the magic circle

(You know the drill! You can ask here if you have a question you'd like answered!)

Favorite dessert to make?

Ha. So — I love to bake, but I am not really a Dessert Person. Like, there are specific desserts I like eating, but more often than not, I will just buy them because I apparently have fancy taste and my desires exceed my skills (or, you know, certain stuff is just annoying to make).

Anyway, all that to say, the list of desserts I have made and enjoyed making is pretty short, but we'll go ahead and run through it...

1). Chocolate Pie.

This is, as it sounds, chocolate pudding in a pie crust.

I don't like making pie crust, but pie crust that you make yourself at home is worlds better than anything you can buy frozen (alas!), and so I Suffer and Endure and Make It. :D

Chocolate Pie is Max's favorite and so I make it for him every Thanksgiving and sometimes for Christmas. These are the two occasions he knows it is safe to ask for chocolate pie.

2). Tiramisu.

It's not really baking, but! I have a solid method in my back pocket which does not involve raw eggs (eww), so.

Hard to go wrong with coffee, ladyfingers, and brandy (or rum) layered with whipped cream/marscapone and chocolate. Yum. I made one this year for Max's birthday and it was gone within about two days. :D

3). Macarons.

...I feel like someone is going to come out going WHAT at me, because I just said my desires exceed my skills, but!

Macarons are Just Okay. THERE, I SAID IT.

Anyway I wanted to prove to myself that I could make them, so I did. It ended up being surprisingly fun; they were not picture-perfect (I needed to whip my eggs more), but I am actually planning to make some apricot ones here in a couple of weeks and see if they work out better this time.

(I made blueberry and raspberry last time, per the request of the person I was making them for; they were Aggressively Fine, but if I'm doing jam, I want it to be strawberry or apricot. Certain People may laugh now.)

4). Danishes.

Again, this is one where I feel like people are going to go, what, but!

Laminated pastry is actually fun to make, though if I'm making puff pastry I prefer to use it for things like chicken pot pie or apple turnovers (which I don't add much sugar to, so I suppose they're borderline acceptable to eat for breakfast).

I made Danishes for my dad for Father's Day the last time I was out there for Father's Day, and the entire plate of them was gone within about thirty minutes. My brother-in-law ate, like, six. (They were, to be fair, not huge, but still!)


At some point in the next few weeks I am also planning to try my hand at making eclairs again, now that I've actually got the equipment for it (specifically, nice piping bags and such), so I guess that + the macarons will be it. Eclairs are probably the thing I buy most often at Safeway that makes me go, "ugh I do technically have the ability to do this but I'm lazy."

(To be fair to the Safeway nearest the house, though, their bakery is quite good. The eclairs I get there remind me of the ones I used to get from the bespoke bakery my mom's friend ran in Salt Lake, which is not something I can say of any other grocery store bakery I've gotten stuff from.)

Anyway.

Frequently, if it's Just Me And Max and it's not a special occasion but I want something dessert-y, it's cookies. I have a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe memorized and have had it memorized since I perfected it when I was, like, 10.

("Perfect" according to my grandfather, who was Very Picky about cookies, but I digress. I'm fond of it! I don't think it's to anyone else's taste, but Max likes to dip them in coffee, so.)

There you go. :D