It's been awhile, but last night there was pouting in the Messy household because there was nothing in the house for dessert. No cookies, no pie, no cookies, no cake.....nothing. This is sometimes a Big Deal, because The Boy is a dessert person. He doesn't snarf down sweets during the day, he just likes having a bit of dessert after dinner.

Now we've been hitting the farmer's market every week all summer. I've made pies, we've made a ton of jam and we're going to make pickles. In the fridge right this second there are beautiful ripe Saturn peaches, white nectarines and sweet cherries. All lovely fruit. I've been making a pig of myself. So, when The Boy plaintively moans, "Is there anything for dessert?" I respond, "Have a piece of fruit."

This is apparently inadequate. I have to confess that I do avoid making desserts. I know myself. If it's in the house, I'll eat it. I don't need to be eating a lot of sweets because they inevitably end up in places that don't need to be getting any bigger. I make desserts rarely as a result.

Sigh. So here are the questions:

1. What is your favorite dessert?

2. Which one do you make most often?

3. How often is there dessert in your house.

MessyONE:

1. What is your favorite dessert?

2. Which one do you make most often?

3. How often is there dessert in your house.

1. I really enjoy cheesecake (the moist kind, as if it's a pie versus the taller, dryer cake-like version. And I do make a mean one!). A good one doesn't require any topping at all.

2. See #1. It's pretty much the only dessert I make from scratch with any regularity, although I can bake others. I do enjoy "making" a bowl of Moosetracks icecream, though. :-)

3. Too often. If I had my way, there'd never be dessert, save for when guests were over for a meal, and then there'd only be enough for that meal. No leftovers. Sadly, I don't have my way, so I have places that don't need to get any bigger as well (and mine are already too big!)

My dad is a dessert person too, even if it was just a graham cracker with cake frosting, he has to have something sweet after dinner. But now he is diabetic, so his sweets are now sugar free.

I have problems with my bloodsugar, so sugar is a no-no. :(

1. What is your favorite dessert?

Use to be pie ala mode, now just coffee & a cigarette

2. Which one do you make most often?
both

3. How often is there dessert in your house.

Rarely & when there is, I don't get any **sob**

According to my wife, it's not dessert unless it's chocolate. I don't go quite that far, but if offered fruit for dessert I would wonder where the crust & sauce are. Fruit's great, but it's salad, not dessert.

To the questions:

1. Pie. I have become a pie connoisseur and somewhat of an expert over the years. It all started when my mom would make everything but pie: apple crisp, peach cobbler, pumpkin custard (basically pumpkin pie without the crust!) I love all of those, too, but when I would ask for pie, I'd be told it's too much work. "No, it's not," I'd say. "It's totally worth it!" Mom's response: "Then you make it." So I did.

Currently blueberry and peach are leading the pack, but I love cream pies, too. Did a strawberry-rhubarb for the first time this spring and it was awesome. Blackberries are great, but almost gone now. I bake apple all through the fall, and pumpkin in the winter. Occasionally a lemon meringue - the one exception to my wife's chocolate rule - or key lime.

2. I probably make cookies more often than pie, but it's close.

3. Four or five nights a week. Mostly just a dish of ice cream, but pie at least once a month, and cookies every couple of weeks, as the spirit moves, or the wife & kids request.

You missed cherry pie season! I made four kickass sour cherry pies this year - they were amazing. I don't make "pie filling" like most of the recipes tell you to, either. I think it kills the taste of the fruit. What I did do was whisk together 1 cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon corn starch, 1 1/2 tablespoons of tapioca, dumped it onto the fruit (already in the plate) and baked it for about an hour - maybe a little more. LOVE that pie.

We've already made blackberry, strawberry, raspberry, black raspberry and apricot jams. We do it differently, though. Most recipes call for 6 or 7 cups of sugar to two quarts of fruit, we only add a maximum of two cups. It's PERFECT. I don't like candy on toast, dammit, I want fruit!

I'll have to make chocolate pudding tonight.

delicioso and one or two is very satisfying.

1. German Chocolete cake.

2. Don't make dessert

3. except for occasional candy bars and fat free fig Newtons, not very often.

KA

suger is a poison.

Had to bring up cherries, didn't you? I can't find sour cherries here at all. Occasionally there are cans or jars of them at ridiculous prices, but never fresh. Sweet black cherries, sure, but no sour pie cherries. I grew up in Michigan and I miss them.

