I'm not a chef or a baker but I can tell you what I like and maybe you can come up with something from that? I don't eat many deserts but these two are the ones I think about often.
My grandma used to make a peppermint cake every christmas. White cake, poke holes in it after it cools, crush up those pastel colored chalky mints and sprinkle them on top of the cake then lightly spray it with water so that the color and the flavor gets into the cake. Then top it with a whipped buttercream and add the second layer. For the top she garnished it with crushed pepper mints.
There's a restaurant here those does these fresh baked to order cookies in these 4" round cast iron pans. It comes to you still gooey with a scoop of ice cream on top. It's heavenly.
I think petit fours are really fun and a good opportunity for pastry chefs to play. I used to love to take classic desserts and turn them into petit fours - i.e peach melba might become a raspberry coulis filled peach jube dusted in vanilla sugar with some piped creme pat on top.
Peter Greweling's Chocolates and Confections book is excellent and totally geared to pro pastry chefs. His recipes are very sweet, and sometimes complex,but foolproof. The theory sections of the book are alone worth tracking it down for.
Yeah I make a large slab and cut it down into small squares. I think it looks nicer than the bought in shells. Playing around with the presentation of the top layer of the cheesecake can be fun... Or use a gel / coulis / sauce to put on top of each one.
At my work we arent allowed to buy in tart shells we have to make sweet paste and then line and bake them its pretty time consuming and at the moment we are fully booked every lunch and dinner every day.