Cadence Drake has developed a craving for this one particular cookie-maker’s cookie because I NEVER get to have as many cookies as I want, so I’m living vicariously through her.
Some folks don’t even like desserts. Some folks would skip the meal for a perfect apple pie.
Which dessert would you have if you could only have one? And why that one?
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If I could only choose one, it would certainly be Ras Malai, a creamy Indian delight that takes hours to make, and is like nothing else I’ve ever eaten. Made with milk, cream, sugar, pistachios, and rose essence, it is rich and satisfying, sweet without being cloying, joy in a bowl.
Sounds amazing!!
Short answer: Chocolate chip cookies.
The real answer: _Only_ if the recipe is from my mother’s 1963 high school graduation gift, the Betty Crocker picture cookbook. I started helping bake when I was 3, and I have made that recipe entirely from memory since I was 13. It can be modified to anyone’s tastes with any kind of chip, fruit, or nut and still bake like a dream. Thick without being dry, chewy but never greasy, and rich as all get-out without leaving that too-sweet fur on your teeth. And the better quality ingredients you use, the better it gets.
I’ve made more than 30 friends with these cookies, patched up countless arguments with my sister by baking this recipe together, and I think my father would reach critical mass if there ever _wasn’t_ a double-batch of them sitting in the jar at home. I can’t begin to guess how many times I’ve been told I should start my own bakery, just on this one recipe.
The strangest thing about the recipe is that, though any other ingredient can be scanted, overloaded, substituted, or otherwise fiddled with, the one thing you _can’t_ go without is–of all things, in a dessert–the salt. It’s the salt that makes this recipe a memory worth repeating.
Today I read something wonderful from an author named James F. Sidel: “Memories are like flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water. Fiction is bread. Enjoy the bread.”
I can only hope to make my life taste like my cookies…salt and all.
Ice cream. Any ice cream (except licorice). I love the cold and the creamy texture, especially with the contrasting texture and flavor of the nuts or cherries or fudge ribbons or cookie crumbs…
When I was in college, I walked walked past an ice cream parlor to get to campus. Every day I’d buy a single-scoop ice cream cone to eat on the way home. Even on days when it was below freezing and I was wading through snow. By the end of the cone, I’d be shivering happily. Those days are long gone. Ice cream is now a rare treat. Sigh.
I love pecan pie, but am unwilling to wait 2 hours for it to be ready to eat, so I developed a recipe for a pecan pie filling that tastes close to the long version but only takes about 30 minutes. It also has the advantage of being diabetic friendly, just don’t eat it if you’re allergic to eggs.
My favourite dessert will always be the one I’m eating at any given moment…lol
And if caramel/butterscotch is somehow involved then it’ll definitely be my favourite.
Ah Choosing my absolute favourite dessert is a tough one. I’m a chocoholic and I love my friends chocolate silk pie and my Dad’s chocolate trifle.
I would have to choose my dad’s chocolate trifle. He makes it with a chopped up chocolate log at the bottom drenched in a syrup made of coffee and either cointreau (an orange flavoured liquor) or rum.
Then he puts a layer of chocolate mouse with chocolate chunks in it in next. Then a layer of whipped cream. The there’s another layer of chocolate mouse, without the chocolate chunks this time. Then he puts the top layer of cream on the trifle and attacks a Cadbury’s Flake bar with a blunt instrument until it’s all crumbled into small flakes and sprinkles that on top.
I could live on that trifle. One year I asked to have the trifle for my birthday instead of a birthday cake because it’s that good.
In the spring and summer fresh strawberry shortcake is my diet downfall. In fall and winter, mmmm, creme brule. If only there was fresh strawberry creme brulee…
I can’t live without kiflik, a Hungarian ‘crescent’ pastry that was handed down from my late grandmother. Our version is different than even the other branches of my grandmother’s family. It takes three days to roll out the dough and make the layers. They are filled with apricot, plum, poppy seed, or walnut and baked until puffed up, then sprinkled with powdered sugar. If there was nothing else I could have I would gladly even give up chocolate to have these when I wanted.
First time I took a dozen to my (then) fiancé’s house his sister got one, his dad ate the rest before anyone could blink. One friend I made some for pronounced them Sin On A Plate. They are.
