Mom’s Apple Pie: Grand Prix Gourmet, USA
There isn’t much sweeter than the aroma of an old fashioned Apple Pie baking in the oven. Not only for the scent of the apples and cinnamon, but also for the reminiscing. It always takes me years and decades back, to family times when we were all together. Mom in the kitchen making crusts, Dad teasing about how many apples he had to peel to make the pies. Happy moments laughing together. Besides, doesn’t an apple pie...
Summer Pudding. Grand Prix Gourmet, Britain
Summer pudding with strawberries and blackberries. This was a popular dessert in our family when I lived in England and we still love it. It’s easy to make and inexpensive, especially when strawberries and blackberries are plentiful. In fact, you can use other berries too and the fruit will go even further if you add chopped apple. This recipe is incredibly versatile. It’s quick to prepare too. The pudding requires just a...
How to Hull Strawberries
The best way to prepare strawberries. It’s so very easy to hull strawberries to prepare them for your favourite recipes. Use this method and you’ll have even more recipes at your fingertips. By removing that hard central core cleanly, you’ll be able to make strawberries stuffed with ice cream or chocolate or any other inventive ideas that will surely occur to you. See the image above – aren’t those...
Grand Prix Gourmet: German Apple Cake
German Apple Cake. This recipe dates from 1931! And unlike other apple cakes, this features a dough rather than pastry. It’s a very adaptable recipe but I have written it below in its original version. There are many changes you can make to suit your tastes. For example: Add a little nutmeg – I always find that it goes so well with apple dishes Top the cake with slivered almonds Sprinkle powered sugar on top before...
Irish Ice Cream and Chocolate
Irish Ice Cream and Chocolate recipe This is our absolutely favourite dessert. And that’s not just because it’s delicious. It takes only a few minutes to make and yet it’s elegant enough to serve at your next dinner party. It’s also a wonderful finale to a romantic dinner a deux. You can make this ahead by assembling the ice cream and the chocolate in attractive glassware and then keep them in the fridge...
My Mum’s Christmas Pudding Recipe
My Mum’s Christmas Pudding Recipe. We’re quite traditional with our Christmas meal but, our Christmas pudding is a little different. A lot of people don’t like it; it can be dense, have lots of crunchy currants, taste burnt or overdone and perhaps seem steeped in too much alcohol. That’s the difference, though similar in some ways, my mum’s Christmas pudding recipe is light, full of juicy, tasty fruit and...
Jello Fruit Cocktail
Fruity desserts are a very refreshing summer treat. Especially this simple jello dessert. Doesn’t it look yummy! This is super easy to make. All you do is pick your flavor of jello out and make it as directed on the package. Then you add a fruit of your choice either canned or fresh. Mine is made with a strawberry flavored jello with canned fruit cocktail. I topped it with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. A mixture of...
Mom’s Cherry Cobbler
Mom’s Cherry Cobbler Today it was time to go back in time to when my mother used to make this basic, light cobbler for our family. It is so easy to stir up, takes little time to bake, and makes a wonderful, colorful dessert. There is barely any sugar in the mix, but it is just enough to add a slight sweetness to the Bisquick mix. Compared to some of the heavier, richer toppings, this is just right. I served it with whip...
Strawberry, Cream Cheese Pie
Sweet, Sweet Memories. As long as I can remember, my mother made the best pies! Everyone always loved them, and asked her to bake one kind or another. Naturally she made her own wonderful flaky crusts for each of them too. When we had our apple trees, she would make a bunch to freeze. Dad would always tease that he was the one always peeling apples so he should get credit for the pies. Apple, Banana Cream, Lemon Meringue, an...
Banana Fritters Recipe
Banana fritters with maple syrup – recipe from 1975 I admit that I’m fascinated by older recipes. 1975 doesn’t seem terribly long ago (to me anyway) but this recipe for banana fritters surprised me. This is mainly because, when I think about this dish, I imagine bananas dipped in batter and deep fried. These are different. Although the original author doesn’t specify, I like to serve these garnished with more...
