Dessert Recipes
Sometimes you find some pretty good recipes in magazine food ads. This Apple Almond Cranberry Pie recipe comes from an advertisement for Odense Almond Paste, made from almonds and sugar and imported from Denmark. What's the difference between almond paste...
It's as if our carrot cake and our apple cake decided to get together and have babies. (What really happened is that my father wanted to make a great 3-layer spice cake from Sunset magazine for the 3rd time in...
For years, this apple cobbler recipe has been one of my father's "signature" apple dishes (knowing my dad, bemused by the thought of his having a "signature" anything, he would probably agree to this statement with dramatic flourish and an...
Almost every Sunday morning growing up, my father would make a huge apple coffee cake for us after church. Recently I pulled this recipe from the Boston Globe; they had it listed as an apple cake for the Jewish high...
They say that as you get older you develop more of a sweet tooth. If my parents are any test of this theory, I would have to say, yes this does indeed seem to be true. When my siblings and...
Every year for the past 6 or 7 years, my father has served this apple cranberry pie at some point over Thanksgiving weekend. He found the recipe years ago in Bon Appétit magazine (Oct, 1998). This year we've modified the...
It's apple season! A recipe favorite, updated from the archives. First posted October 2005. ~Elise Apples, cinnamon, brown sugar, butter and oats? Welcome to the essential ingredients of the apple crisp, one of the most simple and easy of apple...
Last year my father got it in his head to make an apple upside down cake. Every fall our trees are loaded with apples and dad is always looking for excuses to bake with them. Well, he tried three different...
July marks the beginning oJf the apple season here. The brightly striped Gravensteins are the first to ripen. And when they do, we spend weeks making homemade applesauce and apple butter. As our freezer is now packed with applesauce, and...
My friend Suzanne has been coming over a lot recently, helping my mother and me raid my next door neighbor Pat's Blenheim apricot tree (with Pat's blessing of course). Suzanne has 3 growing teenagers to feed, so she can put...
It's apple season here in New England, where I am visiting my goddaughter and her family. We went apple picking a few days ago and came home with so many apples, we'll be cooking with them all week. Today the...
My dessert obsessed father was at it again today; he just couldn't resist this berry crumble recipe he found in the New York Times. He used fresh strawberries, blueberries, and some of our frozen boysenberries. Our boysenberries tend to be...
Not much that grows in our garden is available for picking in the spring. The first sign that the summer season is upon us and that the parade of glorious fruit is about to begin is when the boysenberries ripen...
Every year the mother of my best friend from high school invites me to her 4th of July party. Mrs. Mull knows I like to cook so she encourages me, "Of course you'll bring something wonderful to the party, Elise...
Prep time 10 minutes. Total time 3 hours 10 minutes. This berry and banana terrine is an easy and beautiful way to serve summer berries with bananas for added sweetness. Think Jello but packed with fruit. And instead of neon...
Can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. A favorite family ritual growing up was apple coffee cake on Sunday mornings. My dad would prepare it for his six greedy kids, all of us begging for him to pile on...
There is one day a year in which I will happily indulge in a piece of chocolate cake, and that is Valentine's Day, which also happens to be my birthday. This is the cake I made for this year's birthday...
I've been on a frozen yogurt kick lately. Not only because it's so darn easy, but also because the tanginess of the yogurt seems to just give any flavor you pair it with a big boost. It's still high season...
Recipe updated July 26, 2010 "I have the best blackberry muffin recipe!" my friend Suzanne announced to me a few weeks ago as I was musing out loud that I was looking for a good muffin recipe. Suzanne and I...
Yes my friends, it's time for blackberries. The season is here, the berries are ripe and ready for picking. Blackberries grow wild here along the American River, and pretty much around all of the creeks and streams in California. Heck...
Hanging out with my dad is like living in a test kitchen. Dad's baking experiments are the bane of anyone's low carb diet. One must have formidable willpower to resist his creations, and fortunately for my taste buds, I don't...
We made this lovely gâteau a few days ago with some fresh blueberries now in season. Although the cake was delicious, I'm beginning to think that fresh blueberries are best eaten fresh. If we can't tell the difference after cooking...