I’d have to say… passion fruit cream. Its a relatively recent discovery of mine, but I found out I just adore its sweet-but-somewhat-adstringent flavor that swells up my taste buds like nothing else.
My must-have dessert that I can never seem to get is a tri-level brownie – a blonde brownie with chocolate chips &/or nuts on the bottom, with a chocolate brownie in the middle, & topped with chocolate fudge. If you really felt daring, you could top it with chocolate icing. It was said that more than a square-inch would put you into sugar shock.
One that I created for a Soulmates Saga story is:
“Thank you, Miss. I will certainly pass along your praise. Have you given any thought to dessert?”
“Yes, I have, John. What I’m thinking about is very decadent. Something along the lines of chocolate cake, topped with chocolate ice cream, chocolate shavings, chocolate syrup, and chocolate whipped cream topped with chocolate sprinkles over strawberries along the side. Can you do something along those lines?”
“Yes, Miss. I believe we can.”
“Then I leave it in your capable hands.”
“Enjoy your salmon, ladies.”
Both said at the same time, “We will. Thank you, John.”
The salmon was most excellent. They were almost replete and ready for dessert when John approached their table with a young woman dressed in white. “Ladies, this is Patricia, our dessert chef. She wanted to speak to you.”
“Good afternoon, ladies. When John brought your request to me, I was intrigued. It is, as you said, very decadent. I have never seen or considered anything quite like it. I would like your permission to include it on our dessert menu. Do you have a name for it?”
“Good afternoon, Patricia. And thank you. I was considering ‘Lover’s Delight’ as a name.”
“Most apropos.” As she spoke, John came back with two plates. On each was a dessert exactly like the one Allison had described. “Enjoy, ladies. Management has decided that your lunch is on the house today. When you are ready to go, let John know and he will walk you out with our appreciation.”
“You’re welcome. Please extend our regards to the management.” They attacked their desserts with a passion. Allison knew that that much chocolate would put both of them into a sugar high. Energy they would burn off later, if her plans continued.
Thanks
–Bill Downs–
Fresh figs! Absolutely nothing better.
Real French vanilla ice cream scoops rolled in toasted crushed pecans. Put back in freezer and serve with a hot fudge sauce (or lacking that after you have rolled the ice cream in the peans, pour Hershy’s syrup over each serving and freeze. == Yummy — I am a chocolate person.
Rhubarb crisp — tart, sweet, buttery and crunchy in equal measure. Even better if served with homemade roasted-rhubarb ice cream. Anything rhubarb takes me back to childhood because it grew abundantly in our backyard. I was lucky to marry a man who loves it as much as I do.
Yes, yes, I love cookies, too. My favorite is an orange ginger cookie that I make. But if we’re talking no holds barred desserts, it would have to be my English toffee cheesecake. It could bring about world peace. I’m sure of it. One slice and instant nirvana. If I’m eating out, Olive Garden’s Black Tie Mousse Cake is a close second.
I’m a sucker for cookies, too (except oatmeal raisin) but if I had to pick just one, it would have to be crème bruleé. It’s perfection, but I’m happiest with the memories it carries with it. Christmas with family, my great-aunt’s porch in Connecticut, my grandfather’s favourite restaurant in Oregon… It is the culinary embodiment of warm, fuzzy feelings to me.
If I absolutely had to whittle it down to one single dessert, I’d have to set aside the ice cream (whimper), the blueberry pie (sob), the coconut cream pie (wail), the brownies (cry), and go for blueberry batter cake.
This is a cake that “floats” atop a sea of blueberries somewhat like blueberry pie filling, but a bit juicier. And the cake is soft and a bit crunchy on top. The only problem – my mother used to make this, and I have no idea where the recipe went. So I haven’t eaten it in years. There was also the orange custard pudding she used to make, another “lost” dessert, slices of orange floating in a creamy orangey custard with meringue on top.
I’d give up ice cream or blueberry pie or coconut cream pie for either one – and that isn’t something I say lightly. I’d rather die than give up any of them… (Yes, I have a sweet tooth. All of the teeth in my head are sweet teeth, in fact.)
I forgot cream puffs! Although I’d even give those up for the blueberry batter cake. And strawberry shortcake – with real shortcake, not those premade spongy things – I’d even pass that up for blueberry batter cake. But there are so many desserts that are impossible to imagine living without.
