This decadent dessert is impressive and easy to make.

Hot chili and chocolate make a surprisingly good combination. Sweet, smooth chocolate flavour melts on your tongue and satisfies your taste buds, then finishes with a kick of heat.

This Chocolate Ice Cream recipe has only 6 ingredients, requires no cooking, and with the right equipment is ready in 30 minutes.

This recipe is adapted from Tom Jaine's and Nicholas Campion's book, Cosmic Cuisine - The Astrological Cookbook (Windward).

To make this mocha even more decadent, add a splash of amaretto liqueur.

This recipe is comprised of five steps. The first four steps can each be made a day or two ahead. Don't feel daunted by the long list of ingredients and the many steps. The variety of chilies can be found at Mexican grocery stores as well as at Whole Foods stores. If worse comes to worst, don't sweat it. Use whatever chilies you can lay your hands on. Remember, by doing exactly that, the Mexicans created a handful of delicious mole variations.

This is a delicious treat adapted from The KitchenAid Cookbook. Easy to put together, it makes a wonderful anytime snack, or dare I say, breakfast.

This classic French dessert was created in the 1870s, inspired by the “belle Hélène,” the handsome title character of an opera by Jacques Offenbach — the original composer of French cancan music. While poaching fruit may seem like something you’d reserve for newborns and nursing homes, you’ll be singing (and possibly cancanning) when you see the result, as delicious as it is visually stunning. This recipe is adapted from a beautiful and elegant book, The Seven Sins of Chocolate.

A chocolate sauce for meat may seem out of place, but so do most things bordering on the divine. A bit of the bittersweet adds wonderful depth to this sauce. It also makes great dinner conversation. If you’re involved in a game of culinary one-upmanship with your friends or siblings, serving this unique combination of flavours will vault you to first place. I found out it also works well with beef tenderloin and with cayenne added to the sauce for those who like heat.

Vancouver-based Iron Chef Rob Feenie combines French cuisine with Canadian influences. To say he does it successfully is an understatement. His restaurants, Lumière and Feenie’s, are internationally recognized and hugely popular with West Coast locals. This is his recipe.

Mary Knickle submitted this maple syrup-based recipe for Tidings' Maple Syrup Recipe Contest.

She suggests that if you like your chocolate sauce a little runnier on ice-cream add just a little water (a few tablespoons) and adjust flavours accordingly.  You can add any of the above ingredients over again.  Just whisk until smooth under a low heat. Above all enjoy, and savour the comments: "This is the best chocolate sauce I have ever had!"

Looking for something different? Try this specialty adapted from Sarma Melngailis of One Lucky Duck consisting of raw cacao mole, marinated portobellos and green tomato salsa.