Desserts at home

[JFLinLA]

I am the "family baker" for the big get togethers. For everyday, I would make dessert always if time allowed but, alas, work, kids, etc. You get the idea. The challenge at home is that hubby can't eat sugar though I do make a mean apple pie without sugar. Usually several of these during the fall. The kids, of course eat dessert but kid #1 is more picky. Kid #2 would eat anything. Except for the apple pie, there are generally few fruit desserts at our house. I rarely make cakes or big things anymore for the reasons stated elsewhere here. I do enjoy putting the time in to have things taste and look great but it really galls me when people barely eat it. Lots of cookies and other things people can eat with their hands -- I'm enjoying Flo Braker's Miniatures book at the moment.

[britcook]

I'm not sure about ceding to the professionals but I suspect that many people have cut down or given up on desserts because of their excess sugar/calorie/fat/carb counts. We normally just have a simply prepared fruit dessert, mixed red fruit with a splash of framboise, pineapple and mango with kirsch, that sort of thing. Baking and chocolate work tends to be kept for dinner parties.

[alacarte]

In the latest Malawry dispatch, she makes an excellent point that everyone orders an entree, but by comparison, not everyone orders dessert:

The dessert menu is especially tempting to change, because if none of the options appeal to the customer then they simply won't order a dessert (as opposed to the entrees, which nearly every customer orders). On the dessert menu, the lowest-selling dessert initially was the banana-pineapple strudel with banana ice cream and peanut tuile. One day, it vanished from the dessert menu. Robin has played with a few ideas to replace it, including a banana chiffon cake, which she runs as specials to see if they'll generate interest. She wants to replace the strudel with something else that has banana as the primary flavor. This principle is true of most menu items that are switched out: there should always be a banana dessert, always be a lamb dish, always be mashed potatoes somewhere on the menu.