Let’s face it. I would sell all my shoes for a perfecct piece of cheesecake. Not the pudding kind. The New York style, baked until it’s more cake than pie. I love the sweet, velvety feel of it on my tongue and if its topped with a tangy fruit its perfect. Oh well, enough dreaming. Back to Weight Watcher’s.
Every one spoke truly when they said it was hard to choose just one. If it was holiday time, it would be pumpkin pie hands down, the way my mother used to make them. Add a little ice scream with a dollap of whipped cream on top served while still warm from the oven. This is what made thanksgiving for me. To this day decades later all I need is a good pumpkin pie to feel like I had my holiday. Skip the turkey, stuffing, potatoes and and gravy, skip the cranberry sauce, etc, etc. just let me have the pumpkin pie,all I can eat, and I can be grateful for the rest of the year :0)
Pumpkin pie is amazing if it’s made right… I’ll probably be making it this Thanksgiving, so I’ll be very happy. 🙂
My favorite dessert is my own version of Carrot Cake, with added pineapple, coconut, pecans (or walnuts), dried cranberries (or raisins), and cream cheese frosting.
I use half the oil, and less sugar, because of all the additions.
It’s moist and decadent, but not sugary-sweet. I find the spices absolutely intoxicating. SERIOUSLY intoxicating. The extras in the cake are little treasures that always surprise me with every bite. The multiple textures cause me to slow down and appreciate each mouth full.
When I eat it, I feel a vibrational “excitement” in every cell of my WHOLE BODY. (This may be more than you needed to know. LOL!)
P.S. I experience that same whole-body tingle when I eat the fresh stuffed salmon from Sam’s Club. I guess these are two items that totally resonate with MY body.
Dirt. Started out as a Holloween desert made by my mother-in-law. It is now a staple at family get togethers.
Thick chocolate pudding, crushed Oreo cookies, chocolate covered rectangle shaped cookies sticking up like tombstones, elongated shaped fudge representing a fresh grave in front of the cookie, gummie worms lying across the top.
Chocolate eclairs, followed by petite-fours. Both are special-occasion only things, unfortunately. I also used to enjoy Entenmann’s fudge iced devil’s food cake but, sadly, it has discontinued production.
I appreciate everyone’s love of dessert, I share it.
I seldom reply to lists because I only get about a day or two a month to write. Gotta save the writing time for my books. For dessert I’ll make an exception.
Dessert isn’t just your favorite dessert. It is everything that leads up to the experience plus your favorite dessert.
I drive long haul. Dessert comes, when it comes at all, at the end of a long day and sometimes a long week. These days only one in ten truck stops have an actual restaurant, and only about one in ten of those have actual food, let along actual dessert.
Pick up a load in Seatle. Pull it east on I-90. Do the high passes and long flats on a hot day, and do that with a heavy load. If you don’t stop for breaks you can make it to Bonner Montanna, just east of Missoula. At exit 106 you go north to the Pilot truck stop. The truck stop does not have a restaurant. It has a fast-food. They have garp in place of food. Keep ya alive.
But, there is a restaurant there. In the parking lot. Might be more accurate to say the truck stop is in their parking lot, since their building was there as part of a logging opperation long ago. Lon, long before the truck stop.
Now it is the River City Grill.
Park in the lot behind the restaurant and come around the side to the enterence. Big trucks in back. Four-wheelers and ‘nice-folk’ in front.
Once you are inside that distinction disappears. You may be the rangeiest, most stringy old driver in the world off a 4 day haul praying for a truck stop with available showers, but once inside the door they treat you like a regular ‘been comming in for years.
It is worth skipping lunch, assuming you could have had some, just to heighten your sences and build the hunger.
Start with the soup.
They make great soup. I’d talk about the rest of their menue, but we arent here for that. Enough to say it makes you want to eat slow. The tomato soup is creamy and chunky, and not to be poluted with crackers or other flavors or you will miss the very slight shading of onion, and slighter shade of garlic so slight you can’t tell it is there untill the after taste.
Start with the soup, but get coffee. That comes in later. If it is not fresh, it always is, but if it is not fresh just ask and they will make you fresh.
You can add a sandwhich or whatever, but not so much as to remove the edge of hunger.
Sit in the back so that you face away from the kitchen and don’t see them bring the food. You will get to smell it before you see it.