For the jam, I'm glad you mentioned cutting the sugar. I suggested this once and was told the jam would not set properly. Now that I have another data point I'm going to try it.

Had a rice pudding after lunch at a new kabob place. On the house. Love it!

1. What is your favorite dessert?

Pecan pie

2. Which one do you make most often?

I don't usually make desserts. Too complicated. They never come out right.

3. How often is there dessert in your house.

Not often. I'm always on a diet and the boyfriend doesn't really have a sweet tooth.

and it helps that my study partner from college owns 30 acres of Pecan trees and sends me a big bag of shelled meats every Christmas.

With regard to #2, I once tried to make a pecan pie, but instead of 2 tablespoons of floor, I put in 2 cups. Lousy pie, but for a pecan cake in a pie shell, it was pretty darn good.

KA

no, I've never been able to recreate it.

Oh, what a coincidence- you mentioned nectarines... my husband took two last night, cut them in half, pitted, filled the hollows with minced pistachios, butter, touch of cinnamon and cardamon, baked. They were then served warm with creme fraiche with a little sugar.

1. What is your favorite dessert? Most desserts are too sweet. I guess I prefer a little glass of armagnac or scotch after dinner. Fresh fruit is good too. Cherries are the best right now, love kumquats in the winter, etc.

2. Which one do you make most often? Statement above about sweetness notwithstanding, we make baklava a lot. People like it and are impressed with the homemade version.

3. How often is there dessert in your house. Not often. There's just the two of us.

-tenar

Now this is a poll that will get everyone drooling! I too like cheescake and cookies. But here in the south we make lots of Pound cakes and Red Velvet with cream cheese icing. Carrot cake is big at my house along with Key lime pie. I have 5 pecan trees, so we use those a lot. And homemade ice cream is big in the south during the summer.

My favorite- can't say one is better than the other

Most often- cakes (they feed more people when you have guests)

How often- we try to watch the sugar too. Lots of baking during the holidays-occasionally during the hot summer months.

We're in Chicago, so we get a lot of Michigan tree fruit at the farmer's markets. I'm guessing sour cherries can't be shipped because they're just too soft. They'd be into being wine before they got to their destination.

As to the jam - we've done the versions where you cook the fruit to death to pull out the natural pectins and decided that the cooking just murders the taste of the fresh fruit. Now we use commercial pectin (I buy it online at Amazon), and it makes all the difference. The maximum time you have to boil the fruit is three minutes, and the amount of sugar doesn't matter in the least. It ALWAYS sets just fine. There's even a version you can buy that doesn't require sugar at all. Beware that last one - I would cut the amount in half. That blackberry jam we made last weekend might well bounce out of the jars.

We also don't pressure can jam. It's too time consuming and who wants to heat up the kitchen? I decided to go old school and pour paraffin on top of the jam in the jars while it's warm. If you reef on the lids to tighten them, the jars seal anyway as everything cools, but the paraffin protects the jam anyway - you don't have to worry about it.

I love rice pudding. With dried cranberries, a little Grand Marnier and a bit of whipped cream....In the winter.

I can't take it any more!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All these posts about sweet desserts! I'm about ready to eat my monitor screen, the cravings are so bad. I could rape a chocolate easter bunny right now. OMG.

Well yeah, who doesn't like a bit of dessert after dinner. Oh wait....you're talking about food? Nevermind.

Anyway, I like the Oreo Pies, pretty much never actually make dessert, and always have store-bought cookies or ice cream.

I grow both sweet (Bing) and tart (Stella) cherries and had a great crop this year. I couldn't freeze any because we ate them all and those tart Stella cherries made superlative pies.

My Santa Rosa plums are ripe right now and I give most of them away to my neighbors. I let them do all the hard work of jamming and they bring me jars of the results. Next will be the Fantasia nectarines and I have a peach tree groaning under the weight of Elbertas the size of baby's heads. Those I freeze in individual slices in the subzero and then transfer to gallon bags to be used all winter. There's nothing like warm peach pie with homemade vanilla bean ice cream in front of the fireplace to remind you of summertime.

I've been making a lot of rustic fruit tarts lately (galettes); where you put the crust on a sheet and fold it up around 2 cups of fruit, leaving the center open. I just did a plum and almond. For this I do use the tapioca as thickener. Since there's just two of us, this is better than a pie. And since I'm the only one of the two that eats it, it's better for me.