"I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill..." While I'm pretty sure this song isn't about blueberries, every time I hear it all that comes to mind is a huge mound of them waiting for me to dig in. (Like Rock...
There are three things I have a hard time resisting - my dad's tapioca pudding, Belgian dark chocolate, and freshly baked blueberry muffins. Muffins are not as easy to get right as one might think. Too dry, too dense, to...
It's blueberry season! From the recipe archive. ~Elise When blueberries are in season, what better to do with them (other than eating them straight from the basket) than make blueberry pie? Blueberries have been found to be a "superfood", so...
When the summer months come, I find it almost impossibly hard to resist buying fresh blueberries by the double basketful. Thank goodness they're such good brain food! (These days my brain needs all the help it can get.) My twelve...
Come late spring, our boysenberry vines start giving up their berries, a few cups a day. What to make with them? Boysenberry cobbler. Quick and easy, this recipe produces a delicious cobbler, a formidable blow to any low carb diet...
Come late May and early June, my mother's boysenberry vine comes alive with fruit. Boysenberries look like blackberries, but are actually a cross between blackberries, loganberries, and raspberries. As such they fruit much earlier in the season than blackberries, and...
Best bread pudding ever. From the recipe archive, updated photos. No substitute for alcohol in the bourbon sauce, definitely NOT kid-friendly. This one is for the grown-ups. Originally posted 2005. ~Elise This bread pudding recipe is based on one from...
An ice cream loving friend was in town this weekend, giving me the perfect excuse to make this batch of butter pecan ice cream. Butter pecan is one of my all time favorite flavors. In this recipe the butter flavor...
Guest author Garrett McCord has been telling us about his buttermilk pudding for ages. He finally came over and made it for us recently. Outrageously good! ~Elise Elise's father is one of those people who has been known to drink...
This Italian apple torte is easy to make, and delicious. Cooking the apples first helps concentrate the flavor and remove moisture, so the cake doesn't get soggy. The lemon zest, although only a half teaspoon is used, is an essential...
Caramel candy apples are one of those things that are as much fun to make as they are to eat. I helped out at a young friend's birthday party this week, making up a batch of these caramel apples for...
Making your own caramel sauce from scratch is a lot easier than you might think, and it takes practically no time at all. This recipe comes from my friend Suzanne who is a baking genius. I've watched her make caramel...
Here is a delicious autumn nut tart that you can make with practically any mixture of nuts. Just make sure you get the freshest nuts possible - from your local farmers market, or from the bins at stores with high...
The leaves are all down, apples, pomegranates, and persimmons all picked, days mostly overcast and dreary, save for neighborhood citrus trees with their orange and yellow orbs dotting the landscape with vivid color. Citrus trees love winter in California and...
Years ago, when I was still in college, someone gave me a copy of the Silver Palate cookbook. I remember many of the recipes being over the top, both for my palate and budget at the time, and come to...
According to historian Lizzie Collingham in her terrific Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, the English popularized tea drinking in India in the early 1900s as a way to expand the market for the tea they were growing there...
I love cooking with friends, so when Garrett came over with a bottle of champagne in hand and a suggestion to make champagne sorbet for New Years, I was all over it. Unfortunately, our first two attempts were miserable failures...
Guest author Garrett McCord made this cherry clafouti for my mother and me using freshly picked cherries from our neighbor Pat's tree. So good! And incredibly easy. ~Elise I've been making clafoutis for years now and it's become a regular...
Every year about this time my neighbor Pat comes by with a bag of fresh Bing cherries from her tree and a plea to come pick more before the birds get them. That's the thing about cherry season, the trees...
Every year about this time, I'm invited to pick Bing cherries at our next door neighbor Pat's yard. Pat picks all she can freeze and eat for the year, and anything left is for friends or the birds. There is...
If you are looking for a special pie for the holidays, this is it - a light pumpkin pie with beaten egg whites folded into the pumpkin custard, spiked with rum, set in a gingersnap cookie crust, and covered with...
