Successful Dessert Things from the Internet

I was flailing a little on Sunday morning before my piano recital--I have a reputation for serving an excellent dessert buffet after the music, and I had made only one measly (well, okay it serves at least twelve people and has a pound of butter in it) chocolate tart.

It's very dangerous to just grab recipes from the internet and make them for guests, but I did it anyway, and these two were quite wonderful. The pumpkin dessert thing is embarrassingly easy.

Nobody ate the coconut cupcakes that afternoon, but as leftovers--which I have spread around the neighborhood, referring to myself as the Calorie Fairy--they have been very popular.

Pies and Pielets

Monday I made pie dough (after hollering about James McNair's cookbook in an earlier post I used his butter crust recipe); Tuesday I made a pumpkin pie; and today I made a mince pie using a meatless Joy of Cooking recipe. I used great restraint and didn't eat all of the mincemeat filling with a spoon; it is a wonderland of apples, raisins, lemon rind, spices, and brandy.

I love pie filling, but often leave the crust because it's too rich. I am going to work on pielets*: little individual ramekins of filling with elegant precooked pastry cutouts floated on top. I do like a bite or two of pastry if it's flaky and wonderful. Probably I could bake up the filling until it was bubbly, then put on the pre-browned pastry cookie, and heat everything together for five minutes. This is such a great idea that I'll probably become famous for it. I'll be asked to autograph pielets.

*Linguistic notes: Pie-ette is a better name, but hyphens are a pain, and it sounds like a brand name. Pielette is a problem homophone--I immediately got tangled up with pielettes and boats of pastry. Pielet is closer to piglet, so it works for me.

Impossible Pumpkin Pie

How can this be so good? It's a recipe throwback from the seventies, first seen on the back of a Bisquick box. It's not really a pie--more like a pudding. Easy and delicious.

Impossible Pumpkin Pie

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup Bisquick or other biscuit mix*

1 16-ounce can pumpkin

2 tablespoons soft butter

1 12-ounce can evaporated milk

2 eggs

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 or 2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix all ingredients in a blender, or beat in a bowl, until smooth. Pour into a 10-inch pie plate coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.

*Here's a healthy alternative to Bisquick:

Light Baking Mix

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup dry milk powder

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Mix thoroughly. Store, tightly covered, in cool dry place. Use in place of Bisquick.

October Recital Food

I usually have my first piano party of the year in October before Halloween. This year we had music ranging from Haydn to Muczynski, and food from pumpkin candies to Raspberry Tart II.

I found a fabulous pumpkin cake recipe in the October 2007 Bon Appetit. It has raisins, coconut, and lots of grated orange peel for flavor. The recipe calls for cream cheese frosting, but the cake is great on its own. I'll be keeping this one.

Pictured above is another raspberry tart. As you know, a 12-inch tart is the very easiest way to serve dessert to a large group--this one yields twelve to sixteen servings. Have we recorded this recipe for posterity yet?

Fruit Tart

Crust
1 cup butter, softened
4 tablespoons powdered sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Combine ingredients (I use the food processor) and press into a 9x13-inch baking pan or 12-inch tart pan. Chill for 30 minutes. Bake at 350º for 30 minutes. Cool.

Cream Cheese Layer

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup whipping cream, whipped

Mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla; fold in whipped cream. Spread over cooled tart crust.

Fruit Topping

The original recipe calls for a can of blueberry pie filling! I use a layer of jam topped with plain fruit, or a layer of sugared fruit. For instance, I might stir some strawberry jam until it's spreadable and apply a thin layer, then arrange whole strawberries on top. In this case, I used some raspberry fruit spread topped with plain fresh raspberries.

I got this recipe from Barbara in Hawaii--do you remember her? She was (and is, though I haven't seen her for 20 years) really something: a wonderful soprano; an avid sports fan--she knew everything about football and sumo wrestling--never play Trivial Pursuit with her; a cat lover; and a librarian.