Easiest Dessert EVER!

This has got to be one of the easiest desserts EVER! It's not only yummy, but pretty diet friendly and healthy too! I bought an Angel Food Bar Cake from the grocery store, sliced it thinly and sprayed it with cooking spray.  I'd also bought a cored fresh pineapple and sliced it thickly, dried it a little and sprayed that with cooking spray. After we'd cooked our dinner, I wiped up a spot on the grill, turned the grill up to high and put the pineapple on the lower element of the grill. Once some nice grill marks appeared, I turned it over. I then put the angel food cake on the grill and let it start to brown. That goes pretty quickly, so watch it carefully. I turned both the cake and the pineapple over and made sure the fruit was tender by sticking it with a fork. I removed everything from the grill, turned it off, and layered the cake, pineapple, a scoop of low fat vanilla ice cream and dropped on a few blueberries. YUMMY! Quick, easy, healthy and DELISH!

3.14 PI day...What kind of pie are you making?

Friday, March 14, 2015is 3.1415 and PI day or as the way I like t think of it -  PIE day. What kind of PIE are you making? Try one of mine, here are two of our favorites. Both of these pies are old, family recipes. What kind of pie do you like to make? My husbands' family loves desserts, and his dad refused to leave the table without one! Treat your family and try one of mine!

Chocolate Pecan Pie --rich, chocolaty and full of nuts, so good with vanilla ice cream! View the recipe here :

Chocolate Pecan Pie

Or try some lemon chess pie, another family favorite and a recipe that has been in our family for many, many years:

You can check out the recipe and the history HERE

Lemon Chess Pie

Not my greatest picture, the pie is actually dark golden brown on the top and rich yellow underneath. The thing that really matters is that it is absolutely delicious! Very lemony and tart, with just enough sweetness. A favorite family story is one time when my husbands' grandmother, who everyone called Maw, made a mistake and left out the sugar in the recipe. When the pie was served and everyone was choking down the first bite, Maw smiled and said, "I like it tart, don't you?"

Fearless, just like Julia Child! 

Mixed Berry Cheesecake Trifle

A beautiful additon to your table, Mixed Berry Cheesecake Trifle

A few years ago, on an impulse, at one of those at-home-buy-stuff parties, I bought what I thought would be a small punch bowl and pretty stemmed glasses to match it. I learned pretty quickly, that is was a VERY small punch bowl, and much better suited for dessert. Now, I am not much of sweets eater, and rarely eat dessert, but my husband's family really can't leave the table without dessert. How they all stay so thin is beyond me, but such is the inequity of life.

Since I had bought this pretty bowl, with matching serving pieces, I had to come up with something to put in it. Something tasty yet pretty enough to do my impulse purchase justice, thereby validating my shopping. I started out with a few layered jello-type salads, but they were SO big, I had to have a boatload of company to make them. So, I began researching layered desserts. Watching my girl Nigella one morning, way back in the days when she was on the Style Network, I discovered Trifles. A trifle is basically a fruit, cream, cake and liquor concoction, layered into a deep bowl with high sides. The bowl is traditionally glass, the better to show off the layers. Nigella was making an Italian Trifle, which featured mascarpone cheese. Back in 2003, in Richmond, VA no one carried mascarpone cheese except one International grocery store, which was on the other side of town. Since I was still travelling with my small boy fraternity back in those days, I decided to come up with an alternative. It's not so "haute" cuisine as the original, but I promise, it's tasty! I also cut way back on the liquor in my trifle, as I had several under 21 eaters! This dessert is a winner, if I do say so myself.

Mixed Berry Cheesecake Trifle

1.5 lbs. strawberries, cleaned, hulled and halved

6 oz. blueberries, washed

1 loaf plain pound cake

1 pint whipped cream

a small jar of lemon curd

1 Jello No Bake cheese cake (plain) (1 1/2 c. cold milk)

3 oz. framboise or Lemoncello liquor

First, prepare your berries, whip your cream and make the cheesecake filling from the package, according to package directions w/the 1 1/2 cups cold milk. Slice the pound cake -- as thinly as you can -- into an even number of pieces. Make sandwiches of the pound cake -- 2 pieces with a little lemon curd spread in between.

Lemon Curd and pound cake

This is what you will use to line the bottom of your trifle dish. Cut them into halves or quarters as needed to line the bottom and a little ways up the sides. Save 3 or 4 to use in another layer. Drizzle about 1.5 oz. of framboise or lemoncello over the sandwiches, as shown below:

Drizzle the liquor over the pound cake.

The next layer will be a layer of fruit, half of the halved strawberries, half of the blueberries, drizzled with a little more of the framboise or lemoncello.

Top with lots of berries!

Next, spoon on half of the cheesecake batter and half of the whipped cream. Now do it again.

First, your remaining lemon curd sanwiches, cut into 3rds. Drizzle a little liquor, arrange the rest of the berries in a pretty pattern, pressing a few against the sides of the bowl, so that they show (be sure to save a few pretty berries for the very top!). Next, smooth over the other half of the cheesecake batter, the rest of the whipped cream and a sprinkling of the graham cracker crumbs from the cheesecake box. Finally a few choice berries for decoration. Voila! Isn't it pretty?

Finished Mixed Berry Cheesecake Trifle

Baby, It's COLD Outside!

