Palm Beach dining: These desserts will make you say, 'What new year's resolution?'

Eating better while making room for an occasional sweet splurge is the kind of new year’s resolution the island’s pastry chefs can applaud.

Sure, tempting treats are part of their currency, but enjoying dessert now and then often fits their own lifestyles, too.

“I’m working with desserts every day so I am very disciplined,” said Vesalinka “Vesna” Capric, executive pastry chef for Renato’s and its Palm Beach sister restaurants Pizza al Fresco, Al Fresco and Acqua Café.

“But once in a while, I enjoy something sweet, whether it’s something with fruit or something really rich,” she said. “There are so many choices depending on how you want to go with a little splurge.”

Indeed, choices abound in Palm Beach as the island’s pastry chefs offer classics, newfangled confections, fruit-based delights and other desserts.

At Café Boulud, head pastry chef Julie Franceschini, a Corsica native who grew up making desserts with her family, often presents French classics — an almond financier with sorbet, say — in artful and geometric presentations.

She corrals Florida flavors in such desserts as mojito cheesecake with Key lime sorbet.

But Franceschini, who joined Café Boulud in 2016, frequently pushes the envelope.

Among other things, she’s having fun these days with flowers, making desserts that not only employ them, but that also look like them.

This past weekend, Franceschini introduced a dessert that looks like a white camellia flower, with petals made of white chocolate. The dish features a madeleine, mandarin marmalade and ginger-camellia tea ice cream.

Other flowers that figure into Franceschini’s desserts: hibiscus. Her hibiscus-flavored vacherin — a play on traditional vacherin with meringue and ice cream — features poached peach, meringue, Chantilly and margarita-flavored sorbet.

“I was looking at flowers one day, thinking how beautiful they are and how happy they make us, and I knew I wanted to work more with them,” she said.

At the Four Seasons, executive pastry chef Bashar Shamali, a native of Damascus, Syria who has been with Four Seasons hotels since 2005, now is emphasizing refreshing desserts — without dismissing rich favorites.

“After the holiday season and decadent menus fit for the occasion, guests are looking for refreshing and lighter dessert options,” he said, noting such desserts as his white chocolate mousse with passionfruit coulis and passionfruit sorbet.

On the classics front, Shamali recently added to Florie’s menu the traditional French meringue-and-creme Anglaise dessert Île Flottante (“floating island”).

That his version features Florida fruits and flavors — coconut-accented meringue and mango-and-citrus crème Anglaise — stems from the chef’s forming “my best ideas by taking in all of my surroundings and using them as inspiration.”

His personal favorite? Caramelized mille-feuille, a periodic daily special at the Four Seasons. With dark Manjari chocolate crémeux and raspberry, it “reminds me of childhood memories,” said Shamali, who grew up near a chocolate factory.

Meanwhile, Capric, the pastry chef for Renato’s and its sister restaurants, has been working a lot with fruits and nuts so far in 2022.

Pineapple and coconut tart and almond biscuit with Bavarian crème brulée are among her recent dessert specials at Renato’s.

Fresh mango brightens her vanilla Bavarian cream dessert with pistachio, white chocolate and hazelnut.

“I’ve also been working with passionfruit and dragon fruit — the colors are amazing with dragon fruit giving a purple and passionfruit a yellow,” Capric, who’s originally from Montenegro, said. “Next I’d like to work with acai, maybe with a granola and a gluten-free cake.”

Longtime favorites at Renato’s include tiramisu and chocolate lava cake.

“I think whatever dessert you decide to have once in a while, it’s important to be present while you eat it,” Capric said. “Take your time. Taste every flavor and every bite. Be happy that you are enjoying it so much.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach pastry chefs get creative with new year's desserts