Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Finish Off Your Delicious Meal With One of These Fabulous Desserts!

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The perfect ending to a delicious meal is without a doubt a fabulous dessert. The recipes in this article will help you pull off a dessert to be remembered by family, friends, coworkers, etc. Parfait Pumpkin Blocks are tasty and make a pretty presentation. You know we eat with our eyes as well as our taste buds! It can be made a day or two ahead of time and kept frozen until 20 minutes before serving! Or combine your love of cheesecake and of pie into one dessert with this Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake Pie.
PARFAIT PUMPKIN BLOCKS
CRUST:
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
Mix the above ingredients together until well blended. Press into the bottom of a 9-inch square baking pan.
FILLING:
1 can (16-oz) pumpkin
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
dash of ground cloves
1 qt softened vanilla ice cream
1 cup heavy cream, whipped
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup toasted chopped pecans
In a mixing bowl combine the pumpkin, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Fold in the softened ice cream. Pour the filling over the crust in the pan. Cover and freeze for at least 2 hours. Remove from freezer and cut into squares or 'blocks'.
TOPPING:
Before serving, sweeten the whipped cream with the powdered sugar and cinnamon. Place a dollop atop each block. Sprinkle the toasted pecans over the whipped cream.
NOTE: This is a great make ahead dessert. It can be kept in the freezer until 20 minutes before serving time. Allow to thaw during that time before cutting to serve.
CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY CHEESECAKE PIE
1 chocolate ready pie crust
2 (3-oz each) cream cheese bricks, softened
1 can (14-oz) sweetened condensed milk
1 large egg
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup fresh raspberries
2 squares (1-oz each) semi-sweet baking chocolate
1/4 cup whipping cream
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
With an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese until fluffy; gradually beat in the sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Add the egg, lemon juice, and vanilla; mix well.
Arrange the raspberries over the bottom of the pie crust. Slowly pour the cream cheese mixture over the raspberries.
Bake the pie for 30 to 35 minutes, at 350 degrees, until the center is almost set. Allow to cool.
In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the baking chocolate in the whipping cream. Cook, stirring, until thickened and smooth. Remove from the heat. Spread this chocolate glaze over the cheesecake pie. Chill until serving time.
Just before serving, garnish each slice with two to three fresh raspberries, if desired.
Refrigerate any leftovers.
Enjoy!
For more of Linda's dessert recipes visit her blog at http://ladybugssweettreats.blogspot.com.
For her diabetic dessert recipes visit her at http://diabeticenjoyingfood.blogspot.com.
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Cake-Baking Secrets for Perfect Cakes

