Just Desserts

Just Desserts

It's dessert time of year. America has some strange concepts of sweets. You can dream of your favorites while reading this.

Cookies, in general, should be crispy. Why do people like soft cookies? It baffles me. But this post is more about specific cookie types. Chocolate chip cookies - the ultimate recipe is Nestle's Toll House. Nothing else is close. Big chocolate chunks, M&Ms, chips made of milk chocolate, pecans, walnuts, all degrade perfection. I do like to add raisins - baked raisins are sweet and chewy and compliment crispy, buttery Toll House cookies.

Many years ago, maybe before 1980, a common cookie was a sugar cookie. Delicious. You can still get sugar cookies, but they don't taste the same. They removed all of the flavor except sweet. Snickerdoodles have some of the flavor, maybe they are the same as the old sugar cookies. But if they are not crispy - blech.

Fruit pies can be delicious. Cherry pie is far preferable to any other fruit. It MUST be served HOT.

Pecan pies are good, but there is too much of the gooey stuff. It should look more like a pizza - flat crust, thin layer of goo, pecans.

Frosted cake - grocery store cake is garbage - there is no flavor, just sweet. Fancy European cakes - dense, not sweet - blech. I don't understand chocolate cake. Chocolate must melt into your tongue to taste right. Cake does not do this. Frosting does. I don't expect to ever make a cake from individual ingredients, so looking at mixes - Ducan Hines Butter Golden or Betty Crocker Butter Recipe Yellow mixes use butter instead of oil. Use a chocolate frosting. The butter from the cake and the chocolate from the frosting hit your tongue to provide a wonderful chocolate/butter flavor.

Brownies - use butter instead of oil. Brownies impart a much better chocolate flavor than chocolate cake. Adding chocolate chips does not improve brownies, it just adds calories. I've want to try using brownie dough to make cookies. These would be crispy/chewy like the edge of ordinary brownies. Sounds good. I hate to bring that many calories into my home.

Chocolate bars, M&Ms - as noted above, chocolate must melt onto your tongue to give a good flavor. High cacao levels prevent this. I like Dark Chocolate M&Ms (50% cacao I think). But they must be heated. I use 58 seconds in a microwave. Plain M&Ms and most milk chocolate bars are too sweet.

A side note - I had to look up the spelling of blech or bleck. Blech is an expression of disgust. Bleck is shoe blacking, black grease, or soot. Same thing I guess.

Caramel should not melt in your mouth. It should be chewy. America's obsession with melt in your mouth caramel has ruined it. I wish I could find consistently chewy caramel/pecans/chocolate pieces, I would love it. With melty caramel - blech.

Toffee seems to be a solid crunchy form of caramel. Toffee, almonds, chocolate make a great combination. Almond Roca is one example, but I think it too sweet.

Cheesecake should melt in your mouth. Otherwise you don't get the sweet cheese flavor. It is not easy to find good cheesecake. And a lot of it is now contaminated with chocolate, caramel, coconut, apple, cinnamon - blech. Strawberries on top are good, especially in a sweet strawberry gooey sauce.

Ice cream - chocolate, banana, or butter pecan. Nothing else is worth the calories. Baskin-Robbins is the only place that understands chocolate ice cream. You have your choice of chocolate or chocolate fudge. Chocolate has more chocolate flavor than anything you can get anywhere else. Chocolate fudge has even more. Chocolate ice cream is meant to melt on your tongue. Adding any kind of chunks ruins it.

Baskin-Robbins makes a wonderful Banana Royale Sundae - ice cream (specify chocolate), banana slices, choose hot fudge topping, whipped cream, crushed almonds, maraschino cherry. And good milkshakes. Milkshakes should be just ice cream and milk, blended. But once, on a trip in Tennesee, I stopped at a B-R to get a chocolate milkshake. I watched as the server loaded the canister with chocolate ice cream and put it in the blender. No milk. Tasty result, but not quite a milkshake. Since then I specify "made with just milk and chocolate ice cream". Adding malt flavor or real banana is good.

Cinnamon buns can be wonderful - full of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon. (This is not a breakfast - it is a dessert.) Wonderful aroma. A butter cream frosting can be a nice addition. A sweet but flavorless frosting is not. I read a book called The Choice by Nicholas Sparks, long ago. At one point the main character wants to surprise his new girlfriend by bringing coffee and cinnamon buns to her in bed. He covers them and walks in. What's under the cover? Anyone that can't smell hot coffee and cinnamon buns from across the room is dead. (Apologies to people with no sense of smell.) (And I'm eternally grateful that Covid didn't take smell and taste from me.)

Crème brûlée and strawberry custard tarts - wonderful custard desserts. (But flan? The texture is awful.)

But the vast majority of desserts are not worth the calories. My mother used to look at restaurant dessert menus delighting on just about every item. I would look at the same items and say "blech".

That's my survey of desserts. Sweet Dreams.