Fruit

You can use honeydew, cantaloupe, or any other firm-fleshed melon for this light and luscious brunch dish. The important thing is that your melon be perfectly ripe and juicy, so sniff, pinch, and choose carefully. Make this a couple of hours in advance, so it has time to macerate in the port.

Serve this as a starter: It’s nice to have on the table as a beginning for a brunch. You might also serve it as a summery dessert.

This is a great fruit dish in the autumn, when the apples and pears are at their peak. Make it a few hours ahead of time, if you like, and leave it at room temperature until ready to serve. You may want to heat it briefly in a 300°F oven before serving. Choose a tart apple, such as Granny Smith, or any good local apple. This could be served as a side dish, as a starter, or even as dessert!

This salad is easy to put together and makes a nice presentation when mounded on a platter. If you can find smoked chicken, by all means use it, but otherwise, a good roast chicken will suffice. The contrasting colors and flavors of the fruits and nuts, with a slightly sweet dressing, make this especially pleasing as a brunch entrée. If you would like to make sandwiches, toasted sevengrain bread is a good choice. If you’d like to get a head start on the salad, the whole thing can be made a day ahead and refrigerated until ready to serve.

This dish can be served as a sandwich filling or as a stand-alone salad accompanied by favorite lettuces and veggies. We use canned tuna packed in spring water because it’s lighter than tuna packed in oil, and we make sure the apple is tart and crisp. Granny Smith apples are fine, but also Mutsu, Honeycrisp, or any good local crispy, tart apple will do. Add half the dressing at first and see if you need more—it’s up to you how well coated you want the tuna and apples to be.

Tart apple, smoky bacon, and rich Cheddar cheese all come together for a flavorful autumnal treat with this unique sandwich. Certain elements of this sandwich should be thick—the bacon and the bread—and others should be thin—the apple and the Cheddar. Use a crisp, tart apple such as Granny Smith, Mutsu, or Honeycrisp. Use the best bacon you can find as well. I like to make this sandwich in a cast-iron skillet because it makes for a uniformly deep golden crust, which I cherish above all else in a grilled sandwich.

A sophisticated dessert or even a sweet main course, these crêpes feature two favorite flavors of kids everywhere: bananas and chocolate. Using bittersweet chocolate cuts the sweetness of the banana and makes these crêpes quite elegant.

Johnnycakes, believed to be the precursor of the pancake, date back to the 1700s and are typically made with cornmeal and either water or milk. Though they used to be fairly flat griddle cakes, our johnnycakes contain eggs, butter, and leavening, so they taste somewhat like a cross between pancakes and corn bread. Adding blueberries makes them even better.

These extra-special pancakes are filled with toasted walnuts and topped with caramelized bananas—a perfect combination. While adding syrup may seem over the top, we always slather these with some anyway, for extra decadence. Serve with yogurt and fruit.

A generous measure of blueberries—two full cups—ensures a juicy mouthful of berries with every bite. Use fresh berries when they are in season, or frozen if fresh seasonal berries are unavailable. There is no need to thaw frozen berries before using them. You can keep the cooked pancakes, loosely covered with a clean kitchen towel, for 15 minutes in a 200°F oven. Serve with Roasted Asparagus and Leek Frittata (page 96).

The addition of ricotta cheese gives these citrusy pancakes a little more heft. After you cook each batch of pancakes, transfer them to a heatproof platter and keep them warm for up to 20 minutes in a preheated 200°F oven.

Cheddar and apples are great together, and the combination gets even better when you add some superior-tasting slab bacon. Any sweet-tart apple—Macoun, Mutsu, Greening, Winesap—works well here.

Roasting pears accentuates their sweetness, making them the perfect match for tangy goat cheese. Allow yourself enough time to prepare the pears and let them cool—about 30 minutes in total. This can be done several hours ahead or even a day before you plan to make the omelet, which takes under 10 minutes to cook. You’ll have enough roasted pears for four omelets; if you make only one, use the extra pears to top pancakes or waffles. Bartlett or Bosc pears are a good choice for this recipe, although you could use apples instead. Be sure your goat cheese is chèvre, which means that it’s made entirely from goat’s milk. Among the better-known types of chèvre are Montrachet, Banon, and Bucheron.

This pink-hued cake is filled with rhubarb, which is in season during the spring and early summer. The cake freezes nicely and has a high ratio of fruit to cake—always good in a brunch sweet. Sliced into wedges, this coffee cake is a nice way to round out a seasonal bread basket of fruit muffins.

My family goes crazy for this coffee cake, one of the most requested items in my recipe box. This moist, tender cake is delicious cut into squares and served either warm or at room temperature, perhaps in a basket alongside muffins and slices of quick bread. It works especially well with a tart apple such as Granny Smith, though at apple picking time, it is a joy to go to the market to find the tartest, crispiest apple you can. Mutsu, Jonagold, Honeycrisps, and Winesaps are just a few examples. Well wrapped, this cake can be frozen for up to three months. Thaw it overnight at room temperature before serving, and store it, covered, at room temperature.

A buttery soft frosting blankets this tall and sprightly cake, rich with eggs and dotted with lemon zest and poppy seeds throughout. An impressive and showy dessert for lemon lovers, this can be made a day in advance. It’s a nice end-of-brunch finale.

Homemade raisin challah bread is a real treat. Slice this light, egg-rich loaf thick for toast or use it to make a memorable French toast. This bread can be frozen for up to two weeks.

Deliciously gooey and sweet, these delectable breakfast pastries immediately put everyone in a good mood. Be sure to start a few hours in advance of serving to give the dough time to rise. You can also start them the night before.

These scones are easy to make and can be rewarmed quickly in a 300°F oven for about 10 minutes. They work well with either fresh or frozen berries.

This rich, dense bread is flecked with green from the zucchini and adorned with delicate zucchini blossoms on top. The flowers, which are available at gourmet specialty stores, are a beautiful addition, but the loaf is equally delicious with or without them. You can also use this batter for muffins, in which case you’ll have about twenty-four muffins and you’ll need to bake them for 20 to 25 minutes.