This flourless chocolate cake by Garrett is to-die-for. Almost like fudge. ~Elise For a recent potluck for all the Sacramento food bloggers I decided to throw together this intensely decadent and very easy chocolate torte. The original recipe is based...
Chocolate. Bourbon. Cake. I think the moment my father spied this recipe in the New York Times he was a goner. ("You had me at chocolate.") Nothing was going to stop him from making this cake. When he found out...
Another Valentine's treat from Garrett McCord. Enjoy! ~Elise A classic little treat perfect for a date or as a gift, chocolate covered strawberries are a defined part of romance in America. Dressed up to the nines in white and dark...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord. ~Elise Fondue has finally made a comeback, as most culinary fads eventually do, but this time with a bit of spark. Back in the seventies a party wasn't groovy unless a fondue pot was...
First posted in 2004, but now with photos! Enjoy. ~Elise This over-the-top chocolate torte recipe comes here by way of my friend Rob Kent, who is famous among his friends for showing up at various birthday parties and special events...
My young friend Audrey and I have many things in common. We both like to dress up with pretty aprons. We are both excruciatingly accurate with water guns in a swimming pool. We would both rather read a book than...
Chocolate mousse is a great dessert for entertaining because 1) it looks pretty, 2) everyone gets their own serving, and 3) you can make it a day ahead of time. In fact, you do need to make it at least...
What to do on the last day of vacation with a kid who loves to help cook, a fridge stocked with whole milk and eggs, and a pantry with cocoa, chocolate chips and sugar? Make chocolate pudding, of course! Aldie...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic who is helping us get ready for Valentine's Day with these easy-to-make chocolate truffles. ~Elise Want to show me romance and sweep me off my feet? Then cook for me. Flowers...
When I first encountered Clotilde Dusoulier's fabulous Chocolate and Zucchini website, I thought to myself, "How wonderful, the ingredients of my favorite cake!" My grandmother taught me how to bake when I was very young, and later when I was...
Is it ice cream season yet? Time to pull out the ice cream maker! Please welcome Simply Recipes contributor Garrett McCord as he shares his recipe for cinnamon ice cream. We made it the other day and it was simply...
"Elise, I absolutely forbid you from making these again," exclaimed my father in exasperation after his fifth sticky bun from this batch. "That good, eh? I'm glad you like them," I answered smiling. We finally had to freeze the few...
I love coffee ice cream, but rarely get it because the caffeine does a number on me. If I have coffee or even mocha ice cream after dinner I'm jittery until 3 am. So, when I opened David Lebovitz's new...
Some things, prepared with delightful results in the exuberance of our youth, when made again 10, or 20 years later, don't quite live up to the blissful memory. This coffee, oreo cookie, Mount Gay ice cream is not one of...
Guest author Garrett came over to make this cranberry sorbet for us the other day, so good! Even in bone-chilling weather. ~Elise I've gone a bit cranberry crazy at the moment. Plain loco. Off the deep end. You see, it's...
Quick and easy cream cheese frosting brought to you by guest author Garrett McCord, the cupcake king. ~Elise Cream cheese frosting is a baking basic. It's perfect for practically any cake and any leftovers are great dolloped onto some freshly...
Admission, I love eggnog. When I was a kid my parents would get a couple cartons at a time, which they still had to ration, because I, like my 5 siblings, could easily drink a carton apiece. These days I...
Here's a perfect cake for the holidays, an eggnog pound cake. This recipe is a favorite of my friend Evie, a professional pastry chef, who passed it on to us. If you like eggnog and pound cake, you'll love this...
Apple season means apple pies, and my favorite are those apple pies packed with apples, not overly sweet, and with a buttery crust. The problem with baking thick apple pies is that the apples shrink as they cook, leaving a...
Fourth of July, Buttermilk Pie. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? If you're familiar with buttermilk pie, then this is old hat for you. If not, you might be scratching your head right now wondering, eh? Buttermilk? in...
Years ago I remember my father making vanilla ice cream for all of us with an ice cream maker that required a lot of crushed ice and salt. Can't remember now if it was hand crank or electric. But man...
Growing up in the 60s, one would encounter a lot more Jello salads than one does these days. My grandmother used to love to make gelatin salads for us - salads molded with Jell-O gelatin. One of her favorites included...
