It’s difficult to conceive of how one of the most perfect treats ever, the chocolate chip cookie, can be improved, but making one in a skillet is a surefire way to do it. A cast iron skillet packed with cookie dough transforms this iconic treat into a crispy-edged, chewy-centered center-of-plate dessert. 

A skillet cookie is a great way to make the most of your oven as it cools down at the end of your pizza party. In a cast iron skillet pan, the chocolate-loaded batter absorbs the residual heat from the oven as it bakes, infusing your backyard with irresistible sweet aromas. Give it a light lick of flame to melt the chocolate chips and gently caramelise the crust, and after 15 minutes of cooking, you’ll be rewarded with a perfect balance of gooey, salty chocolate and soft-baked cookie.

Fresh out of the oven, there’s nothing quite like spooning a serving of vanilla bean ice cream onto a warm slice, the refreshing chill of the ice cream mingling with the salty, rich, flavours of the cookie. For an indulgent teatime treat, or packed away for a gameday tailgate, let the cookie cool in the refrigerator first. The hardened texture will resemble that of a traditional soft chocolate chip cookie, but with a slightly gooey interior and crisp crust. Best of both worlds? We think so. 

The beauty of brunch pizzas is that they’re as versatile and interesting as brunch itself. From French toast to chicken and waffles, if you’ve seen it on an early morning diner menu, we’ve tried it on a pizza. For this particular ode to breakfast, bacon, cipollini onions and Gruyère top a pizza with an egg cracked in the centre and cooked just right: firm whites and a delightfully runny yolk.

When dreaming up a pie that could serve as either a weekend treat or a special event showstopper — Mother's Day, for example — we wanted something both rich and delicate in flavour. The dairy components we chose are decadent, yet interesting and balanced: a base of tangy crème fraîche, sharp Gruyère, and mild mozzarella. And we didn’t skimp on the alliums. Oven-roasted cipollini onions (small, white Italian onions ideal for caramelisation) provide sweetness, and a post-bake sprinkling of chives add hints of herbal flavour.

Cooking an egg on pizza can present some challenges. As pizza maker Anthony Falco wrote in his book Pizza Czar, toppings can pierce the yolk, the egg can slide out of place while transporting the pie to the oven, and launching can result in the egg racing right off and onto the oven floor. So if you’ve never topped a pizza with egg before and you’re making this for someone special, you may want to try it at least once, following our tips, before you serve it up for real.

To make this pizza successfully every time, we create a well of cheese in the center of the pizza and crack our egg directly into it. From there, we carefully launch the pizza into the oven. If our egg whites aren’t cooking as quickly as the pizza, we use a fork to gently spread them out and help them firm up in time to finish with the other toppings and crust. The result is that the lower third of each slice gets a drip of yolky sunshine. A few other pro tips: Poached egg added post bake or a well-distributed smattering of quail eggs would also work well here.

We took the best elements of a cheese board — fruit, pickles and cheese, all complex in flavour — and combined them on a pizza for an effect that’s sweet, sour, creamy and a bit funky. It works year-round, of course, but it’s extra special when summer berries are at their best. The fresher the blueberries, the better the slice.

Pickled blueberries (added pre- or post-bake) and lemon zest make for a sweet zing that’s complemented by the creamy Camembert and nutty Gruyère. Other berries would work well in this application (try raspberries or blackberries when they’re in season) but there’s just something about the plumpness of the blueberries that provides for that extra textural contrast. While this pizza is mostly about assembling quality ingredients, it does require a bit of forethought: You’ll have to make the pickled blueberries two days in advance so they have time to brine.

Excellent for an afternoon picnic in the back garden or boxed up to cart to the park or beach, we recommend pairing this pizza with a bottle of sparkling white wine and good friends.

This recipe features pickled blueberries, part of our Garnish of the Month series.

Crostini are all about shareability, indulgence and versatility. Featuring everything good in the world — carbs, cheese, cured meat, fancy nuts — these homemade pizza crostini with ricotta, speck and Marcona almonds are about to become your new go-to appetiser when you want to impress.

Unlike bruschetta, which is traditionally grilled or broiled, crostini (“toasts” in Italian) are usually toasted just enough to crisp them up. But the rules about what kind of bread you should use to make crostini are pretty loose. Phaidon’s “The Silver Spoon,” often referred to as the definitive book on Italian cooking, cites an extensive choice of bases: baguettes, focaccia, soda bread, sourdough and breads made with polenta, rice, millet, buckwheat and rye. But it also notes that “homemade breads of all types are ideal,” which may shed light on where we’re going. Why not pizza crostini?

A homemade, crusty pizza base is easy to prepare. We blind bake pizza dough, docking it with a fork to prevent it from turning into pita, then cut it into party-sized squares. Depending on how hefty you’d like your bites to be, cut a 12-inch pizza into 12 or 16 squares. From there, all you have to do is roughly chop the almonds, mix some olive oil and pepper into the ricotta, and assemble. 

The formula for this crostini is cheese + nuts + cured meat. We chose fresh ricotta for its creamy texture and relatively mild nature. Marcona almonds, an extra-fatty variety from Spain, are fried in oil and salted so they’re richer, sweeter and saltier than most other almonds. Speck, an Italian ham that’s cold-cured with juniper and other spices, is salty, spicy, sliced thin enough for light to pass through and beautifully perched atop each bite. The resulting snack is spicy, herbal and delightfully salty. 

While we love this particular combination, the overall formula is easy to play with . Manchego + pistachios + jamon serrano? Mozzarella + pine nuts + prosciutto? The canvas is yours.