Print Restaurant

653 11th Ave  New York, NY 10036 (map)
212-757-2224
printrestaurant.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

The orange-scented samali ($5) at Artopolis is everything I love about Greek sweets: strongly flavored with citrus oil or spice, moistened but not killed by sugar syrup, texturally interesting and unusual. The tender but coarse-crumbed semolina cake is steeped in orange-flavored syrup. It's delicate, not overly sweet, and a fitting foil to the bakery's strong Greek coffee.

A lot of the pastry love at Artopolis goes to their phyllo pastries, and justly so, but give this unassuming cake a try. It's an undercover winner.

Artopolis

Agora Plaza, 23-18 31st Street, Astoria NY 11105 (map)
718-728-8484
artopolis.net

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

Despite their uniqueness and general deliciousness in the pastry world, canelés are still quite rare in this city, so I buy them whenever I see them being sold. In this case, I also knew they were made by highly regarded pastry chef Jennifer Yee, and despite my high expectations from her work, these little wonders didn't disappoint.

Lafayette's mini-canelés have a beautiful shiny, dark brown exterior. On your first bite, you experience all the unique qualities that make canelés special. A pleasant crunch on the outside proceeds a soft, moist, custard-like inside, with an incredible aroma that can only come from vanilla and rum. Real vanilla beans dot the interior—a professional touch.

Lafayette's canelés are sold three for $4 and are baked multiple times throughout the day for freshness. You can see some of Yee's plated desserts in our first look feature of Lafayette.

Lafayette Bakery

380 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10003 (map)
212=533 3000
lafayetteny.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

Some day, perhaps, we'll have a standout kouign amann in every New York neighborhood. But for now I'm grateful for what we have: Dominique Ansel's, of course, and Bouchon Bakery's uptown, and also Macaron Parlour's ($3),* which evolved from a jam-filled kouign amann-like croissant that's still on the menu.

* Also one of the stops on our Stray Boots tour of East Village sweets.

If Dominique Ansel's is all about buttery richness, and Bouchon's goes for densely packed layers and an especially crackly crust, Macaron Parlour's is for those who like their pastries a little sweeter. It sports a sugar crust that glistens like a glaze, with a slightly honeyed-caramel profile that boosts the pastry's subtly buttery innards. Macaron Parlour plans to add ice cream to the menu soon; if you ask extra nice you might be able to convince them to make a kouign amann ice cream sandwich for you.

Macaron Parlour Patisserie

111 St. Mark's Place, New York, NY 10009 (map)
212-387-9169
macaronparlour.com

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photographs: Niko Triantafillou]

It's been a year and a half since Dominique Ansel unleashed his version of the Breton kouign amann on New York, calling it DKA (Dominique's Kouign Amann). New Yorkers have been clamoring for them ever since.

On Friday, perhaps capitalizing on the current doughnut craze, the bakery debuted a new creation that has all the hallmarks of another smash hit: the half-croissant, half-doughnut "cronut" ($5).

The cronut is made from thin layers of flaky croissant dough that are deep fried and then carefully injected with a light Tahitian vanilla cream. A thin layer of rose-flavored glaze coats the top layer. Purple colored candied rose petals add some crunch but also make for a beautiful garnish.

The experience of eating a cronut is very different from eating a traditional doughnut. For one thing, the cream is evenly distributed among the dozens of pasty layers, so you never get hit with a giant burst of filing as with say, a creme brulee doughnut from the Doughnut Plant. The extra layers also mean more oil-dough contact, so it's a more oily pastry similar to a fritter—a deep-fried dessert lover's dream.

Ansel says he will change the flavors regularly, with lemon maple coming in June and dulce de leche in July. These have sold out before noon every day since their debut on Friday, so go early if you must have one this week.

