Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers: A Cookbook

by Nicole Rucker

Fresh fruit-based desserts from beloved Los Angeles pastry chef and restaurateur Nicole Rucker.

Nicole Rucker is responsible for some of the most raved-about and Instagrammed pastries and baked goods in Los Angeles, first as the Pastry Chef at the hotspots Gjelina Take Away and Gjusta, then through her pie company Rucker's Pie and restaurant Fiona. In her debut cookbook, Rucker shares her obsession and her recipes with readers to help them achieve the same kind of magical alchemy she's perfected in fruit desserts.

To Rucker, fruit is every bit as decadent as chocolate cake and in this unique guide to crafting desserts, she offers up an enthusiastic ode to baking with seasonal ingredients, from summertime peaches to winter citrus. As much a storyteller as she is a baker, Rucker warmly relays her lifelong passion for fruit with charm and humor. With imaginative adaptations of classic dishes like Peach and Ricotta Biscuit Cobbler and Huckleberry Blondies, Rucker's recipes are for the wide-eyed fruit lover and farmers' market trawler in all of us.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published July 2, 2019

Reviews

[Lin Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given how sublime Nicole Rucker's desserts taste in person, I expected this to be one of the recipe books I mostly use as a coffee table book, but since getting it in May, I've already cooked through a large portion of it. Living in California and having a lifelong appreciation for backyard fruit trees and farmer's market bounties, I really appreciate the way Rucker finds different ways to highlight all the flavors of each fruit: a Magic Banana Pudding Cake where one batter separates into an airy cake layer on top and a rich custard layer on the bottom; an Olive Oil Lemon Curd that we've put on scones and ice cream and into her Lemon Cake recipe, too (so good); a forgiving pie dough recipe that will take all the fruits that are starting to go a little bit and turn them into a pie, galette, or tray of hand pies. These recipes have been a joy to bake through, not just to eat.

For how fancy her desserts were at Fiona and are now at Fat + Flour, this cookbook surprisingly reads and feels like it's meant for home cooking. Unlike other highly acclaimed baking books I own, Dappled rarely calls for things that you wouldn't find in your normal grocery store or already in your kitchen (when a dessert craving strikes, especially in the middle of a pandemic, I'm not going to go hunt down special pectin sheets or the specialty baking pan your recipe was written for...). But this is not to say that people who love spending all day in the kitchen mastering some fancy technique won't benefit from this book: her creativity with fruit, the ways to highlight its flavors, are very much worth absorbing. Rucker's love for fruit and her expertise in baking is evident throughout the book.

To be honest, I wasn't sold on the idea of a baking book revolving around fruit (I impulse added this to my cart while order a pie from Fat + Flour). I love chocolate and previously mostly baked cookies and brownies. Besides, what more is there to write about banana/apple/carrot quickbreads, various upside-down cakes, and pies? I was wrong. Reading Dappled has changed the way I look at fruit and at desserts, and I know I'll be revisiting some of these recipes year after year as the fruits featured come in and out of season.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This cookbook is slightly-outside-of-the-box with it's recipes, like the Spiced Tangerine Semolina Cake and Huckleberry Blondies. They're the kind of desserts where you never had them at home, but if you went out to a restaurant and saw them on the menu, you'd think something like "ohhh, that sounds interesting" or "I gotta try that!"

Most of the recipes include easy-to-find ingredients and they don't seem overly difficult. A great book to have on hand if you want to impress guests without working too hard.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to stop finding great cook books. I'm running out of room in my kitchen and my husband says I can't put any more cook books in the bedroom.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

First I checked out a copy of Dappled from my local library upon its publication. Then I made pear-cranberry pie PERFECTION. Just... PERFECTION. A mildly sweet and tangy blend of flavors. Excellent warm, yet maintains it's melded flavors over the days if you're like me and baking a giant pie for one. And so my own hardcover copy of Dappled now resides alongside those rarest of rare in my non-digital cookbooks collection. Well worth the investment for the pear-cranberry pie recipe alone, but oh so many yums in addition. As a novice in baking, I still opt for Trader Joe's 2-pack "circles" of frozen pie dough (or similar if you haven't a TJ's handy); but am eager to now adapt as-needed Nicole Rucker's pie dough recipe to my GF-requiring Celiac friends. Om nom nom...

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully done cook books with colored pictures and slightly difficult recipes:
Dutch Baby with Sauteed Apple Compote
Spiced Tangerine Semolina Cake
Rhubarb and blood Orange Pavlova
Black and Blue Pie with Brown Sugar Crumb (must try)
Lime Pie That Saved US (must try too)
and various frozen yogurt and ice cream recipes! So good!

[Karen Peek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicole Rucker is the genius behind many of the creations that Whole Foods offers. Once I tasted the Huckleberry Pie, I knew I needed this cookbook. She is a whiz with fruit baking; many creative and delicious recipes...break out of the older traditions (or go back to them) with this one! Highly recommended.

[Margery Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed by this. I heard a wonderful interview with the author on Good Food so I had high expectations and was expecting recipes that really foregrounded the fruit but I was kind of disappointed. Also everything is very American-sweet.

[Christina Karvounis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really fun cookbook for the fruit lover in me. As other reviewers have remarked: nothing particularly ‘new’ but I appreciated the ratios and small twists. Solid.

[Missy · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful recipes, something different too.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lot's of great fruit-based recipes. More ideas for the rhubarb growing in the backyard!

[Beka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting twists using fruit in desserts. Nothing stood out, but still quite lovely.

[Saima · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting recipes about baking with fruit. Avocado and pistachio cake sounds intriguing.

[Elizabeth Puckett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excited to bake

Good book wish the for!steadfast different and the whole section on ice cream is not usable unless you have an ice cream maker

[Amanda Bright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ways to use fruit.

[Aasinathena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful fruity recipes !

[Mckinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love fruit desserts.

[BluMoon Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first baking book to excite me in a long time!

[Donna Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some really good recipes in this book! I'm hoping to find a hard copy that I can afford!

[Juli Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful and creative! I love seeing fruit-forward dessert recipes in such quantity.

[flamelikeme · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved every single sweet i have made from this beautiful, soothing, totally approachable cookbook. The pineapple coconut cake is a standout, and her Dutch Baby recipe is truly perfect. Highly recommend!!

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel these recipes are either super nice or super gross and there exists no spectrum in between those two designations.

EDIT: wanted to share that I made the Raspberry Halva Brownies recipe and it was heart-stoppingly delicious, but a poorly written recipe all-around; were I to have lacked the skills needed to identify AND fix the problem aspects of the recipe (ingredients, instructions, all of it was a problem), it would've ended in disaster. Beginner bakers, please tread cautiously and maybe have a back-up plan in case catastrophe strikes; advanced bakers, follow your instincts when pursuing any of these recipes.