New Orleans Beignets recipe
New Orleans Beignets recipe. If you’ve been to New Orleans,then the chances are that you’ve visited the Café du Monde in Jackson Square. And if you have, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that you enjoyed a plate of beignets. There are many very excellent reasons to visit New Orleans and the beignets are certainly on this list. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to recreate them at home? Or maybe you haven’t...
New Orleans Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce
New Orleans Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce Oh, this is so delicious. It’s remarkably easy to make and the bourbon sauce elevates this from a family meal to a dessert you’ll be happy to serve to your guests – and they’ll love it. The crowning touch is by far the bourbon butter and this can be made in advance. The pudding itself takes about forty minutes to bake in the oven but only few minutes to prepare....
Tipsy Laird Recipe for Burn’s Night
Tipsy Laird Recipe for Burn’s Night There’s nothing more romantic than Burns night in Scotland. It certainly celebrated around the whole country, and if you are lucky enough to be in a Scottish highland hotel, then you’ll be celebrating in style too. Haggis, tatties, (potatoes) and turnips or neeps are served, there should be a piper in traditional Scottish dress, and of course a Ceilidh, so that everyone can dance and be merry after...
Peach Melba: Nellie Melba and her Prince
Peach Melba – Nellie and her Prince. Sadly, many of the recipes we see for Peach Melba today use canned peaches. These are all very well and good but when this recipe was developed by Auguste Escoffier in 1892 or thereabouts, the lovely, fresh fruit was used. Famously, the dish was created for Australian Dame Nellie Melba, a celebrated opera singer of the day. At the time, she was having a torrid affair with Prince Philippe, the...
Tangy Lemon Pie
Lemony, Cream Cheese Goodness. Tangy lemon pie with cream cheese has been a hit with my family for over fifteen years. I’d been looking for another pie recipe using cream cheese, since Mom’s Strawberry Pie—also using cream cheese—is my favorite. I was pleased when I found this one. This recipe provides the tart lemon flavor much like you would find in a lemon meringue pie. Instead of the meringue, which I’m not crazy...
Pumpkin Pie Dessert
Pumpkin Dessert A delicious pumpkin pie dessert is just as good a pumpkin pie! I learned to make this dessert from my oldest sister. We have a big family so making a whole pan of dessert goes over really well and sometimes isn’t enough especially if they all love it. It’s turned out so good now that it’s a family favorite for the Fall holidays. My younger son loves pumpkin so this is his all time favorite dessert...
Mom’s Blueberry Dessert
My Mom made the BEST blueberry dessert when I was growing up. It is my very favorite dessert besides German chocolate cake of course! Mom started making this Blueberry Dessert for family gatherings when I was a young girl. It became such a hit and a to die for dessert each time it was served. The flavor of this is so rich and blueberry tasting! It’s not to hard to make. I have a hard time making the carton whipping cream up so I...
Baked chocolate dessert
Delicious baked chocolate recipe. This recipe dates from the late nineteen seventies and I’ve reproduced it here just as it was originally given. I rarely cook with salt though and find that I don’t need it in this delicious, chocolate-y recipe. It’s easy to make and I like to serve it in individual glasses or ramekins. The originator of the recipe suggests serving it with whipped cream but I find that a little rich...
Crème Caramel Authentic French Recipe
Crème Caramel Authentic French Recipe Crème Caramel is a very famous and delicious pudding style desert from France, which is also enjoyed in many other parts of Europe. There are many varieties of this egg custard pudding, for example a very famous sweet in Portugal known as Bolos de Nata, is just like crème caramel, the only difference between them is that the crème caramel does not have a pastry base. Here’s the recipe: ...
Betty Crocker Apple Crisp
I’ve made this apple crisp recipe for as long as I can remember. I have a Betty Crocker Cookbook that I’ve had for years. It looks quite worn but this is where this recipe comes from. Apple crisp is so easy to make. I love to fill my pan to the top with apples which means I don’t always go by the recipe in how many apples to use. Apples cook down and I like my crisp to be thicker not thin. I’ve never had a pan of apple crisp that...