Dominique Ansel Bakery

189 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012 (map)
212-219-2773
dominiqueansel.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

The City Bakery is already well known for their excellent standard and vegan chocolate chip cookies. Building on that success, they now sell a gluten-free, dairy-free, chocolate chip cookie with cacao nibs ($3) through their rapidly expanding Birdbath Neighborhood Green Bakery locations.

The cookie's texture is more crumbly rather than crunchy . But aside from that one difference, there's nothing about this cookie's flavor to indicate that it's got no dairy or gluten—it could easily be passed off as a standard chocolate chip cookie. There's plenty of large dark chocolate chunks and crunchy cacao nibs as well.

This is a solid and tasty cookie regardless of your dietary restrictions. There's also a gluten-free, fat-free coconut chip cookie that uses the same soy milk base. And don't forget to ask for your 25% discount if you arrive by bicycle or skateboard.

Birdbath

Multiple locations in NYC
thecitybakery.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

It's a gift that the pastries at Bosie Tea Parlor are as good as they are. They're so much more precise and exacting than what you expect from a neighborhood tea shop, the kind of thoughtful desserts that evoke fine dining restaurant more than something to nibble with your tea. Case in point: the Chai ($6.50), which is a little pricey given its size, but a bargain given what a comparable dessert would cost you at a ritzy restaurant.

There's a lot going on from the bottom up: a milk chocolate brownie studded with pecans, rich and fudgy but not too sweet. Then bitter orange maramalade and chai-spiced panna cotta, more dark and intense than the brownie. It's topped with milk chocolate chantilly and a crisp blade of dark chocolate, which add lightness as much as anything else. And then there's the strip of orange zest on top, which pastry chef Damien Herrgott should sell by the pound.

Take your time with this one—you'll need to sort out all the elements as you taste them. Sips of black tea help.

Bosie Tea Parlor

10 Morton Street, New York, NY 10014 (map)
212-352-9900
bosienyc.com

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

Sometimes in life it's nice to have someone make the important decisions for you, like choosing the toppings for your ice cream or gelato. Épicerie Boulud does just that with four seasonal Coupe Glacées ($7.95). Half sundae and half parfait, each one is thoughtfully composed by pastry chef Ghaya Oliveira.

The "Good for you" has yogurt, raspberry sorbet, honey seed granola, and raspberry sauce. There's also the "Summer of love" with rose and marzipan gelato and pistachio crumble. These sounded fine but I went with the "Choco-holic," an all-chocolate mix of chocolate gelato, chocolate chip biscuit, chocolate crumble, and salted caramel.

Épicerie Boulud's chocolate gelato is plenty rich, although not too dark. The wafer-like chocolate biscuit is light and airy and when coupled with the chocolate crumble, these two components provide a one-two punch of crunchy textures. The salted caramel sauce is less sweet than expected and provides some relief against all the sugar-based components.

Épicerie Boulud

1900 Broadway New York, NY 10023 (map)
212-595-0303
epicerieboulud.com/

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

The everything bagel is one of the most iconic flavors of New York, and the most satisfying. The mix of salt, onion, garlic, poppy, sesame, and caraway seeds, combined with the subtle sweetness from the underlying bagel, is hard to beat. But what if it could be improved? What if, instead of a bagel the "everything" mix was applied to a big, yeasty pretzel?

That's exactly what Du Jour Bakery has done with their everything pretzel. The shape is a bagel-evocative ring instead of the common knot, but the crust is a little thicker and more well baked than a bagel so you experience a significant crunch when you bite into it. There's a certain kid-like pleasure of ripping off pieces of pretzel and popping them into your mouth that you just don't get with eating a bagel.

If you're not in the mood for savory when you visit Du Jour, there are certainly plenty of items on the other end of the salty-sweet spectrum. Such as the nutella crepe.

Du Jour Bakery

365 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215 (map)
347-227-8953
dujourbakery.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

A lot of common breakfast foods double as desserts: doughnuts, crumb cake, even blintzes (I'm looking at you Veselka!). But what about pain perdu? Is it worthy of being a stand alone dessert? Or is it just a fancy breakfast food?