Vanilla, cinnamon, butter, moist, hot, bread pudding with their own glaze. Whipped cream on top, or with chilled half and half on the side.
The pallet has been set with the tomato, onion and garlic, so when the vanilla, cinnamon and butter hit your tongue the flavor races across your mouth to the edges. The chilled half and half is still cold, and the pudding is hot, the only noncontrasting thing is the smoothness of the bread.
It makes you want to slow down and just taste.
Now, coffee. Clear the pallet with coffee. Repeat the process from the first taste of bread budding untill the dessert is gone. Relax and remember. Don’t think about the rest of the long haul comming up–this is dessert.
Thank me later.
Here in the UK, and specifically the county of Kent, a fondly remembered post war dessert was Gypsy Tart. We never had it at home but every week it was served at school in huge aluminium trays and we couldn’t wait to eat it. Our eyes would gleam, our mouths would water as we watched each slice being lifted out of the tray and onto our plates – and woe betide those whose slices were a little bit bigger than everyone else’s helping. If you were lucky to be the last in the line you would get the tray scrapings and the crumbs and flakes of pastry as well.
I still remember how delicious it was then and wish I could find a recipe that worked today. All recipes I have found and tried use dark brown sugar and evaporated and/or condensed milk whisked until thick and then baked in a pastry case but it’s simply not the same; and several recipes turn out a simple caramel tarts, not a Gypsy Tart.
I guess I’ll just have to go on remembering, longing with hope and anticipation, for the most favourite dessert of my whole childhood.
Custard. Just a plain, ordinary egg custard with a bit of nutmeg sprinkled on top. Sometimes the simple things are the best.
Heath Bar Ice Cream Cake — something about the sweetness of the ice cream, the decadence of the fudge, and the crunchy toffee that could satisfy my sweet tooth any time.
Angel Food cake, without a doubt. Don’t get me wrong, I love cookies (you can’t trust me in the kitchen if you’re making chocolate chip because I’ll eat half the dough before you get the chance to cook all of what’s left), but I ADORE Angel Food cake. My mom makes a really light, fluffy Angel Food, and then tops it off with some of her homemade buttercream icing and… oh God now I want cake.
I don’t think I have an absolute favourite dessert, but this is one area where many restaurants collapse. When you’ve had the sort of meal you couldn’t make yourself you (strangely) expect the pudding/dessert to be out of your cooking league too.
Like most people, I love apple pie, but invariably anything served in a cafe or restaurant has sickly sweet mush in it masquerading as apple. I expect my apple filling to have some tartness as well as sweet! Cooking apples aren’t extremely sour for nothing.
Homemade, hot from the oven, basic receipe, Toll house cookies. Much like the first bite of pizza when it’s really too hot to eat, the memories of molten chocolate chips sizzling the bit of skin behind my upper front incisors is a peculiar wonder that renders me drooling as I write. Yes, I am a little weird.
I’ll pass on most desserts for health reasons.
That said, I’m partial to frozen sweet things, like smoothies. I’m also partial to dark chocolate. (Obviously, smoothies with dark chocolate in them are some of my favorites.) I never add sweeteners to smoothies; fruit is sweet enough for me.
There’s only one desert that I know I couldn’t live without. Brownies. The moist, gooey ones, with chocolate chips inside and chocolate frosting on top, and a generous mountain of whipped cream. Yum!
The most amazing thing I ever had was an Irish cream cheesecake drizzled with a sauce made from reduced Jameson’s and sugar. I had it in a little town in Co.Donegal and I could have died right there and been content.
…Looking at what would be involved in travelling to Ireland…
I don’t get too hung up on them but when I can I love rice pudding, cheese cake ( I make a great gourmet one) and something I learned to love in Puerto Rico, Tres Leche. But when it comes down to an all time fav it’s a molasses cookie that she call Cry Baby. When there all gone you cry like a baby.
Just one – oooh, such a tough question. I think, though, that Chocolate Revel Bars (utterly decadent, sort of an oatmeal cookie dough with a layer for fudgy chocolate deliciousness between.) I can’t make them very often, because I find them hard to resist. (And since right now, I’m trying to lose another 90 pounds to go with the 10 I’ve lost so far…)
Of course, if I could have my fantasy dessert, it would be – any of them, but they would be zero calorie and good for me. Yes, I live in a happy, unreal place in my mind.
