Corduroy Orange

Martha says

I forgot to pick up my pies from the PTA fundraiser and now they’re at the food bank. What am I going to do for Easter dessert?

Hmmm…. that is a bit of a quandary, especially if you were counting on that course having been taken care of for you already. You can’t really get away with serving a plate of cookies at a formal meal; and you probably have a fairly extensive menu of savory dishes that you’ll need to make. Which means, you’re looking for a tasty, attractive dessert that can hold its own at a formal table but can be made with minimal time and effort.  Lucky for you, I’ve got a couple of ideas.

Well, how comfortable are you making your own pie crusts? It’s really fairly easy to do, requires only ingredients you’re likely to have on hand, and even if the crust doesn’t come out perfectly; it still is better than a storebought crust. From there, you can go about anywhere.

Except that most fruit pies work best with fresh fruit, which is sorely lacking in quality this time of year. If you’re going to go the fruit pie route, I’d recommend apple. For a tasty personal touch, add a quarter cup or so of grated cheddar cheese into the pie crust by tossing it in with the flour before you add your butter or shortening to the crust recipe; cut back slightly on the amount of fat you use.

Cut about 9-ish peeled and cored apples into large chunks and toss with 1/3 cup brown sugar; 2-3 good shakes of cinnamon; 1 1/2 good shakes of allspice; a healthy pinch of nutmeg; and a sprinkle of cardamom if you have it. Pour into the bottom pie crust, add a couple tablespoons of butter in pea-sized pieces across the top (optional),cover with the top crust and bake at 450 for ten minutes before reducing the oven temperature to 350 and baking another 35-40 minutes.

Or, perhaps you want a dessert that you can make ahead of time so you don’t have to worry about it at the same time as you’re making everything else. My mom used to make a really good pound cake and drizzle it with a simple icing. Because she baked it in a bundt pan, there was always a certain amount of icing that fell into the center of the cake and around the outside edges. Your uncle Lew (my grandfather) then instituted a policy very popular among my siblings and me of scraping up the extra icing onto the cut pieces of cake for a little extra sweetness.

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (feel free to substitute a liqueur of your choice)
• 1 cup butter,softened
• 1 cup sour cream
• 3 eggs

Combine all ingredients and blend with electric mixer at medium speed, scraping bowl often. When everything is well combined (about 3 minutes of mixing), pour batter into greased and floured bundt pan and bake at 325 F for about 1 hour, or until top springs back when touched lightly in center.

Cool for 10 minutes in pan and then invert onto wire rack to finish cooling.

While cake is still somewhat warm, transfer to serving platter and glaze with mixture of

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla (or liqueur used in cake)
• 2 Tablespoons water for consistency
• My addition to my mom’s recipe: the glaze of one orange or one lemon

You can recycle much of the runoff by spooning it back over the cake, but there will still be plenty for your youthful dining companions to scrape over their individual pieces at dining time. Just make sure you tell them about Lew.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under Advice Column, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.