Apple Crock Pot Dessert
Apple Crock Pot Dessert Recipe. Autumn is time of the year that apples are ready to pick and enjoy. I know I do since I grew up on an apple farm when I was younger. We had many apple trees always loaded with many different kinds. With those apples are all kinds of desserts you can make but I’d never made one using a crock pot before. So I looked up some recipes and thought I’d give it a try. I soon found that out that not only is a...
Apple Crisp, The Old Fashioned Way
Apple Crisp, The Old Fashioned Way Mom often made this simple, old fashioned apple crisp for us when we were growing up. It was always a favorite. Dad liked ice cream with it, but I like it just the way it is, especially when still warm from the oven. The flavor is delicious, the crumb topping just crumbly enough. It’s very easy to make too which is always a plus to me. The hardest (or most time consuming) part of the recipe is...
Almost instant strawberry tart
Ten minute strawberry tart. This was a popular recipe in the nineteen sixties and seventies and I see no reason why it can’t be revived today 
Yes, it uses a pre-baked pie case (I use the graham cracker type) and, apart from the fresh strawberries, it uses items from the store cupboard but the labour involved is ten minutes tops. Kids love it but you can give it a more adult, sophisticated flavour by adding just a few drops of...
Berry Ice
Yum Leftover berries? Make a Refreshing Icy Dessert With all the berries looking so appealing last week, I stocked up on strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. A little too much, I guess, since I couldn’t use all of them. So into the freezer with a portion of each. So today, I thought I’d try to make an iced dessert to use them. This one combines strawberries, raspberries, and a few blackberries. I bet...
Fresh Fruit Salad
Calling All Fresh Fruit Lovers! A fresh fruit salad is delightful and refreshing on a warm summer day! This is a super easy salad to make. I had a variety of watermelon, honeydew, strawberries and blueberries in my refrigerator and thought I’d put them all together to make a nice salad with. All I did was cut up the fruit except the blueberries of course. I tossed them on top and stirred it all together. You can use any fresh...
Fruit Salads
Fruit salads What could be more healthy, refreshing and delightful than wonderful fruit salad? In honour of National Fruit Salad Day, here are our favourites: Summer Fruit Salad with Creamy Honey-Lime Dressing Summer Fruit Salad with Creamy Honey-Lime Dressing Do you love fresh fruit, especially spring and summer fruits? Those luscious strawberries, melons, blueberries, cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, all just call my name at...
Rhubarb Cobbler
Mom’s Rhubarb Recipe I learned about this cobbler recipe from my sister. She made it for a family outing while visiting. It turned out so good that there wasn’t any left over. She said it was a dessert Mom made. I don’t remember her making this rhubarb dessert. I have all my Mom’s recipe boxes so I got them out and starting hunting through them for the recipe. I found it! It said on the recipe in the corner my...
Friar’s omelet recipe
Try a Friar’s Omelet recipe from 1886 I have in possession a battered old leather-bound notebook. In the front page is lady’s name and the date – 1886. It is a collection of hand-written recipes from England. Many of these recipes were given to her. Some are marked ‘Mother’, others are from ‘Alice A’, ‘Sissie’ and ‘Florrie’ amongst other contributors. I’m...
How to make proper English pancakes
How to make proper English pancakes I’ve seen many an English person try to hide their bafflement when, on visiting America, they have ordered pancakes and syrup for breakfast. Instead of what they expected, they were served with thick little cakes rather than the delightful plate-sized English pancakes they were expecting, slathered in lemon juice and Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup. I’ve never tried to make American pancakes...
Baked Alaska: Recipe and history
Baked Alaska: Recipe and history In 1867, ownership of Alaska was transferred from Russia to the United States. Delmonico’s restaurants celebrated the fact with the invention of a special dessert created by chef Charles Ranhofer. You can imagine how these Victorian-era guests were delighted. The dish, named Baked Alaska, consisted of a beautifully light cake covered in delicious meringue. Inside the straight-from the oven-cake...