I like just about any kind of bread pudding. Not much into pies or crusts.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Is this a what are you planning to make thing? If so, I'm hoping to make sufganiot for Chanuka. They're like small jelly doughnuts with more filly than American ones, and it's more like real preserves than pastry jelly. I might make sfingi, instead, however, which are fried sweetened ricotta balls stacked like a croquembouche and drizzled with honey.

What I want to make is a Pavlova, but with everything else I have to do, I'm not fussing with meringue. :)

I'm going to make a Sicilian Cassata cake for Tuesday for birthday dessert (we're going out to lunch and coming back for dessert). I've never made it before and it looks good and a bit different.

I'm also going to make some cranberry pecan rugalach because I'm using the recipe in my newspaper column and I have to take a picture of them. I'll give a box to the birthday girls.

I would like to try making monts blancs, but I sure don't plan to actually do them.

Gluten free turtle brownies, maybe gluten free brookies.

Every summer we're invited to spend an afternoon at an old friend's house, and his wife mentioned that the only dessert she eats is sfogliatelle. I didn't know what that was, looked it up, and decided that would be a nice challenge. Might be best to do a practice run before my next invite.

Every year I say that I'm going to make pan forte for Christmas, and every year I don't. Probably won't this year either, but some day I'm going to, just because I haven't ever done it.

This year my must have cookies are going to be alfajores and Mrs. Brandt's date filled cookies. Two very different but very delicious cookies that I didn't make last year, although I love them both equally.

Annie

Creme brûlée and carrot cake both tempt me but not enough to make them - only from a restaurant menu. I hate working with flour and sugar..

I'm making torrone soon, it's been too long.

fstp, I'd like to know how they turn out. I looked them up and I could happily make that the only dessert I ever eat too.

I bake biscotti every year. Friends and family have come to expect a bag! I use David Lebovitz's recipe for Chocolate Biscotti.

I have made both of the pies I spoke of the butterscotch and the Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie, but want to make them up again soon. So many nice sounding goodies you all would like to make. Many I have never heard of!

Sue

Indian Pudding - everyone loves it, but I always think of it too late

Wow, all of you are ambitious bakers. I will make a mincemeat pie for Christmas, and this year will be the first time I make a real gingerbread house with the kids. Wish me luck. I'm afraid it will become a gingerbread lean-to.

rockypointdog, my girls and I used to make a gingerbread house every year. We called it a "gingerbread hovel", far more frosting and decoration than gingerbread. It generally stayed fully assembled just long enough to take a picture, then it fell down and we ate it. One year I got serious and made a gingerbread train with gingerbread cars and gingerbread circus animals. It was really cute, so cute no one wanted to eat it and after Christmas we threw it away. I never did it again, we liked the "hovels" so much, LOL.

Now the grandkids are getting old enough for gingerbread constructions, maybe we'll get back into making the hovels!

Have fun with yours.....

Annie

Dyhgarden, I looked up David Lebowitz's Chocolate Biscotti. They look terrific. I want to make them. How hard are they, though? Tooth breakers?

I haven't tried Lebovitz's biscotti, but I recently made a selection of biscotti for dessert at a wine tasting fundraiser with an Italian theme and found the most delicious, perfect chocolate biscotti recipe. I wanted one without nuts, as the other two I was making both had nuts. People went crazy for these. They were perfectly crisp, not crumbly and not too hard and really chocolatey. I think I used mini chocolate chips...

Double chocolate biscotti

Thanks, Olychick, they look great too.

The chocolate biscotti look really good, but I dunk mine in tea instead of coffee, and that might not be ideal. I don't drink milk either, and so I'm wondering what else I could dunk them into. Maybe a mint tea. Is there a wine you would recommend? Maybe I could dunk them into Frangelico or Amaretto!

seagrass: Here's a very easy, no-bake lemon creme brulee recipe for you to try -- always a crowd favorite. Dessert sacrilege, but I even skip the blow torch sugar topping part. The dessert is sweet enough without more sugar.

Thanks so much for posting, Olychick! The crowd back home is chomping at the bit for royal iced Christmas cookies, but I'm just a nervous wreck transporting several hundred of them -- never mind my fear that all the airplane's overhead bins will be full, and they'll demand that I check my duffels of cookies. :/ Biscotti would be perfect.

Lars, the recipe I posted requires no dunking. We were eating them at a wine tasting; no dunking happening there.

Thanks, Oly. I've heard of people dunking them in wine, but if they do not need it, so much the better. I usually make chocolate crinkle cookies when I make chocolate cookies, but this would be a nice variation.

I made a Torta di Mele al Burro for Thanksgiving because I have a lot apples, and I'll probably make an apple pie next. If I feel up to it, I'll make an apple strudel. We haven't eaten all of the apple cake yet, however.

Since I can't remember the last time I made it, I'm going to make Trifle for Christmas dinner dessert.

