This World Chocolate Day, celebrate everything chocolate by trying this no-bake and no-cook bonbon recipe made with just chocolate and ice cream. This recipe is the kind of thing that makes people assume you spent hours in the kitchen, when in fact you spent fifteen minutes of active work and the rest of the time letting your freezer do the rest. You just need to melt chocolate and coat ice cream balls in it to make this dessert, and you can top the dessert with sprinkles, flaky salt, crushed cookies or peppermint. The bonbon is not a new invention, and chocolate-coated confectionery has existed in various forms for centuries across European patisseries, where the French word ‘bonbon’ means ‘good good’, which is used to describe any small sweet, coated or made with chocolate or sugar. The ice cream version also follows the same recipe but needs to be frozen. You get a dessert with a cold and creamy centre enclosed in a firm chocolate shell that provides textural contrast and a delightful sensory satisfaction. So, this World Chocolate Day, pick up your favourite brand of ice cream tub, preferably chocolate or add vanilla to the mix. You can also opt for your favourite ice cream flavour, be it mint, coffee or butterscotch. The ice cream is scooped into balls, frozen solid, so the melted chocolate does not melt it. The chocolate coating needs to be thin and messy is the look to go for, as bonbons are not truffles, which need a polished appearance.

Chocolate cherry sandwich cookies are proof that one of the best things you can bake on World Chocolate Day requires no special equipment, no tempering of chocolate, and no more than thirty minutes to make a delicious chocolate dessert. All you need is a cake mix, preferably chocolate, or you’ll have to use cocoa powder, to make softer cookies that are a hallmark of whoopie pies or sandwich cookies. Into the cake mix go an egg and butter to make the cookie dough, which is shaped and baked. The filling is where it gets interesting because these chocolate cherry sandwich cookies use Maraschino cherries, which are premium syrup-soaked preserved cherries which you can source from any speciality supermarket or online stores. Along with the cherries goes their juice into the classic butter-and-powdered-sugar base that makes the buttercream. The cherry juice does double duty here: it tints the buttercream a pale pink and also makes it sweeter, with an unmistakably cherry flavour. Before trying the recipe, here are some tips, that even an easy dessert recipe, which is a World Chocolate Day special, needs patience. The cookies must be completely cooled before the frosting goes on. A warm cookie will melt the butter in the buttercream, and the frosting will slide, thin out, and lose the thick, holdable consistency that makes a good sandwich cookie worth eating. The buttercream also needs to be sufficiently thick for the cookies to stick, so make sure to adjust the consistency if too thick or runny.

Monsoon calls for cherry recipes, and cherry galette fits right in and is cosy and warm. This dessert looks like it requires far more skill than it actually does, and unlike a traditional pie, a galette skips the pie dish altogether. The dough is rolled into a rough circle, the filling is piled in the centre, and the edges are simply folded up and over, pleating as you go, with the slightly imperfect, free-form shape being the entire point. It does not need any lattice work or any pastry-making skills that an ornate pie demands. The crust here is a classic all-butter pastry, built in a food processor, using cold butter that leads to the flaky, layered texture once baked. You can make the dough, more than you need, and make it two days in advance and freeze it for longer storage. The filling for this cherry galette is simple, using fresh cherries, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla extract and almond extract. The almond extract is a small addition but makes a noticeable difference, drawing out the cherries' natural depth without tasting distinctly of almond. How to make a cherry galette at home comes down to one key technique – the fold. You have to work around the circle of dough, lift the edge up and over the filling every three to four inches, slightly overlapping each fold as you go. This creates the signature pleated border while leaving the centre of the fruit exposed to heat, which is exactly what allows the cherries to bubble, concentrate, and caramelise at the edges. For best results, use fresh, in-season cherries, which will always give the best flavour.