Just Desserts

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen, and you know in my humble opinion, you can never have too much of a good thing

And in this case, that means dessert. Today, I'm going to be fixing a few confections that are just the perfect ending to any meal

First up is a decadent Charlotte Russe, and then it's on to my ooey-gooey toffee butter cake

And finally, my sweet Southwest Georgia pound cake, where nobody does it better

So stick around, y'all, cause today is like a dessert dream come true

So the first dessert I'm making today is called Charlotte Ruth's

It's an old, old dessert that's been around for years and years and years

It's very much like a trifle. Now I'm going to put a fourth of a cup of milk in my saucepan

and while that's just warming up, I've got some water here, and I've got a plain gelatin here

and we're going to just sprinkle that gelatin into that water, and I'm going to let that bloom

We're going to take this off, and I'm going to add my gelatin to the milk

and give that a stir, and it's already thickening up that milk

All right, I've got that dissolved, and I'm just going to sit that over here, And then we're gonna move on over here to our egg whites

And these eggs are at room temperature. You always wanna start with room temperature eggs

They just work better. Alright, so we're just gonna dump our whites into here

And then you'll wanna save your yolks for another dish. Okay, and this is our last egg

Alright, now I'm gonna put these aside and save these for another recipe

Alright, now we're gonna beat these until they form stiff but not dry peaks

Alright, that looks like nice stiff peaks. Alright, I'm gonna move this to the side and bring in this other bowl

And in this bowl I'm going to beat two cups of heavy whipping cream

And I'm going to add a cup of granulated white sugar. And a teaspoon of vanilla

And I'm going to beat this until it forms stiff peaks also

and then I'm gonna fold these two things together along with our milk and our

gelatin and our water. Okay, this is starting to thicken up a little

All right, let me move this out of the way. What we're gonna do now is we're

You're going to fold in our sweetened whipped cream into our egg whites

And while that gelatin dissolving, I'm going to go ahead and start folding these two things together

And when you fold, you want to go under and over. So to make sure that milk's not too hot, I'm going to pour it back into this cold bowl

and that will chill it back down. And that's fine, it's just, it almost feels like the temperature of my body

So I'm just going to drizzle that through here and then fold it in with the other ingredients

to make a wonderful, gooey, sweet center for our Charlotte Roos. All right. Now we're going to make a mold out of this Charlotte Roos. Well, I'm going

to use just a glass Pyrex dish, and I'm going to start with ladyfingers, and I'm putting

about three across the bottom. And then I'm going to come in here and I'm going to stand

up these lady fingers around the bowl, and you want to make sure that you fill in all

the gaps because we're going to unmold this onto a dish. All right

Now I got some sweet sherry and I just going to take our sherry and we going to come in here and I going to brush our lady fingers with the sherry

Alright. Now I've got some wonderful strawberry preserves. These are store bought

Now I'm going to put a layer of the strawberry preserves down there

And you can see how that's coming along. Now I'm going to move over here and get our cream filling, and I'm just going to fill

up the middle of these ladyfingers. And then I'm going to top it with some more ladyfingers, and if I have to, I'll break

some pieces to just finish that. All right. I've got it all covered with lady fingers now, and I've got a little bit more sherry left, so I'm going to take that last little bit and just dab on top

And now I'm going to take a plastic wrap, and I'm going to seal this up real good, and I'm going to stick it in the refrigerator for four to six hours because I want this chilled very, very good

And when we come back, y'all, I'm combining two of my most favorite things in the whole world, a gooey butter cake and toffee chips

So don't go away. Gooey butter cakes. We're back and before we get onto that gooey butter cake that I was talking about before

break I want to go ahead and unwrap our roots because I had one that's been in the refrigerator

now for about four hours. And I'm going to go ahead and unmold this and I'm going to

slowly tilt it and let the air get up in there. Look how good that looks. Now I had some filling

left over. And I'm gonna dress this with just a little of our filling. And I've got some

raspberries and strawberries. I'm just gonna drop some fruit around it. I'm gonna come

in here and fan me out a berry and put in the center of that. Mmm. That looks just

delicious. And I'm gonna sit that over there. Now y'all have seen me make gooey butter cakes

several times on the show. I think out of all the gooey butter cakes, just the basic

recipe may very well be my favorite. And then I'm adding chocolate toffee bits. And you

can find these in your baking section. These are just yummy. So I'm gonna start with the

base to our gooey butter cake. I've got a stick of butter melted here. I've got a yellow

cake mix here. I'm going to add one egg and one stick of melted butter. Now, while I'm

mixing up this, I'm going to go ahead and add another stick of butter. So that's going

melt and we're gonna mix this up and this batter is gonna be real real thick

all right I've got our crust in one egg and one stick of melted butter blended together here but

because I'm cooking outside and using my little mini oven a 13 by 9 by 2 wouldn't fit in this

this oven, so I'm doing it in two 8x8 pans. All I'm going to do is divide our batter up

half in one pan and half in the other, and we're just going to press this into our pan

