Desserts

 Decadent, rich, intensely chocolaty, and gluten free!  Those words aren’t often found together in the same sentence.  Trust me, though.  You will savor every bite!

 Lots of silence except for the sounds of spoons getting every last bit out of the bowl.  That’s what I heard at our table tonight when I made this chocolate pudding.  We found the recipe in Food and Wine, and with a few healthy alterations, we’re going to be making this often.

 I’ve been enjoying learning about gluten free baking with the cookbook from the Culinary Institute of America.  It has 5 different blends that create different textures in the product, so as I discover new successes from the book, I’ll include the composition of the blend that’s called for.

 I had this recipe clipped and saved in a file for who knows how long, and when I made it the other day, it got voted into the regular routine of desserts.  It’s a great chocolate and coffee combination.  It’s adjusted for sea level baking.

We had our first strawberry shortcake of 2011 tonight thanks to great California strawberries.  Years ago I came across a healthier, lower fat shortcake recipe, and it has served me well.  We slice strawberries, sprinkle them with a bit of sugar, and let them sit while the shortcake is in the oven.  Sometimes we slice the biscuits in half, put a scoop of ice cream and some strawberries in the middle, top with the biscuit half and repeat the layers, topping of course with whipped cream..

 This is one of our new, favorite desserts to have at home.  I use a 9 inch cast iron skillet and frozen, fresh peaches.  I also have been using Smart Balance butter sticks which appear to be only half as bad for you as regular butter.  Eat it warm from the oven topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  It easily serves 6.

 This is a delightful cake for breakfast, tea, or any other time you’d like a sweet treat.

 Pies are the favorite dessert at our house because what doesn’t get eaten for dinner dessert usually gets consumed for breakfast the next day.  This great new pie can use fresh or frozen blueberries, so it will be a nice taste of summer in our bleak mid winter.  The recipe came from Taste of Home (Aug 2010).

I received the inspiration for this decadent dessert from a local, rural magazine called The Fence Post.  Instead of using a box brownie mix, I just used our favorite quite brownie recipe.

If it’s possible to bake something that tastes like summer, this is it.  It’s easier to make than shortcake but just as comforting.

This is a wonderful dessert that’s low in fat but high in flavor.  It’s a huge hit with my family, and it often gets consumed as breakfast the day after I serve it for dinner dessert.

I was looking for a quick chocolate recipe to make for our guests who celebrated Valentine’s Day with us, and Hannah thinks this one is a winner.  Our guests did too.

This frozen salad is a traditional dish for my family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and we actually like it for a light dessert all year long.
 

This is a wonderful desert that all of our staff raved about.

Got a huge thumbs up from all of our staff.

The name for this delightful dessert came one day at lunch when we were discussing a new word to our vocabulary.  Hannah was explaining that diaphanous meant light or transparent, and then I said I could make a diaphanous dessert in an attempt at alliteration.  Spencer chimed in and said that the following dessert (which seems to be his current favorite) deserved the name.

I received this recipe in an e-mail labeled “Dangerous Chocolate Cake”.  Because you mix it up and microwave a single serving in a coffee mug, it means one is only 5 minutes away from a serving of warm chocolate cake.  Very dangerous indeed.  I recently tried it in the form of waffles, and they made a quick and tasty dessert with a bit of ice cream and chocolate sauce.  One recipe served 4 of us.

I sent a package of these delicious treats to my father-in-law for his birthday, and the rest of them were put out on the buffet for our skiing guests.  They didn’t last long, and the recipe was requested, so I think they qualify as a hit.

If you reach the 5:00 hour and don’t have a tasty dessert in mind, give these a try.  I simmered the sauce just before I served dinner and then plopped the dumplings in as we were sitting down.  When the 10 minute timer went off, I just turned off the burner and left the lid on the pot.  They were warm and tasty when we were ready for dessert.