I stumbled upon this cake a few years ago at Joy of Baking, and it turned into a favorite. I’ve made it with fruit other than cherries, but cherries are the winner for sure. I’ve also done it with and without ground almonds, and though I prefer it with the almonds, it is delicious without as well. A very versatile cake, and when we got cherries in our CSA this week, it was clearly the thing to do. 🙂
Lemon bars are such a great summer dessert – very portable and light after a big grilled meal. They are a little time consuming, but well worth the trouble. These are made with a traditional shortbread crust. I made these for our friend’s summer kick-off roof deck party and they were a hit.
Who doesn’t love s’mores? Admittedly, I don’t really like chocolate. But I’ll eat it in this form…especially because I’ll hoover any marshmallows in sight. These was a cute and easy recipe that was handy for something like a party or cookout, because it was very mobile. Also bite size, so you can eat more and not feel guilty, right? Right. 😉
Tarts are one of my favorite desserts, and I love this one from Southern Living a few years ago. I’ve used it for a couple of Spring get-togethers in the past, and it’s been nice and refreshing every time. What attracted me to it originally was the ginger snap crust with the orange – it seemed like a winner. My only complaint about this recipe is that I usually find I need more crumbs/butter to make the crust than written, but I find that with almost all crumb crusts so clearly it’s me. Regardless, if you like a thicker crust, plan to 1.5x the crust recipe and you’ll be good to go! We really enjoyed this for our Easter dessert with some homemade whipped cream.
Pie is the one dessert I can’t stay away from in any circumstance. I really do like apple, and prefer dutch. This one was pretty good, though I felt the topping ended up too crunchy…I think tenting the pie in the last 10-15 minutes, or maybe a smidge more butter might have prevented that. I would make it again and try to adjust. I did a braided crust since this was our Thanksgiving pie (I’m a little late to the party posting this!), and it puffed up quite well and I thought really added a nice layer. We used a mixture of Fuji and Jonagolds which we had picked ourselves for this, and they were great…I think you could use any apple, really.
These are a great dessert to bring to a summer party or picnic…very refreshing. I brought them to a summer get together at my friend’s house and they went like hot cakes…nice and tart and a good portion. I got this recipe from Martha Stewart, but I doubled the crust because I wanted a stronger base for the bars. The recipe below is printed as-is, though.
I really, really love pie. Any kind. And I really love blackberries. When our local farmer’s market had some fabulous-looking blackberries, I bought a ridiculous amount and of course had to make a pie. The result was very good, and very tart, and would have been even better if I’d had some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream on hand to go with it. I got this particular recipe from Joy of Baking, one of my favorite websites – I’ve always had fantastic luck with her recipes!
My all-time favorite cake. I usually turn my nose up at dessert, but I can never resist this. This is probably the best recipe I have ever found, and it’s been tweaked and adapted so much that I’m not even sure of the original source, though it was somewhere on All Recipes many moons ago. You can make this cake lighter and fluffier if you use light brown sugar, or more dense and moist with dark brown sugar. My preference is the latter.
Om nom nom! 