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Everybody loves cake, and it's even better when you can make it yourself. If you're completely new to cooking, learning to bake a cake is a simple and fun project to start your new hobby with. If you get really good at it, you might even make a career out of it. The tips in this article will help improve your cake-baking skills.
Pre-made cake mixes tend to be heavy. This not only makes it difficult to mix them, but can also make the finished cake feel heavy in your stomach. To avoid this undesirable heaviness, simply get some meringue powder. You can buy this powder at a baking goods supply store; some supermarkets also carry it. Mix the powder into the cake mix to lighten the mix's weight.
In addition to wanting your cake mix to be light, you don't want it to be too dry. Here's a secret for making moist cakes: use unsweetened applesauce in place of oil. Unsweetened applesauce is also healthier than oil, making your cake slightly more attractive to guests who are watching their diet.
Many cakes not only call for wet ingredients such as eggs, but sticky ingredients such as honey. Sticky ingredients can be messy and hard to work with. They stick to the measuring spoon, the mixing bowl and your fingers, making it hard to mix your cake batter properly. To avoid a sticky mess, spray measuring cups and spoons with non-stick cooking spray before you start pouring honey or other sticky ingredients into them. You can also spray mixing blades with this spray to make it easier to mix your cake.
In addition to sticky ingredients, you may have to use cold ingredients such as sticks of butter or eggs. Butter sticks can be as difficult to work with as honey if they are too cold; they are stiff, nearly unbreakable and don't mix into your cake batter easily. To avoid problems with butter and other cold ingredients, take them out of the refrigerator before beginning your cake. If your butter is still too cold to work with by the time you're ready for it, put it in the microwave for ten to fifteen seconds to soften it.
An undercooked cake will fall apart, not taste right and may contain bacteria such as salmonella that can make people sick. Sometimes your cake can look baked on the outside but still need to be cooked on the inside. When your oven timer rings, remove the cake from the oven, but don't turn the oven off yet. Check whether the cake is done by inserting a toothpick into it and pulling the toothpick out again. If the toothpick comes out clean, your cake is baked on the inside. You may have to put the cake back for three to five additional minutes before testing it again if your toothpick doesn't come out clean.
Cake baking takes patience. Once the cake comes out of the oven, you've only completed the first step. Now you have to frost it. Frosting cakes allows you to express your creativity; you can use colors and designs to express a mood or simply make something beautiful. However, you can't frost the cake while it's hot; the cake may crumble or the frosting may melt if you try to do so. Wait a couple of hours or even overnight for the cake to cool completely before frosting it.
Baking a cake is a fairly straightforward process. Simply mix the ingredients, bake the cake and frost it once it cools. Once you get used to baking cakes, you can experiment with different types of cakes. You may enjoy baking a cake in a particular shape, such as a Mickey Mouse cake for a child's birthday party, or making layer cakes that have frosting between each layer of cake. Whether you're making your first simple cake or are a cake expert, you're sure to impress your friends and family if you follow the cake-baking tips in this article.
Julia D. Johnson loves to bake and decorate cakes. It is a passion she learned from her grandmother, and she is now passing it on to her children. To learn more about decorating cakes, visit her website now at: Cake Decorating Ideas.
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Christmas Gingerbread Cookies Make the World Go Round!

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It is that time of year. The most joyous time of year. Christmas and all the decadence that comes with it! In my household Christmas also means cookies! My husband and I love to bake, and Christmas cookies make for the best baking around. One of the most popular Christmas cookies in existence is the gingerbread cookie.
Growing up, my mother was not much of a baker. I do not remember loads of cookies or fresh-baked bread to devour during the holidays. However, when I married my husband I took on his family's tradition of baking. On our first Christmas together, when we were still dating, my husband took me to his home where he was still living with his parents, for a day of Christmas baking. His mother did this every year and this year he invited me! I was so excited. It is truly a good and bad thing. Good because I love spending the time in the kitchen, but bad because of the extra calories. However, Christmas only comes once a year, so I believe calories shouldn't matter!
We started the day with making snowball cookies and then moved on to haystacks. After we completed those came the Christmas gingerbread cookies! We made the dough, rolled it out, and cut it into various shapes. We had: gingerbread men, gingerbread women, candy canes, Christmas trees, angels and more.
After we baked the cookies, came the fun part, decorating the cookies! With tubes of frosting, candy bits and more we decorated the cookies and had so much fun. That is the wonderful thing about Christmas gingerbread cookies, it really is the cookie that the whole family can help make. Children and kids love to help in the kitchen and I truly cannot think of a better way than decorating Christmas cookies.
Christmas gingerbread cookies recipes are readily available. I have seen some of my favorite chefs, Paula Deen and Ina Garten, make them on their Food Network Shows. If you look on the internet you can find thousands of these recipes readily available.
Since I first started that tradition years ago of making Christmas gingerbread cookies with my husband, I now look forward to it every year. We both relish in the opportunity to make cookies and decorate them together. It wouldn't be Christmas time without it. It has become almost important and fundamental as putting up the tree, wrapping the presents and driving around and looking at Christmas lights. Now that is saying a lot!
Christine is a professional writer who provides information on Christmas gingerbread cookies for All Christmas Cookies - your premiere online resource for Christmas cookie recipes!
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