Coconut cream pie. Sure, I love all the chocolates and the pies and cakes and what not, but coconut cream pie is my all-time favorite dessert. There’s a restaurant called Jim’s Steak and Spaghetti House in Huntington, WV, where I’m front that sells homemade pies and I never miss getting a piece. Or two.
My second favorite is a vanilla cream-filled, powdered sugar Jolly Pirate Donut — NOTHING is as good as a Jolly Pirate donut. Seriously.
If I could have just one dessert it would be something that means more to my heart then my mouth, not to say that it isn’t absolutely delicious. My all time favorite dessert is my grandmother’s vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. Boring you say? Hardly. This cake is baked in a dripper pan (grandma’s term), making it about 2 inches thick. The frosting is then poured on the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven. This creates an amazing cake-frosting fudgey layer between the actually frosting and the cake. Since the frosting is poured on there is not “thin” spots that you end up with when you spread frosting. Grandma would make this cake before bed so we had to wait until morning to eat it, which of course meant we had it with breakfast.
My grandmother shared this recipe and I have made it a few times but there is just something missing from it. I’m pretty sure that something is grandma love. I guess I have to keep working and maybe someday I’ll be a grandma and then my cake will be perfect.
I love me some apple crip with a big ol’ scoop of icecream. 🙂 Mmmmm it’s better then apple pie because of the cinimon oats and apples give it that wonderful taste that makes my mouth water. Add the creamy vanilla ice cream and Perfection. Damn now I have to go make some becuase I’m craving it. Thanks a lot Holly. 😛 Just kidding 😛 But seriously I am going to make some now. 🙂
I’d have to go with fresh fruit, preferably a lovely bowl of raspberries and blackberries! Sweet, tart, juicy, and except for the minor issue of getting seeds permanently stuck in your teeth, pretty healthy! Add some whipped cream to get rid of the “healthy” bit, if desired.
PS. Unfortunately, I’m lucky if he makes it once a year. He only ever makes it more than once if great disaster strikes on my little bruised heart. 😉
I’m a huge dessert fanatic but if I were to choose one, it would be my father’s homemade Tiramisu. Being a chef (and a damn good one at that) I grew up knowing only his cuisine. When I was ten and I broke my finger, my dad made me tiramisu. When I broke up with my boyfriend at 16, he made tiramisu again. It works better than all the chocolate fudge brownie Ben&Jerry’s in the world and is a great hangover cure.
I’ve tried eating other people’s tiramisu’s but, to be honest, their coffee:biscuit:liquor:cream ratio is all wrong. Go daddy!
Tiramisu! Or however you spell it. For the last 10 years or so, we’ve eaten tiramisu at every restaurant that had it. The best one we found by far was at the Bay Bar and Grill in Bozeman, MT.
I’ve been to Bozeman… It was back when I was thirteen or fourteen, but if I could have, right then, picked the place in the world I wanted to live, that would have been it. We did not have desserts, though.
My Grandma’s fluffy Semolina pudding topped with morello cherries. And I’m not talking about the school lunch stuff with the texture and consistency of a spare truck tyre. This one’s lovely, made with folded in whipped egg whites, and melts in your mouth, perfectly offset by the sour cherries.
Pie. Always pie. Specifically, fruit pie or cobbler.
Mom would take us kids over to the next farm, which grew nothing but berries. I don’t think anybody even lived there during the summer. Maybe the old couple, but not the boys.
Anyway, there we would squat, shuffling down the rows of berries, picking the ripe fruit from its prickly leaves. For ages. The Joneses kept half of what we picked, and we got the other half. Strawberries went to preserves, and so did most of the blackberries and boysenberries.
But some of the blackberries and boysenberries became cobbler. Ahh. My grandmother was a magician with biscuits, dumplings, and pie crust. And her two cows were geniuses at making milk and cream. As a kid, I loved to put cream (never mind whipping it–you might end up with butter, after all) on the cobbler, but now I take it straight.
I don’t get blackberry cobbler very often these days. Maybe once every few years, because I am so not a magician in the kitchen. There’s a pie shop a few miles from home that makes a decent blackberry cobbler, but it is madly expensive. Still and all, it’s a delicious memory, and if there’s no blackberry cobbler in Heaven, I’m going to organize for it.
