Day 2: desserts that will make you want to ditch your resolutions
Tomorrow is my dad's birthday, and we got together today to celebrate. I ended up making two desserts: tapioca pudding and trifle. My dad's favorite dessert is tapioca pudding, but that is not necessarily a crowd pleaser - at least not with most of my family. (I inherited the tapioca-loving gene, though, and Pat likes it as well.) I have made tapioca pudding a few times before with disappointing results, which is indeed disappointing when you spend 45 minutes straight stirring something over a hot stove. Anyway, I tried a new tapioca pudding recipe yesterday from 101 Cookbooks, and it is a winner. So totally worth the effort. And thanks to modern technology, I watched a couple short movies on my laptop, which made the 45 minutes of stirring go by in a flash. It also helps that the novelty of cooking with our new-to-me Wolf oven/range has not lost its novelty.
Not that it's all that much to look at, but here is tapioca perfection in a glass.
Speaking of which, hey Internet peoples, do any of you know what type of glass this is? My grandma gave me a set of 8 of them, and I lost the note she gave me telling me what they are. They're small; they hold about 4 ounces. Juice glass? Cordial glass? I don't know my glassware.
Back to the trifle. For this one I have a tried-and-true recipe that I modified from my Aunt Marianne's original recipe. Hers is homemade pound cake, homemade custard, homemade whipped cream, raspberries, Mandarin oranges, sliced almonds, and sometimes wine, depending on the audience. I make a little lighter version and also cut some corners. I use store-bought angel food cake (which is a huge bastardization of trifle - I know - but I just find the pound cake to be too heavy, personally), custard from a mix (shame on me), homemade whipped cream, raspberries, Mandarin oranges, sliced almonds, and I never ever, ever, EVER let any extra liquid near it. I can't get into soggifying the cake. Soggy is bad.
Lemme know if you want the recipe (the proper one or my little bastard recipe).
Pretty.
Happy Jan 2, peoples.
Fran
Comments
#1 Sherry!
Thanks, Courtney's mom! I am shocked to think my grandma ever owned sherry glasses! Maybe I will have a sherry party. Whatever they are, I think they're super cute. Thanks for suggestion. Aren't you glad you took that class in table settings?? I'm sure it comes in handy ALL of the time. Happy New Year to you too!
#2 I think that your glasses are
I think that your glasses are sherry glasses. Bigger than a cordial glass, but not as big as a goblet. I once took a Home Ec class in table settings, long ago, at a time when that was considered a good way for a high school girl to spend a half-hour of her school day. Happy New Year!
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