Now we're going to come over here and we're going to make the filling to our gooey butter

cake. And I'm going to use the same bowl. I don't have to wash it. It's not going to

affect the center of our gooey. I'm going to start with an eight ounce package of cream

cheese that's been softened to room temperature. I'm going to add two eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla

Another stick of melted butter. I'm going to get every drop out

And one 16-ounce box of powdered sugar. Now we just going to beat this up until it smooth Alright

And now we're going to add our toffee bits to this. And I'm just going to fold those in

Now you can get toffee bits two ways. You can get the plain toffee bits or you can get toffee bits with chocolate

Now I'm going to divide this center into both of these pans

And I'm just spreading this out. All right. Now I like a little sprinkled on top so when it bakes you can see that it's not just a

regular gooey butter cake, so I'm going to take a few and just put on top like that

Now I'm going to put these in the oven. It's been preheated to 350 degrees, and because

of the sizes of these pans, I'm going to just watch that. I'm going to keep checking on

them periodically after like 30 minutes. So I think I've waited long enough. I'm

going to come in here and cut me a piece. Oh that looks good. You can see those

strawberry preserves. I just love the way this looks. It's got the different

textures in there, the cream center, and the strength that the lady fingers give it

The next thing up is the Southwest Georgia pound cake. I'll see y'all back in a minute

Our gooey butter cakes turned out really, really good. It's amazing how well these little ovens will bake

These gooey butter cakes look delicious, too. Sometimes I'll use these to put in the center of baked Alaska

I'm going to try to resist tasting it and just keep those piled up there

They look scrumptious. All right, let's talk about pound cakes. This is one of the favorite pound cakes of the folks that live in southwest Georgia where I was born

I was born in Albany, Georgia, and a lot of people over there make these cakes

And I'm going to start with two sticks of real butter at room temperature

Now I'm going to add three cups of sugar. And I'm going to beat these together until they're nice and creamy

All right, now I'm going to add the eggs. Alright, that's nice and creamy now

Alright, now I've got three cups of all-purpose flour. And I have a half a teaspoon of bacon powder

And I'm gonna give those a quick sift together. And that was bacon powder now, not soda

All right, now we're gonna add our dry ingredients to our creamed mixture

We're gonna start with flour and end with flour. If we started with the heavy cream and ended with cream, it would almost make our batter

look like it had broken. And I going to add a teaspoon of vanilla All right now I going to take a Bundt cake pan and I going to spray it

Because you want to make sure that your pound cakes always come out and don't leave chunks

in the pan. And I'm going to dust this with a little flour

We're just going to pour our batter around

And we're going to start this cake off now in a cold oven

And we're going to bake it for an hour and fifteen minutes

you'll want to just take your spatula and level out your cake like that. Now like I

said, we're not going to turn our oven on until we put our cake in the oven. When we

put the cake in the oven, we're going to turn it to 325 by an hour and 15 minutes. And it's

And it's going to be so light and rich and dense at the same time

I think the cook has earned the right to taste a gooey butter cake

So let's see how they turned out. They look yummy. You can see the toffee nut and the chocolate in the gooey part of that

Mmm. and it's unbelievably rich. While our cake's baking, I'm gonna clean up

And when we come back, I'm gonna show y'all ways that you can take that ordinary pound cake and really

dress him up. So I'll see y'all back in a minute. I was telling y'all earlier that Southerners love their pound cake, but we also love doing

different things with it, like our toast, buttering it and frying it up in the black

skillet, where there's just lots of things that you can do with a pound cake besides

just eating it straight up. Personally, I love my strawberry shortcake made with fresh pound cake

You know, you can get the little cups in the grocery store that have the indented center

and that's what my mama used to use a lot of times. And they were perfectly yummy, but nothing, absolutely nothing

takes the place of real shortcake. So I'm gonna take our cake and I'm gonna just pour fresh strawberries and that juice over it

And I want to really get that juice all over it to soak into that piece of cake

And then I'm gonna top it with fresh whipped cream. And you've got the best strawberry shortcake you've ever put in your mouth

And another flavoring that I really, really love is the flavor of lemon curd

I just love it. Now, you can make your own lemon curd, or you can do as I've done today and just use a store-bought

And I'm just gonna let that lemon curd just drip all over that piece of pound cake

And then I'm gonna top him with just a little fresh zest

These are just a couple of my favorite ways and I'm sure once you make that pound cake

that you're gonna come up with plenty of other ways yourself. Well, did y'all enjoy today's show

I hope that you did, because, you know, there's just nothing better than just a whole bunch of desserts

The Southwest Georgia Whip and Cream Pound Cake is so unbelievably dense and rich and delicious

And the gooey butter cakes, I swear to Peter, I didn't think I could improve them

but I think the toffee bits just really take it over the top

And the Charlotte Russe, oh, it's just delicious. It's an old-timey dessert that we can still enjoy today

I hope y'all love all the recipes, and as usual, America, I want to send you love and best dishes

from my kitchen to yours