More Thanksgiving Desserts

Had lots of people over for Thanksgiving this year, so we needed a lot of desserts. First, a blueberry-swirled cheesecake with blueberry topping. I got a lot of comments on people liking the graham-cracker crust on this. It's just graham crackers, butter, and sugar, so I all I can think is that blind-baking it did some fun caramelizing stuff. Next, a butterscotch pie using this recipe, with a couple extra eggs for thickening. Also used the leftover pie crust from a couple posts ago. And for the big finale, individual baked alaskas with pumpkin ice cream and ginger cake. I've ever made nor eaten a baked alaska before, but I was pretty pleased with the results. It was a little harried getting them all meringued up in the middle of the party, but it was a fun experiment, and everyone who had one seemed to enjoy it.

Thanksgiving 2007 Prep

Got a head start on Thanksgiving with a couple desserts: Molasses Cookies (very popular a couple years ago) and Vegan Cranberry Upside Down Cake. They look good, at least. Results to be determined.

Blueberry Pie, New Food Processor

A little pre-Thanksgiving experimentation with a new pie crust recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Instead of being super careful to have frozen solid butter and cutting it into the dough to just the right amount, they worked out a recipe where you can just blend it all to heck, as long as you reserve a little un-buttered flour to toss in at the end. They replace some of the water with vodka, too, to cut down on gluten formation. It was awfully easy, but I can't decide about the results. Nice, but a little dense. I saved half for a Thanksgiving pie next week, so we'll see how it works out a second time. Blueberry because I couldn't resist a giant bag of them at Costco.

Wedding Cake

Finally, FINALLY organized some pictures of Dinah and Eli's wedding cake. Congrats again, you crazy kids! And thanks to everyone who brought a camera. We ended up going with a white cake with alternating layers of lime and pomegranate curds, iced with white chocolate buttercream. The decoration on top is pomegranate arils and sunflowers from the reception. Candied lime slices ring the base of each tier.