The holidays always offer a slew of dessert cookbooks. Here are a few of them:

Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen, by Gina DePalma, W.W. Norton & Co., $35

DePalma, so the book says, grew up in an Italian American family and cooked alongside her mother and grandmother. "I drifted to the sweet side of the kitchen because as much as I loved to cook, I discovered that I loved baking more," she says. Ultimately, Mario Batali hired her to be his pastry chef as he opened his Babbo restaurant in New York City in 1998.

"As far as the desserts were concerned," DePalma writes of Batali's pastry instructions when they first talked, "my ingredients were not to be manipulated beyond recognition; nor would the garnish confound the presentation. I would not be expected to spin sugar, construct intricate frameworks of tuiles and chocolate, or make ten perfect circles of raspberry coulis on a plate. It was a concept of dessert that was entirely familiar to me."

When making a dessert, DePalma says, "I feel very strongly and quite personally that dessert should not be an object of whimsy or nonsense."

So she's put together a cookbook that includes recipes for cookies, cakes, tarts, ice creams, custards, fritters and more. Many of her recipes strongly reflect Italy — Hazelnut Cookies, influenced by a Roman bakery; Citrus-Glazed Polenta Cake; panna cotta made with sheep's milk ricotta; Three-Cheese Tart with Chocolate and Orange, which uses cream cheese, mascarpone and ricotta; and Spiced Blood Orange Marmalade ("If you happen to spot imported blood oranges from Sicily," DePalma writes, "snap them up").

Most of the recipes are simple and easy to make. Many are her personal take on Italian desserts. And a few — her Cranberry Tart is a good example — may never have been seen in Italy.

Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts, by Claire Clark, Whitecap Books Ltd., $40

Some folks say Clark, the daughter of an English vicar, is one of the two or three top pastry chefs in the world. She left England in 2005 to be in charge of desserts at Thomas Keller's The French Laundry, in Yountville, Calif., one of the world's top restaurants. Now, her cookbook, Indulge, features the recipes from the Yountville restaurant as well as those from a lifetime of cooking.

As a child growing up in a Victorian-era vicarage, the smells from her mother's kitchen, "the aromas of vanilla and spice or caramel and chocolate would slap you in the face, along with a rush of welcome warmth," Clark writes.

The first recipe is her cookbook is a simple one, for her mother's Scottish shortbread, which she says has "a wonderful buttery taste and a firm but light crumb."

"I cannot get enough of her shortbread recipe!" Keller writes in an introduction to the cookbook. "It is something I always look forward to after traveling."

Some of Clark's recipes are easy to make. Her Apple and Poppy Seed Cake — "the sharpness of the apples complements the crunch of the poppy seeds," she writes — comes immediately to mind, though it needs to be adjusted for baking at Santa Fe's altitude. Also easy are her Chocolate Chip Cookies, which she says Americans do better than anyone else. The secret is to underbake them, she writes, and let them finish baking while they cool.

But others are more complicated, including the Battenburg Cake, created in 1884 to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria's granddaughter to Prince Louis of Battenburg, and Clark's Lemon Meringue, which needs a cake, lemon syrup, candied zest, pavlova, meringue sticks and lemon curd.

Elizabeth Falkner's Demolition Desserts, by Elizabeth Falkner, Ten Speed Press, $35

We think Falkner's San Francisco bakery, Citizen Cake, makes the best alfajores, South American cookies, in the world. Unfortunately, that alfajores recipe isn't in this cookbook.

When she was a child, Falkner says, she and her mother watched Julia Child's cooking show on TV. It's difficult to envision this baker, with her admitted punk-rock sensibility, taking Julia seriously. But Julia — as well as the Beatles, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Snickers bars and the TV show ZOOM — have affected the way Falkner now bakes. At least, that's what she says.

Along the way, she got interested in giving her desserts unusual names, such as A Chocolate Tart Named Desire or Waking Up in a City that Never Sleeps. But more importantly, she is the kind of pastry chef, she writes, who sees dessert as "an art form." She usually takes, say, an apple pie and tries to rethink it. "How can I turn this dessert upside down and come up with a new way to look at it and eat it?"

Or, she says, she "will create a dessert that is entirely new, sometimes building it around one extraordinary ingredient or an unfamiliar flavor combination. I am inspired by all kinds of things, from exotic sugars to architecture to song lyrics."

If that interests you, you'll find this cookbook fascinating. If you don't want to take the time to deconstruct desserts, well, mostly look elsewhere.

But the book does have some interesting, even simple recipes, including one for Mexican Wedding Cookies that legendary California baker Marion Cunningham asked Falkner for. There's also Chocolate2 Chip Espresso Cookies and a chèvre rice pudding with dates, candied kumquats, pistachios and honey.

I'm Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas, by Marcel Desaulniers, John Wiley & Sons Inc., $29.95

Desaulniers, a French American and the executive chef and co-owner of the Trellis Restaurant in Williamsburg, Va., may have written more chocolate cookbooks than any other human being.

His Death by Chocolate won a James Beard Award, and Desserts to Die For took an International Association of Culinary Professionals award. In 1999, he won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef in America.

Desaulniers wrote his new cookbook to give home cooks a collection of chocolate confections for Christmas.

There's Chocolate Chip Pecan Rum Tart, which uses a Sweet and Sour Sugar Cookie crust (yes, he gives a recipes for the cookies) and is garnished with Vivacious Vanilla Ice Cream (which he also gives a recipe for). He offers a recipe, called They're Nutty Chocolate Brownies, that's filled with nuts and topped with ganache. "Now that's a BROWNIE!" he writes. Indeed.

The Stoner Family's Cocoa Coconut Cake with Warm Dark Chocolate Fudge Sauce — a rather long title — is a cocoa coconut cake drenched in almond coconut syrup and topped with fudge sauce. For Coconut Chocolate Chunk Macaroons, Desaulniers says: "In a traditional macaroon, almonds provide the dominant flavor. But this is the season to make merry, so let's throw restraint out the window and partner the almonds with sweet coconut and scrumptious chocolate chunks."

Then there's Chocolate Cashew Diamonds, what Desaulniers calls "a mouthful of engaging caramel-flavored, cashew-enhanced chocolate happiness."

But you get the idea ...