Simple Desserts

Hey, y'all. I'm Paula Deen

You know, there's nothing better than instant gratification. And today, I want to show y'all some of my favorite dessert recipes

that are fast, simple, and yet scrumptious. But before we get to that, I want to take y'all to Savannah Coffee Roasters

for some fresh beans to complete this bittersweet affair. And then it'll be time for us to head back to my kitchen

First up is going to be nutty coconut macaroons. After that, things are gonna get fruity with my pere sauvignon

And then I wanna pay tribute to my friend, May Dawson, by preparing her famous sugar cream pie

And finally, my yummy blueberry dumplings. So I hope you brought your sweet tooth, cause desserts are on me today

Good morning, y'all

Today's show is all about simple desserts. Now, when we're talking simple desserts, there's nothing better than a great cup of coffee

And today, I'm going to show you what I drink, and it'll pick you up and get your morning going

So y'all come with me, because we're going to go get us some great coffee

When I'm serving up a perfect cup of coffee to go with my desserts

I always start with a fresh ground coffee bean from Savannah Coffee Roasters

Now, y'all know that here in the South, we're big tea drinkers, but coffee is fast becoming a partner in our cooking culture

And Laura, the store manager, keeps an impressive inventory of over 30 different varieties

They carry the finest Arabica beans from Columbia, Kenya, and Jamaica, as well as fantastic blends like the good old Savannah blend and the good and evil blend

After you buy your coffee, it's best to keep whole beans stored in an airtight container in a cool, dry place, like maybe your freezer or refrigerator

And the sooner newly ground beans are brewed, the better. I bet this coffee is going to be just delicious

This coffee is going to taste so good today because it's kind of nippy outside and I can't hardly wait to make it

It's gonna be wonderful. Laura was so helpful, and you know, I decided on the Georgia pecan

It's gonna taste yummy with the desserts we're making today. And before we get started on the coffee, though

we've got to get these going. And the first dessert up is coconut macaroons

And they're so simple, y'all, it takes about 10 minutes. So the first thing we're gonna do

is we're gonna start by separating our eggs. We're gonna do a little meringue

to go into our coconut. We're going to start by beating these egg whites

and I'm actually saving these yellows because as soon as I finish with this

we're going to be making pear sauvignon. Did I say that right

Sometimes I get real confused with that word. My southern tongue will get all screwed up in my mouth

So anyway, pear sauvignon, or something like that, y'all. All right, now I've got my egg whites going, and I put just a little crematoria in that

to make them really stiff. And while that's going, I'm going to come over here

This is so easy. I'm just using flaked coconut that comes in a bag

In fact, on the back of the bags, you'll actually see, I'm putting about an eighth of a teaspoon

of salt, you'll actually find a recipe on the bag. Now, I don't know if that one calls for egg whites or not

But this is sweetened condensed milk. All right, now, so our egg whites are done

so I'm going to turn those off. And in my macaroons today

I'm going to be adding a couple of teaspoons of almond rather than vanilla

I just love the flavor of almond. Now, all we have to do is incorporate that condensed milk

with our coconut, and it doesn't take but a second. All right, now we're just going to fold in our egg whites

And like I said, that's going to make it so nice and fluffy. And y'all remember, I've told you before

you just have to pick your days when you're doing meringues because if it's raining outside, they just don't want to make

So these did so good today because the sun's shining and it's really, really dry outside

All right, so we're just gonna kind of fold that in, just like that working our spatula down and over Like I said the recipes on the bags of coconut may differ and like I said some of them don even call for the egg whites but I think they do so much better

We're going to spray this lightly so our macaroons will come up easily. And I have found that

an ice cream scoop works real, real well for this. But for the time being, I'm just going

use two big tablespoons. Drop them about like that. All right, I've got the macaroons on

our sheet, and we're gonna put these in a 350 preheated oven, and we're gonna bake them

for about maybe eight minutes. I've got those in the oven now, and I've got another tray

here in this oven, and they've been cooking about eight minutes, so we're gonna check

and see what they look like. Oh, and they look good. These are actually a little tinier than the ones I've made