Stuck inside again, weekend after weekend? What to do? We've watched movies, read books and played lots of Wii games....So, I pulled out some old copies of Cooking Light, and tried a new pound cake recipe. I tweaked it just a little to suit our taste, and I must say, it came out very well. Lovely texture, sweet, but not too sweet, dense and moist. And, all in all, not too bad for you -- as far as cake goes! -- using less butter than traditional pound cakes and light sour cream.

Lucious Lemon Sour Cream Pound Cake

2 T. dry bread crumbs

4 c. sifted cake flour (1 lb.)

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 c. light sour cream

3/4 c. butter (room temp.)

2 1/4 c. sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 large eggs

2 T. fresh lemon juice

1 tsp. lemon zest

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 10" tube pan OR 2 loaf pans w/cooking spray and bread crumbs. Weigh your flour OR lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife.**

Combine flour and salt in a bowl, stir w/a whisk to combine. Place butter in a large bowl and beat w/a mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time. mixing well after each one goes in. Add lemon juice and zest, beat 30 seconds. Combine sour cream and baking soda, mixing well (mixture will begin to foam up - that's normal). Add flour mixture alternately with sour cream mixture to the sugar/butter mixture. Make sure your mixer is getting all the way to the bottom of your bowl, so no flour is left unmixed. Use a rubber spatula to help out with this, especially if you are using a small hand mixer.

Pour batter into the tube pan or the 2 loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out cleanly. If you are using loaf pans, check the doneness at the one hour mark.

Cool in pan for 10 minutes and then remove cake to a wire rack. Spoon over glaze if using while cake is still warm (put some wax paper or foil unter the rack to help w/clean up). Let cool completely before cutting. Makes 18 servings.

Lemon Glaze

2/3 c. sifted powdered sugar

the juice of one large lemon

1/2 tsp. lemon zest

Combine all ingredients in a large measuring cup, stirring well to combine. Spoon over warm pound cake.

** Cooks note; It is always more accurate to weigh your flour, but if you don't have a kitchen scale, make sure to LIGHTLY spoon your flour into your measuring cups, don't scoop it and pack it in.

Fantastic Fall Apples!

My family loves almost all apple desserts, but Apple Crisp is an absolute favorite around here! It's easy to make and foolproof...it comes out crispy on the top and juicy and flavorful underneath! Like most of my dessert recipes, this one is from my husbands' side of the family -- I got this from a special aunt and a good friend. I have made only 2 minor adjustments to her original recipe over the years. Be sure to have some vanilla ice cream to put on top!

We prefer this recipe made with Granny Smith apples, but any firm, tart baking apple will work.

Ann's Apple Crisp

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

First prepare your apples:

4 cups apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1/4 cup water

1 T. lemon juice

Layer your apples in a 1 - 2 qt. dish and sprinkle them with the salt and sugar. Pour the water and juice over all.

Next, the Topping:

3/4 cup flour

1 T. oatmeal

1 c. sugar

1/3 cup butter, softened

Mix together your dry ingredients and cut in the butter with pastry blender, 2 knives or your hands, which ever way you like! The mixture should be course and well mixed, with pieces about the size of peas.

Sprinkle the topping over the apples, and bake for 40 minutes, uncovered. Serve warm, topped with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Lemon Chess Pie

As you may have noticed, I like pie and I like to make them. Here is another one of my familys' favorites. It is from a very old recipe, passed down to my mother in law, from her mother in law. To keep that in perspective, and show how old this is, my mom in law will be 90 in December (I think she's proud of that, as she should be!). This pie fits the bill for lemony sweetness and once again, as I've said before, it's easy as pie. Check out the direction for "butter the size of an egg" -- that's exactly the way it was written when given to my mother in law from hers!

Lemon Chess Pie

1 unbaked pie crust

3 eggs

butter "the size of an egg" (about 1/2 stick)

1 tsp. + 1 T. flour

juice of 1 1/2 lemons

grated rind or the "zest" of 1 lemon *

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat eggs and sugar together. Add softened butter, flour, lemon juice and lemon zest. Pour into the prepared pie shell. Bake for 35 minutes.

*Cooks note: Make sure to zest only the yellow part of your lemon. The white part is bitter. A microplane rasp works really well for this. This adds great lemon flavor to your pie, so don't leave it out!

Love Chocolate?

I don't eat a lot of sweets, but if I do, I like them home-made, rich and more often than not, CHOCOLATE! I like to make pies because they are, well, easy as pie. This recipe is an old family favorite. It is written exactly as it was given to me by my mother-in-law more than 20 years ago, who got it from a dear family friend.

Next time you need to bring a delicious dessert to a dinner or want to treat your own family, or are simply craving chocolate, try this. And, don't forget to buy premium vanilla ice cream to go along with it!

Chocolate Pecan Pie

1 9" unbaked pie crust, your own or purchased

2 squares unsweetened chocolate

2 T. butter

3 eggs

1/2 c. sugar

3/4 c. dark corn syrup

3/4 c. pecans (whole or pieces)

Preheat oven to 375 degress.

Melt chocolate with the 2 T. butter, over a double boiler or in a large measuring cup in the microwave. Beat the eggs with the sugar, and mix in the melted chocolate and dark corn syrup. Stir in the pecans and pour the entire mixture into your pie shell.
Bake at 375 degrees for about 40 - 45 minutes.

Serves 8.

Easy huh? Now you know why the saying is so true...