TY for the suggestion, annie. However, I'm usually baking-and-icing-and-dragee'ing right up until a day or two before we're headed to the airport. Perhaps if I'm better organized during future holiday seasons, shipping would be the best option. :)

Yes, shipping definitely takes advance planning, but it works pretty well, as long as the person who picks up the box doesn't decide to "test" before you get there!

Annie

I'm going to make some canneles -- just picked up a mould on BF.

I want to make some biscotti now and can't decide between the recipe I have always used and loved, Alice Medrichs double chocolate one or trying a new one.

The main difference is hers has butter, one less egg and no chocolate chips.

Such hard decisions!

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder; preferably imported
2 teaspoons instant espresso OR coffee powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Combine
flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking powder and salt in a
medium bowl and mix together thoroughly with a whisk or fork. Set aside.


Using back of a large spoon, in a mixing bowl or with a mixer,
beat butter and sugar together until soft and creamy. Mix in eggs and
vanilla. Add flour mixture and stir just until all ingredients are
moistened. Add walnuts, mixing with hands, if necessary.

Divide
dough in half. Shape each half into a long, flat oblong loaf, about
10-inches long, 4-inches wide and 3/4-inch high on a cookie sheet lined
with parchment paper or greased and floured.

Bake in center of
preheated 300 degree F oven 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick
inserted in center comes out dry. Cool 5 to 10 minutes.

Transfer
loaf carefully to a cutting board. Using a long serrated knife, cut
loaf on diagonal into slices about 3/8-inch wide. Lay slices, cut side
down, on cookie sheet.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until surface of
cookies feels dry and crusty. Place cookie sheet on a rack and cool
cookies completely before stacking or storing.

Click here to view: http://www.recipelink.com/msgbrd/board_1/2014/JAN/11115.html

Olychick, years ago my friend and I decided to make double chocolate biscotti. We're both chocolate fans, but our husbands, not so much and they kept saying yuck? Guess who couldn' stop eating them.

Madonna

The one dessert that still intrigues me is the Italian pastry 'Sfogliatella / Sfogliatelle.'

I've worked with puff pastry and other flaky doughs in the past, so it wouldn't be intimidating. But it seems very time consuming. And I intend to take a stab at the pretty, shell-shaped dessert . . . one of these days.

Sol

Reporting back on the double chocolate biscotti (thanks, Olychick!): they turned out great (crisp/crunchy, but not tooth-breaking hard)! DH gladly served as my tester today, and his comment was, "They taste great, but kinda dry: maybe don't cook them as long?" Ugh -- biscotti, man, they're BISCOTTI! I'm going to try a couple of almond recipes tomorrow so I can gift 'black and white' versions to family this year. Question is, how do I label these so family don't think I'm giving them over baked cookies? :/ (They'd be too polite to say anything.)

javiwa -- perhaps include a note giving the history of biscotti (i.e. the twice-baked part) to explain the texture? I had a good chuckle over your husband's comment. =)

TY for the suggestion, roxanna7. I could end up insulting those who DO know what biscotti are (I may be on the receiving end of a few sarcastic DUHHHHs!) -- but, hey, they're getting treats! :)

If DH's first comment had you chuckling, this next bit will send you rolling: when I mentioned the possibility of labelling the biscotti, he said, "Nah...unnecessary: everyone knows what biscotti is." ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELF?! 8-|

About the only desserts I'd like to make would be tiramisu, and Mom's raspberry cobbler. I've lost the recipe for the latter, and it isn't raspberry season anyway. I've never made tiramisu, but someday.

I'm not really a fan of most desserts, and will generally settle for ice cream. Or, for another helping of asparagus, or something.

(That was the joke at the work lunch cafeteria.. I'd get up from the table, announce that I was getting dessert... and come back with asparagus or spinach.)

Some day --- I am going to make an honest-to-goodness Austrian apple strudel. The _Joy of Cooking_ has a recipe that looks promising. Ken's deli in Back Bay Boston (circa 1970) used to sell slices of real strudel. I would use a tad tart(er) apples -- I think. I don't want the phyllo pastry short cut (ATK).

I have a good recipe for hazelnut biscotti and almond-anise biscotti. Yum. Not made biscotti in a while.

I would love to make flourless chocolate cake/tort. I need a recipe. I did try an unbelievably complex one and it was terrible.

For a getaway trip to the mountains one year we had a fabulous brandied banana bread pudding that was out of this world good. And I don't really care for banana bread usually. It had a sauce with it. I went to their website and they still serve it but won't part with the recipe. I'd love to make it, tried one time with not very good results.

I went out to eat for a work function to a fancy restaurant and they served pumpkin bread pudding. It was superb. I have a great recipe and would love to try it, but so far I haven't been able to come up with an occasion to make it. If I just made it for SO and I it would take us forever to eat it all.

I made an apple cider pound cake in a bundt pan for Thanksgiving.

My niece, who is a chef, and her family loved it.

I am debating on whether making it for Christmas or making a pumpkin cheesecake.