Updated Years ago, in the sixties, my grandmother came to live with us. She loved to bake, especially oatmeal raisin cookies and lemon meringue pie. She also loved to make Jell-O salads. As kids we loved Jell-O in all flavors...
My grandmother, on my dad's side, had an amazing sweet tooth. How that woman could eat as many jelly-filled donuts as she did and still live to 97, I'll never know. One of her favorite pies to make for us...
Please welcome guest author pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater who shares with us the (almost) lost art of making butterscotch. ~Elise When was the last time you tasted authentic butterscotch? Flavor, sauce, memory, aroma, era: butterscotch was an...
My first encounter with Indian Pudding was over 20 years ago at Durgin Park, a landmark restaurant in Faneuil Hall, Boston, famous for its home-style Yankee cooking and, at the time, its cranky, octogenarian waitresses. Few desserts look so completely...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord and pour yourself a glass of milk; you'll need one with these brownies! ~Elise So I had a bottle of Kahlúa sitting about collecting dust and figured that it needed to be put to...
I apologize in advance. This recipe is anything but simple. My father, the same dad who has never met a dessert recipe he didn't want to try, discovered it recently in the New York Times. When we recalled that my...
My father and I have been experimenting with lemon tart recipes for a year, without much success, by the way (until now). First there was the disastrous lemon tart from the New York Times, described so well by Deb of...
Lime, mango, sugar, a dash of tequila. These ingredients are just destined to be together in a sorbet. Unlike lemon sorbet which can be quite tart, this lime mango sorbet has the smoothing influence of the mango. The addition of...
Who says strawberries have a monopoly on shortcake desserts? Mid summer is the season for many varieties of blackberries, which are delicious served over biscuits with whipped cream. Sweet and juicy marionberries are native of Oregon, but we found some...
Don't you just love it when you put something together on a whim, and it works out the first time? My friend Garrett had a few extra pears from a baking adventure which I decided to poach in Marsala wine...
There is one image from my childhood that is seared into memory, that of the yellow octagonal box of Mexican chocolate on the top shelf of our kitchen pantry. I can still remember my mother making pots of hot chocolate...
Making lemon sorbet is like making lemonade with a detour through the ice cream maker. Easy. We pulled down several Meyer lemons last week to avoid the freeze that hit here in California and I've been thinking up things to...
"This is the best mint chocolate chip ice cream I've ever had in my whole life." This, straight from the mouth of my nine-year old nephew, who, since mint-chocolate-chip is his favorite ice cream flavor, has probably had more mint...
I was recently invited to lead a cooking session with a Girl Scout troop. For days the hostess and I deliberated on what to cook. We finally settled on these luxurious chocolate pudding cakes, because 1) they're easy to make...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic as we gear up for Derby Day with mint julep ice cream. Garrett and I made this the other day and my dad is still getting all misty eyed thinking about...
We have 3 apple trees on which we grow 15 varieties of apples, so we are always looking for good and easy apple recipes. My mom started cooking up apples this way for an everyday dessert a few years ago...
Every year in mid July the nectarines on our white nectarine tree become ripe, all at once, and we harvest them all within the space of a week. White nectarines and white peaches grown at home are so delicate that...
My mother has been praising our neighbor Mrs. Adams' pound cake for many years. My mother is a self-described cake person ("There are cake people and there are pie people. I'm a cake person.") who gets dreamy eyed just thinking...
When it's apple season here in Northern California, we are picking and processing daily from our trees (3 trees, 15 varieties). Of the many apple recipes we have on the site, this is one of my favorites. You simply cannot...
It is getting to the end of the peach and nectarine season here. I picked the last 4 ripe yellow nectarines from our tree today. But what to do with them? Inspiration came from a recent food blogger picnic where...
It's that time of year again, apple season. Our trees are practically raining Granny Smiths. In anticipation of a long apple season we have begun to experiment with apple pies; this recipe is our current favorite. What makes it special...
When we first came across this recipe in Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine we had to try it out. We've made it several times now, and everytime with great results. It's sort of a cross between a coffee cake and...