Interestingly, Landmarc's aesthetically pleasing pain perdu only appears on their breakfast menu, so clearly they don't consider it in the "after-dinner plated dessert" category.

On the other hand, both Dovetail and Craft have featured pain perdu on their highly regarded dessert menus. If you're still on the fence about when or where you should consume pain perdu, read on and decide for yourself.

Landmarc's pain perdu ($16) arrives at your table like a giant glistening bread iceberg sticking out of the water. The deeply browned outer crust is crisp but easy to break through with a fork, much like the delicate shell of a canele. Inside, the soft bread is soaked in heavy cream and eggs, resulting in a sweet custard-like consistency. The dish is served with warm Doc's organic maple syrup. Pricy, but so satisfying.

Landmarc

10 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10023 (map)
212-823-6123
landmarc-restaurant.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photographs: Niko Triantafillou]

When it's time to treat yourself to a dessert at a fancy pants restaurant, many people, myself included, head for the prix-fixe lunch at the three-Michelin starred Jean Georges or slightly more casual Nougatine, generally acknowledged as one of the best dining values in New York. You can't beat the location—right at Columbus Circle and across from Central Park. The dining room's huge windows let in a ton of light and somehow magically seal off the noise from the city.

Jean Georges has their own unique convention for serving plated desserts. You choose from a menu of three or four themes based on either a season or an ingredient, like spring, chocolate, or citrus. Then you receive a large plate with four different takes on that theme. Any one of the four could serve as the sole plated dessert at most good restaurants.

I say go with rhubarb ($16).

The chilled rhubarb soup, served in a small glass, was very sweet and pulpy with the consistency of a shot of fresh squeezed orange juice ordered specifically with extra pulp.

The lemon grass rhubarb creamsicle with champagne mango was my favorite part of the dessert: it's reminiscent of the creamsicles of my youth. The frozen rhubarb was quite tart and contrasted nicely with the sweet, creamy ice cream.

The Alsatian rhubarb tart with basil and rhubarb will appeal to those who want to simply have a slice of rhubarb pie after dinner. This tart leans a little to the savory side due to the basil, and it's baked throughout the day so you always get a fresh slice.

The orange flower yogurt with almond crumble and spiced rhubarb compote reminds me of the textures that make up an apple crisp. The almond crumble provides a solid crunch to go with the soft yogurt and compote. By design, this course was also the least sweet of the group. When you're serving someone four desserts at a time it won't work if they're all sweet.

Executive Pastry Chef Joe Murphy told me JG goes through 80lbs of rhubarb a week this time of year and that the tart is Jean Georges' (the namesake chef) favorite dessert. Ultimately, a dessert at Jean Georges may cost a bit more but you'll never wonder where that money went.

Jean Georges

1 Central Park West, New York, NY 10023 (map)
212-299-3900
jean-georgesrestaurant.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.

[Photograph: Niko Triantafillou]

Esca's pastry chef Tracy Obolsky was recently nominated for a Food and Wine People's Choice award for best new Pastry Chef, and after trying one of her latest desserts, I can see why.

The fluffernutter budino ($9) consists of a thick but velvet-like banana pudding coupled with peanut brittle and salted caramel. There's also a large beehive-style swirl of meringue that's hand torched to order. The meringue plays the role of the marshmallow in the classic sandwich by the same name.

The banana pudding has a strong banana flavor and the texture goes well with the equally smooth salted caramel. The peanut brittle disrupts the smooth layers with a pleasant and decisive crunch.

To realize the most enjoyment from this dessert, Esca Executive Chef David Pasternack says, "make sure to get all four components on your spoon at once." I wholeheartedly agree.

Esca

402 West 43rd Street, New York NY 100361 (map)
212-564-7272
esca-nyc.com

About the author: Native New Yorker Niko Triantafillou is the founder of DessertBuzz.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DessertBuzz.