Desserts

I grew up spending my summers on the beach in Capitola, California. One summer I slept on the beach for 66 days in a row. Campfires on the beach were a nightly occurrence, and s'mores were a staple while hanging out by the fire. Regrettably, I don't sleep on the beach much anymore, but I can still bust out my cast iron skillet and make s'mores in my kitchen. This is an easy recipe as long as you keep an eye on the marshmallows and don't let them burn!

We had a Christmas party a few years ago, and someone brought a chocolate pecan pie. It rocked my world. I ended up casually moving it away from the other deserts so no one would eat it. I must have eaten three pieces that night.

Plantains can be a desert or a side dish depending on the sugar content. As desert, warm, caramelized plantains are a perfect topping on vanilla ice cream (similar to apple à la mode). As a side dish, a less sweet version of plantains are the perfect compliment to the spicy seasoning in many Caribbean recipes, including jerk chicken. 

I recently scored a nice cast iron loaf pan the other day, and I couldn't wait to get home and try it out with my banana bread recipe. My mom used to make banana bread all the time when I was a kid. I jazzed up her recipe a few years ago for my kids by adding chocolate chips.

This is another family recipe. Looking at the ingredients, I don't think it's a very old one! My mom learned this from her late sister Peggy. All you have to do is combine the ingredients, pour the batter into a loaf pan, and bake it in the oven. It doesn't get any easier than that! 

I grew up eating this cake at family gatherings. Besides loving the cake, I also remember the unusual looking bundt cake pan with the hole in the middle of it. Bundt pans are actually an Americanized version of a German “bundkuchen” (group cake) pan, served at gatherings in Germany.  In the US, the “t” was added to the word “bundt” pan so that Americans would pronounce “bund” the German way.

This is the recipe that was famously entered by Ella Helfrich in 1966 at the annual Pillsbury Bake Off. She used a bundt pan to bake her ‘Tunnel of Fudge’ recipe. This cake mysteriously develops a "tunnel of fudge" filling as it bakes. She came in second, but her recipe was so popular, it created the market for bundt pans. Nordic Ware received more than 200,000 orders for bundt pans within days of the competition. I bake this cake using an old cast iron "bundkuchen" pan from Germany I found on eBay.

Over the holiday's, my daughter Eimile was home from college and pushed hard for this recipe. It took a few tries to adapt this recipe to cast iron, but we eventually got it right.  A perfect recipe for my Wagner #2 3-cup muffin pan!

I ran across this recipe on Cooks.com as I was researching traditional gem pan recipes rom the 1860's. This quick and easy recipe was perfect for my Griswold #1 gem pan. 

I came up with this recipe based on the Blueberry Gem Muffins recipe. I substituted lemon zest and Meyers lemon juice, but couldn’t bring myself to take out the blueberries. Lemons and blueberries just seem to go together. 

My daughter Eimile picked out this recipe from a food blog. We used a Griswold #1 gem pan instead of the mini tart pans. They don't come out quite as pretty as when you use the mini tart pans, but we were really happy how they turned out. The shortbread crust is the way to go, and making the lemon curd from scratch is well worth the effort!