Please welcome pastry chef extraordinaire Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater who is our guest author for this article on Pavlovas. ~Elise It's no coincidence the late Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, for whom the Pavlova dessert was named, is said to...
I found this peach blueberry cake recipe on epicurious and couldn't resist trying it. The crust is almost biscuit-like and has a rich buttery flavor. Although the original recipe calls for the cake to be cooked for 1 3/4 hours...
My friends know me well. They know if they invite me over and I see that they have bushels of fresh-picked peaches just waiting for a home that I will offer my own kitchen counter space to take some of...
This pear pie by guest author Garrett of Vanilla Garlic scored major points with my parents. Great pie! ~Elise Every once in a while I see a recipe in a magazine at the doctor's office or in the reception room...
Most pecan pie recipes I've found call for 2 cups of sugar - one cup of corn syrup plus one cup of either granulated or brown sugar - which results in pies so sweet they can give you a sugar...
I love peppermint ice cream! Too bad around here the grocery stores only stock it during the holiday season. This week I decided to make my own and got some great advice from the king of desserts himself, David Lebovitz...
The big dilemma for those of us who like to cook but don't always have the time to do everything perfectly is whether to attempt to make our own pie crust or to buy a frozen store bought version. Most...
Hachiya persimmons can bake up into a delicious, moist cake that is almost a pudding. This recipe takes only a half cup of added sugar and uses the sweetness of the persimmon pulp.
This pineapple upside-down cake is one of my father's favorite recipes (he'll look for almost any excuse to make it). The cake is wonderfully dense, with a slight almond flavor and with sweetness from caramel and pineapple. Dad has recently...
What to do with Santa Rosa plums? One easy and absolutely delicious possibility is plum cobbler. This was so good, we're making it again tomorrow. (Have to do something with all these plums!)
We've got plums coming out the wazoo at the moment. Every time I mention a potential plum recipe my mother's eyes light up with what appears to be frantic joy; she can't give them away fast enough and she's tired...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic who turned a few of our ripe plums into a "wow-that's-good" sorbet. ~Elise I developed this recipe out of necessity rather than noble ingenuity. Every summer Elise's mother loads me up...
My father should have a t-shirt that reads "I've never met a dessert I didn't like" or in this case, "Got Plums? Will Bake". His baking endeavors might not always look their bakery best (please don't ever ask him to...
Double the recipe and make two loaves of pumpkin bread. Whenever we carve up a pumpkin for Halloween I'm always reluctant to throw the pieces out. We salvage the pumpkin seeds and roast them for a tasty snack, but what...
This is one righteous pumpkin cheesecake. (Hmm, now that I think about it, what does that mean? I have visions of Alvin the Chipmunk taking a bite of this cake and squeeking "Righteous!") It's tall, it's proud, it's creamy. It...
The first time we made this pie we used blueberries instead of blackberries and a whole cup of sugar instead a half. The blueberries were frozen and not completely thawed or drained. The pie ended up being runny (pie soup...
When my father was a kid growing up in Minnesota, in the summer he used to love to chew on rhubarb that grew like a weed around there, RAW. That's right. Raw. (The stalks, not the leaves which are poisonous...
Please welcome Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic who ushers us in to Spring with this rustic rhubarb tart. ~Elise Early Spring, sadly, is a time of wanting. Where we pace back and forth, twiddling our thumbs, rolling our eyes, waiting...
I would like to say that my father is incorruptible. And I think essentially he is, perhaps with the one exception being if there is rhubarb involved. A rhubarb pie in particular. In which case you don't even have to...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic as he celebrates spring with rhubarb sorbet. ~Elise I'm not sure what first drew me to rhubarb. I think, perhaps, it was the name. Rhubarb. It sounds so strange, intriguing, even...
"Rice pudding is how God intended us to eat rice," my father announced when I mentioned I was thinking about making some. Well that settled it, rice pudding it would be. With a little investigation, I found that there are...
Ever stumble upon something that everyone else seems to know about or has tried, but for you it's a brand new oh-my-gosh discovery, and then you feel like an idiot, because, where have you been? For me, that something was...
