Best of Boston

2007 Best Pastry Chef

Maura Kilpatrick

At Oleana, no one orders the warm chocolate cake or the crème brûlee. That’s because, we’re pleased to relay, there isn’t any. Kilpatrick pays dessert the respect it deserves, melding rose petal, blood orange, and other exotic flavors into homemade ice creams and stunningly original sweets like her brown-butter bread pudding with milk jam and mulberries. She even gives the standards a twist: The big-enough-to-share baked Alaska comes with coconut ice cream and passion fruit-caramel sauce, a heavenly combo that establishes Kilpatrick as a classic in her own right.

Oleana, 134 Hampshire St., Cambridge, 617-661-0505, oleanarestaurant.com