Name just about any nut — peanut, almond, pistachio, macadamia — and it’s probably on a dessert menu somewhere right now. Lately, chefs have been going nuts over nuts, increasingly incorporating them into of all kinds of desserts. And diners are devouring them, making many nutty desserts bestsellers.
According to Datassential MenuTrends, 44 percent of dessert menus feature nuts, rising from just 23 percent a decade ago. Pecans, peanuts and almonds are the most popular varieties on dessert menus, while roasted peanuts, candied pecans, hazelnuts and pistachios are among the fastest growing on dessert menus over the past four years.
“Nuts are a super-ingredient that offer a huge range of flavors and textures, and different crunch and crackle depending on the variety,” said Stephen Gillanders, executive chef at Intro Chicago. “Not to mention they offer desserts a healthier type of fat.”
Last October, Gillanders began offering a banana budino, an Italian-style custard, made with bourbon caramel and topped with a granola that includes Sicilian pistachios, Marcona almonds and pecans.
"The banana budino is definitely the nuttiest dessert on the menu,” Gillanders said. “And it also happens to be our best seller.”
At The Hay-Adams in Washington D.C., pastry chef Josh Short recently added to the dessert menu The Rocher, which is a play on the famous Ferrero Rocher chocolate-and-hazelnut candy. Short’s version, one of the restaurant’s best sellers, is a flourless hazelnut cake made with house-ground hazelnut flour, topped with chocolate mousse and hazelnut crunch, and served with a mousse of chocolate bark and candied hazelnuts.
"I really enjoy using hazelnuts,” Short said. “They are very versatile and with such a great flavor. They can be used for many applications in both savory and pastry. It's my top go-to nut.”
Short also enjoys using other types of nuts. Most recently he was on a peanut kick — not technically a nut, but it fills the same role in the pastry kitchen — and made peanut-filled desserts, such as peanut butter blondies with spiced peanut butter frosting.
Also passionate about peanuts is David Collier, executive pastry chef at Blue Duck Tavern in Washington, D.C. Collier’s Washington Circle dessert is a peanut-filled homage to the classic Paris-Brest French pastry — a ring of choux pastry filled with praline pastry cream and topped with sliced almonds. (The bicycle-wheel-shaped dessert was originally created to commemorate an 1891 bicycle race that ran from Paris to Brest and back.)
For his peanutty take, Collier makes a ring of choux pastry and fills it with mousseline made from Virginia-grown peanuts that have been roasted and then steeped in hot cream, and tops it with candied peanuts. The dessert also includes some peanut feuilletine, and is served with a scoop of dark chocolate ice cream.
“Peanuts are a little more fun than almonds,” Collier said. “I enjoy the textural element they can add.”
Collier also has a Nutella-based dessert on his menu, and is testing a rooibos custard made with almond milk.
Robert Parker, pastry chef at Three Degrees in Portland, Ore., is making a pistachio-anise panna cotta with a soft toffee filling. Parker likes how the earthy, licorice flavor from star anise accentuates the sweet, nutty pistachio, as well as the surprise diners get when they cut open the dessert and the toffee syrup spills out.
“Pistachio specifically adds natural coloring and flavor in this dessert,” Parker said. “I also like to think about textural variations and the role they can play in soft desserts.”
Added in December, the pistachio-anise panna cotta is the second best seller on the restaurant’s dessert menu.
Melissa Denmark, executive pastry chef at Gracie’s in Providence, R.I., also adds nuts to panna cotta, but she keeps it creamy. Denmark’s toasted hazelnut panna cotta is made with hazelnut milk as the base, and is served with chocolate sorbet, white grape and a cinnamon oatmeal cookie.
Some chefs are offering nutty, drinkable desserts. For example, on the menu at Farm Burger, a seven-unit chain based in Atlanta, is a pecan milkshake: A blend of local ice cream, whole milk, housemade caramel sauce, spiced pecans, local honey and cinnamon topped with whipped cream and spiced pecans. And at Andiron Steak & Sea in Las Vegas diners can order the Whiskey Toasted Almond, a sort of dessert-on-the-rocks made with J.P. Wiser’s spiced vanilla whiskey, RumChata, almond milk, spiced coconut simple syrup and a splash of Angostura Amaro.