Do you remember the first time you had a root beer float? I do. I must have been around 7 years old and we were visiting my grandparents in Phoenix, in the summer. Have you ever been to Arizona in...
Have you ever encountered a stubborn teenager who outright refuses to eat something new, in spite of everyone telling her how good it is? At some point you just give up and say, "oh have it your way, all the...
Leave it to the lady with the tree to have some great recipes for apricots. My neighbor Pat (the one whose tree is raining apricots this week) suggested cooking an apricot pie on the grill and passed along a recipe...
You know that when your friend's smile fills the room as he speaks of his wife's "sour cream apple pie with a brown sugar crumb topping" that it has got to be good. Dad and I couldn't wait to try...
My father has been looking for an excuse to make this cake since he first saw it in Cook's Illustrated (May/June 2006). With dual imperatives of Mother's Day being two weeks away and my brother John's birthday (never mind that...
When fresh strawberries come into season, and we can get flats of them for only a few dollars, that's when we start looking for everything and anything to do with them. This strawberry frozen yogurt is a terrific way to...
Strawberries are in season now in California (even in my little garden) and the markets are filled with them. One of my favorite desserts on this site is a mascarpone mousse with strawberries in a balsamic syrup. The combination of...
Several weeks ago, strawberries and rhubarb both began to show up in quantity at the store. Strawberry rhubarb pie is one of my favorite desserts on the planet. But it's a pie. And being a pie, it takes some work...
Rhubarb is one of those strange vegetables that acts more like a fruit - the bright pink rhubarb stems that is; the leaves are poisonous. Strawberry rhubarb pie is one of my favorite pies in the world; in fact everyone...
Strawberry and rhubarb has to be one of the world's best pairings. We love the way tart rhubarb (ever try to eat raw rhubarb?) dances with sweet strawberries in cobblers and pies. In this terrine, orange zest makes an appearance...
What better way to conjure up memories of the joys of youth than strawberry shortcake? Strawberry shortcake consists of sliced strawberries that have been macerated with whipped cream served over a white cake or biscuit. I'm from the camp that...
Ever notice how people from big families eat fast? That's because if you finish your food first, you'll be assured of seconds. In our family we kids perfected the art of eating quickly with strawberry shortcake. If there was one...
We recently came across an intriguing recipe for strawberry mousse cake in Martha Stewart Living and decided to skip the cake part and just make the strawberry white chocolate mousse. It was fabulously cool and rich, just the dessert for...
As previously announced, this month's Sugar High Friday is all about Custard. 70 delectable entries have been submitted from food bloggers in 18 countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, India, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden...
If one is going to take the trouble to make chocolate brownies, and incur the wrath of the Fat-god for eating them, one may as well make them right. Brownies from a box? No thank you. This is my dear...
My friend Suzanne served in the Peace Corps for two years in Kenya in the late Eighties. The Peace Corps at that time published a recipe book for their volunteers that provided a chocolate cake recipe that was special in...
My friend Suzanne performed an experiment with her family and me. She baked two pumpkin pies, one using the purée and recipe from a can, the other using purée she made from a ripe sugar pumpkin. Each of us received...
I've had so many friends rave about sweet potato pie that when I found a recipe for one I just had to try it. Given that I completely botched the first pie crust (forgot to chill it before baking it...
Winter is the season for tangerines and other mandarin oranges. There's something wonderfully comforting about enjoying a big bowl of ripe, juicy, sweet mandarins in the middle of dismal, dreary winter. Walking around the neighborhood, oranges stand out like light...
One of my favorite desserts growing up was tapioca pudding. You don't see it that much anymore. Kids get pre-made over-sugared puddings from the grocery store. My parents don't make it that often as it requires too much (for them...
My father has always been the baker in the family. (Mom claims she baked plenty of cakes for us growing up, but since it has been more than 20 years since we all left home, none of us remember and...
Zabaglione is a simple Italian dessert made of egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala wine. It is usually served warm, though it can be served cold, or as a sauce, or even frozen. The Gourmet Sleuth writes,"Zabaglione is said to have...
