Your Best Italian Dessert

Starting at the top: saffron, egg yolk, hazelnuts, heavy cream, cardamom, lemon, sugar, dried cherries, white wine, honey and sweet vermouth.

Saffron messing up the yolks' clean and tidy look.

First we began with the semifreddo base, whisking together the yolks, sugar and saffron.

Next, Merrill whipped the mixture over a double boiler -- a good workout, if you're looking for one.

This is the consistency you're looking for -- it gets elastic and sticky.

To make the cherry sauce, you combine dried cherries, sugar, toasted cardamom, wine, and lemon juice in a pan, then boil it down to a syrup. (To toast cardamom, a step we resisted but were later glad to have done, we spread the ground spice in a small pan and placed it over medium-low heat until we could smell the cardamom.)

In goes the wine.

Brenna warns you that the egg yolk mixture will be sticky but we didn't expect it to be this sticky. Here, we ponder starting over, but then decide we'll forge ahead, and we're glad we did because the mixture loosened as soon as vermouth was added.

See just how sticky it was!

Here, sweet vermouth performs its magic.

Whipped cream -- what's not to love!

Merrill folds the cream and yolk mixtures together.

You'll probably use 4 ramekins of the same size and color -- here, we've given ourselves 4 alternative dishes for the finished dish photo. Which one will it be?

Freezer time: yes, Amanda likes to mix her chocolate and mint ice creams. And no, that frozen pink lemonade isn't something she'd usually buy -- it was for a recipe test for the Times. And lechef, that's your Zesty Herbed Chicken Broth on the right, beneath the pie doughs.

The hazelnuts, dressed with olive oil, honey and salt, before toasting in the oven.

Here, we make it pretty for its close-up!

Amanda is very precise with her flour measuring.

Just a little butter to make sure the crust is crisp...

An egg to bind the dough.

Be careful not to overmix the dough -- you want the dry and wet ingredients to just barely come together.

When you pinch the dough between your fingers, it should just stick to itself.

If your ricotta is especially watery, make sure to drain it for several hours before making the filling. Ours needed minimal draining.

Amanda combines milk and rice in a cast iron pot; it will simmer until the rice is tender, and the milk has thickened.

This is a lovely, workable dough.

We used a smaller pie plate (9') and ended up with leftover dough -- which we dusted with cinnamon sugar and baked on its own, producing a delicious snack to get us through the afternoon!

Once the rice is cooked, Food Blogga has you cool it. We used an ice bath to speed up the process.

7 eggs get beaten with 1 cup of sugar and some lemon juice and zest (or extract). We used Meyer lemon juice and zest.

Amanda adds some vanilla -- what fun!

After we whisk in the drained ricotta, it's time for the rice.

We had leftover filling because of our small pie shell, so we baked the rest by itself in a dish.