SO WE’VE COME TO THE END—AND TO THE BIG DESSERTS. These are probably not right for a weeknight . . . although who knows? Maybe you’re prone to champagne on Tuesday nights. (In which case, we’re jealous.) If so, you’re probably the type who’ll make even more layer cakes, vacherins, and steamed puddings than we do. (In which case, we’re more jealous.)
We start off with five big layer cakes, every one of them a double-decker affair fit for a cake stand. We include both American (uncooked) and French (cooked) buttercreams and even make a bow to that old, Southern favorite, seven-minute frosting. Although most of these desserts can be saved a day or two in the fridge, they’ll have suffered from exposure and time. There’s really no way to sugarcoat this news: these desserts are best on the day you make them, with just enough time for the frosting to cool to room temperature.
With one exception (a creamy frozen yogurt), most of the accompanying frozen desserts are a bit more, um, ornate, too: modeled on Nutella or on hard sauce, laced with sour cream or Marshmallow Fluff. But by now you’ve already seen dozens of other recipes for ice creams, gelati, and the like. You could—no, should—mix and match. Think of the pairings like wine and food: match sour and earthy to sweet, savory and nutty to complex with bitter undertones (chocolate, ahem).
We end this section with three specialty desserts: a rich jelly roll/frozen custard combo, some pretty spectacular vacherins (or meringue shells), and a holiday steamed pudding with a frozen “sauce.” In fact, those vacherins and their attendant Blackberry Sour Cream Sherbet were the first recipes we tested for this book. It was a warm summer evening. We were having a barbecue dinner with friends on our outdoor dining porch. We finished the meal with this sweet/sour combo just as a luna moth landed on one of the screens. It seemed a good omen for the book. In fact, it’s hard to describe how happy it made us to spend a year bringing sixty à la mode pairings to the table. It’s a sweet life. We wish the same for you.
