Food for Thought - Pre Production - My Ten Desserts

As mentioned awhile back, my teammates and I are suppose to pick at least 10 european desserts each that we will later share with one another during the next meeting. While I am not exactly an expert when it comes to exotic sweet stuff. Based on the look and the fact that they are not macaroons, here are my top ten picks... for tonight.

1. Blackberry Slump

A cousin of the cobbler, this dessert is served at the Four Swallows restaurant on  Bainbridge Island, Washington.

2. Pizzelle

A crisp waffle cookie, known to be one of the oldest cookie recipes around, these large crisp Italian cookies are made with a pizzelle iron.

3. Cannoli

Meaning "little tube", Cannoli are an Italian pastry that originated in Sicily and are a staple of Sicilian cuisine, they consist of tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough, filled with a sweet, creamy filling usually containing ricotta. They come in a variety of sizes.

4. Torrone Semifreddo

An Italian nougat made with honey, egg whites, sugar, and nuts. It can be soft and chewy or hard and crunchy. The recipe here calls for folding crunch store-bought nougat into whipped cream and honey, then freezing the mixture.

What emerges is a wonderful ice-cream-like dessert!

5. Marzipan Tart with Fruit Tumble

An Italian dessert, mixing together an almond paste mixture with a crown with colorful, yummy looking fruits will make it pretty hard to resist.

6. Chocolate Mousse Cake

Always a classic, this rich flour less chocolate cake is made with melted chocolate and instant coffee powder, baked in a springform pan. Garnish each slice with fresh whipped cream and a toasted almond, otherwise you might get a little nauseas from the sheer richness of the cake.

7. Raspberry Tiramisu

Always a classic, this rich flour less chocolate cake is made with melted chocolate and instant coffee powder, baked in a springform pan. Garnish each slice with fresh whipped cream and a toasted almond, otherwise you might get a little nauseas from the sheer richness of the cake.

8. Heaven and Hell Cake

A rich, multilayered dessert of angel food and devil's food cake, peanut butter mousse, and milk chocolate ganache should be frozen before icing is added and refrigerated before it's sliced.

9. Neapolitan Cake

What appeals to me about this one are the numerous ways this cake can be presented. Very much like those rainbow cakes you see all over the place lately.

10. Creme Brulee

Last but not least, this french dessert consists of a rich custard base topped with a contrasting layer of hard caramel. The custard base is traditionally flavoured with vanilla, but can also be flavoured with a variety other other flavourings.

Normally, the sugar that is sprinkled onto the custard, will be caramelised under a salamander broiler or with a butane torch.

Honorable Mention:

Cherry Jubilee

A dessert dish made with cherries and liquor, it is then subsequently flambeed, and commonly served as a sauce over vanilla ice cream.

The recipe is generally credited to Auguste Escoffier, who prepared the dish for one of Queen Victoria's Jubilee celebrations, widely though to be the Diamond Jubilee n 1897.