In real life, we don’t have desserts here. When there’s a birthday, we buy or make a cake, eat a little of it, then throw out the rest of it when it molds. Cake is one of those formalities of life, but fruit pie is dessert!
Nobody lived there during the WINTER, not the summer. In summer, the boys came to the farm, teenaged boys so big and tall I practically could not see all the way to the top of them.
We used to pick blackberries in Ohio when I was a kid. It was rather risky, because copperheads like them too.
Warm chocolate brownie covered with vanilla ice cream covered in hot fudge sauce topped with nuts.
Heaven.
Ah, desserts, now.
My favourites are actually two, but considering I can’t have anymore my Grandmamma’s creamy and light-as-a cloud chocolate mousse (with the occasional stray chocolate chip in it), I suppose I’m left with candied orange peels dipped in dark chocolate. They are so sinfully good that I have learned to reagard them more as an emergency life-saver than a dessert… (Un)fortunately, there is a small pasticceria in my village, where they make truly wonderful ones in autumn and winter. At times, when I’m in need of some cheering up, I’ll go and buy one – just one. Then I’ll come home, and curl by the fireplace with a book, a cup of orange pekoe and my candied peel, and nibble away. Lifts one’s spirit like nothing. 🙂
For me it’s my mom’s chocolate cheese Pie (not cake but pie)The crust is made from chocolate cake that had a big dip in it. The filling is a mix of whip cream, cocolate pudding mix, and cream cheese. It would sit overnight and then topped with small chocolate chips and broken up chocolate covered pretzels. It’s perfect on a hot day. And my mom makes this pie for me because I’m an addict when it comes to chocolate. 😀
SHORTBREAD COOKIES, but not just any kind, and certainly not whipped! REAL SHORTBREAD has to be made with the recipe one’s mother-in-law had from her mother, a Scottish lady living in the old country itself.
It has to be made with real butter, preferably home-made butter, made with one’s own hands, the kind of butter that wins competitions, and is famous among the locals; only three ingredients needed for perfection: butter, flour, and icing sugar.
The dough has to be kneaded until it is soft, and as smooth beneath one’s hands, as the round, plump cheeks of a six-month-old child. It has to be rolled out to a nice even thickness, three-eighths of inch or more, thick enough to offer a meaningful bite. Then the dough has to be cut with a knife; sliding long and clean through the rich, creamy slab; sliced into delightful geometric shapes: rectangles, rhumbuses, and parallelograms. The shapes, need then, to be punched with the tines of a fork, creating even lines of perforations so characteristic of real shortbread; and laid, thick and rich, on a pan. Finally, those lovely shapes, those promises of delight, must be baked in a slow oven for a long while, until there is just a hint of golden on the most exterior of edges; and when taken out and cooled; tempting all who pass by.
Eating one of great-grandma’s shortbread cookies is such an exotic experience, one has to stop all else, even breathing, for nothing can be allowed to interfere with the pleasure.
If one, for reasons to horrendous to mention, must avoid consuming such a food, then one must wait to make these shortbread cookies until there is a surety that there will be someone to help consume them; or, perish the thought, someone who will take them away. For when shortbread line a plate; smooth, rich, creamy white and golden; one simply CANNOT resist.
Coming from a dessert junkie, it’s impossible to pick just one. I’d say my favorite is Mississippi Mud Pie, my own recipe. But then I crave things I can’t get in this country, like pumpkin pie, which I wonder if I’ll ever eat again :(. Or homemade buckeyes because the peanut butter where I live is so drastically different.
After an accident that resulted in my jaw being wired shut for over 2 months I actually had to make this choice as my mother told me she would make me any ONE dessert I wanted. It was a no brainer for me, Cherry Cheesecake. I still remember eating it and that was almost 25 years ago. My first meal was pizza. I couldn’t open my mouth far enough to get a slice in, I had to cut it up with a knife and fork.
Ouch. That’s a really rough way to have to figure out that question.
Homemade cinnamon rolls with brown sugar, apples, and pecans in the middle, topped with powder sugar glaze.
Hey too thick to have a website.
As for deserts – well I just love processd cheese and apricot jam sandwiches, can’t get enough of them.
That is a combo I would not have imagined.
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