The I Hate to Cook Book (33 page)

Sift two cups of confectioners’ sugar with a dash of salt. Then add a teaspoon of vanilla and beat in enough heavy cream to make it the right consistency to spread.

     JELLY FROSTING     

In the top of your double boiler, over boiling water, put

½ cup any kind of jelly

1 unbeaten egg white

dash of salt

and beat this with a rotary beater for about five minutes, or until the jelly has disappeared. Now take it off the heat and keep beating until it stands in stiff peaks, then spread it on the cake.

     MAGGIE’S SUGAR TOPPING     

Bake your cake five minutes less than the recipe says to. Take it out of the oven, but don’t turn the oven off. Let the cake cool just a bit. Then on it spread this mixture:

¼ cup softened butter (½ stick)

cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons heavy cream

chopped nuts or coconut (as much as you want or have)

Set the cake back in the oven for five minutes, or until the frosting bubbles.

Easier still, you can put chocolate-covered peppermints on top of a hot cake, put it back in the oven until they melt a bit, then spread the melted mints around with a knife.

And you can put marshmallows on top of hot, just-baked cupcakes and set them back in the oven—or under the broiler—until the marshmallows brown.

The Cheese Problem
The fancy menu-writers like to say, with a casual wave of the hand, “And for dessert, bring on the cheese tray, with crackers.”

Now, this sounds easy and cheap, but actually it isn’t. That one wedge of sharp Cheddar in your refrigerator isn’t going to fill up a cheese tray. (Remember the gorgeous illustration that accompanied that little suggestion?) In addition to your Cheddar, you’ll need at least an Edam and some good imported Gruyère and Camembert, to make any splash at all; and good cheese is expensive.

Furthermore, the cheese tray doesn’t resemble that picture one bit, once you’ve brought it out and it’s been eaten from. You can’t very gracefully serve it again, and so there you are, up to your bustle in Cheese Balls, Cheese Sandwiches, Macaroni and Cheese, and cheese-topped casseroles. While these things are quite all right, it’s rather a shame to make them from such expensive ingredients.

Then there is another point. Cheese for dessert is rather like
Paradise Lost
in that everyone thinks he
ought
to like it, but still you don’t notice too many people actually curling up with it. I like cheese quite well, myself; but I’ve always remembered one night in a Pullman diner, while I ate my wedge of Roquefort, noticing that there wasn’t another piece of cheese in sight. Chocolate
sundaes, chocolate cake, and fruit pie, but no cheese. I felt pretty smug, I can tell you.

In any case, you want to be sure your guests truly like it before you go to all that expense. After all, you hope they’ll serve you something you like when you go over to their house.

The Fruit Bowl
People who have been gifted with pretty fruit knives often like to serve a fruit bowl as dessert. Often this serves a double purpose, being merely a centerpiece which may also be eaten, should anyone care to.

This is really quite economical, because usually no one eats much of it. If you’ve ever noticed, they don’t plunge for that pineapple and ask for a paring knife, or say, “Oh, goody, papayas!” Usually they settle for a couple of grapes and a cherry, and that’s
it
. Whoever thought up the fruit bowl was a canny lassie indeed.

There are, in addition, a number of other uncomplicated things you can do with fruit:

You can remove the seeds from honey-dew melon halves and fill the hollows with lime sherbet. (This is a good dessert with a curry dinner.)

Or you can fill the hollows with fresh strawberries and diced, slightly sugared fresh pineapple, and over it pour a sauce of vanilla ice cream beaten with a little brandy.

Or you can make

     GRAPE CREAM     

6–8 servings

Mix together

4 cups seedless white grapes

1 cup sour cream

½ cup brown sugar

Refrigerate this at least two hours—overnight if you like—and serve it in sherbet glasses. Good with cookies.

     APPLE CREAM     

4–5 servings

(A good, easy affair to make when there isn’t much fresh fruit around besides apples.)

Grate three-quarters of a cup of raw red apple with skin on, using the medium grater. Then combine it with

¾ cup heavy cream, whipped until stiff

¼ cup sugar

2½ tablespoons lemon juice

pinch of salt

Now put it in an ice-cube tray (with divider removed) and freeze it until it’s solid. If you happen to think of it, beat it once, an hour or so later. Serve it in sherbet glasses.

And speaking of fresh fruit, berries and peaches are good topped with boiled custard (made according to the recipe in your big fat cookbook), flavored with sherry or vanilla, and kept handy in the refrigerator.

Or you can use instant vanilla pudding in the same fashion. Add a little more milk than the package calls for, and flavor it with sherry.

Then there is sour cream. Slightly thinned with sweet cream or milk, it’s a good topping for fresh strawberries, peaches, and raspberries, as well as for fresh or canned peaches and black cherries.