I think I got a heavy hand with those that I just put in. All right, let's see how they're going to do

Oh, yeah. They're going to do nicely. Don't those look delicious? And you saw how little bit of time, effort, and ingredients that it took

to make these wonderful homemade macaroons. They're so good. I can't hardly wait to have one

But we better move on over here and make that sabonin I was telling y'all about

For this, I'm gonna put four egg yolks into the bowl. And I'm gonna put, oh gosh, just a pinch of salt

and some 4X sugar. And I'm just gonna mix that up. And this is one of those things that we're going to have to stir and stay on top of

or you'll have a bowl of scrambled eggs. So we're going to have to really, really watch and make sure that they don't scramble up on us

All right, now I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of cooking sherry

but you can use a good drinking sherry if you want to

In fact, I would suggest that if you've got some on hand, but if not, the cooking sherry will work fine

All right, now I'm going to put it over our water. And this is something that you're not gonna walk away from

So this is the boring part. It's gonna take about eight minutes

so why don't I take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll have it ready

And, um... I don't think anybody will miss just one. Hey, y'all

Welcome back, and I've got this custard going so good. Now, what we're going to do now is we're going to take this totally away from the heat

and I'm actually going to pour it into another bowl because we're fixing to beat some cream

and fold into this, and it's going to make it nice and fluffy. And I've got a little sweetened whipped cream

So we're just going to fold this into our custard. You know, you can't go wrong with eggs and sugar and whipped cream

See how it's becoming a pretty soft yellow color now that we're mixing the white into it

Today I'm serving this as a dessert, but this is one of those dishes that you could actually serve as a salad

if you wanted kind of a sweeter salad with a meal. I'm actually using pears that I canned

but you can just go to the grocery store and buy the regular canned pears

and they'll work nicely for you. And you wanna make sure that you grab pear halves

not sliced pears. During pear season this year, I actually made some pear preserves

and Michael and I just enjoy eating them so much. Look there, we're just gonna dollop a little bit on there

And I've got some fresh mint here. And I'm just gonna sprinkle a few raspberries on it

Look how pretty that looks. And with no trouble. And so simple

And so easy to make. It's so good. While this is very good, I'm in a hurry to move on

because I wanna show y'all a recipe that was sent to me from one of my guests that come into the restaurant

Her name is Carol Rood. So she has sent me the recipe for Mae Dawson's Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie

It's nothing but sweetened whipped cream. Sugar. Like a cup and a third of sugar

And we're going to use about three quarters of a cup of milk

and a little flour So we just going to give that a stir People send me recipes all the time and I can tell you how much I love it

All right, now we're going to pour this into a 9-inch unbaked pie shell

Now you can make your own crust, or you can just use the frozen one like I'm doing

And because we're doing simple desserts today, I opted to go with the frozen crust

because we want to make this quick and easy. All right, now I've got some butter here

and I'm just going to kind of pinch it up and just drop it all over the pie

I'm doing it just like Carol says she does it. And now I'm going to just grate it with a little nutmeg

and this almost makes it taste like an egg custard pie. There's nothing like fresh nutmeg

It's so much better than the ground kind that you buy at the store

All right, now I'm going to put this into a 450-degree oven

and I'm going to let it bake for about 10 minutes, and then we're going to turn the oven down to 350

and let it cook another 25 minutes. And it's going to be a little jiggly

so you'll want to be careful when you put it in your oven

Ooh, gotta have a steady hand. And in the meantime, I've already baked another one

and I've got it sitting right here, and it should be nice and cooled

It is. It's just a wee little bit warm, but not too much

I think we can go ahead and cut it. Now, I'd like to show y'all a little trick that I use when I'm cutting pies

because you know you can sometimes mess it up trying to get it out. So I'm going to show you how I like to get that very first piece out

But of course, if it messes up, that's all right too because then that makes it legal to eat before the family gets to it

Now, some people like their pies cut in eighths. Some people like their pies cut into sixths

I don't have to tell you what we do at my house. So all I'm going to do with these scissors is I'm going to come in here

and I'm gonna snip right through that foil. So you can see that the pie just kinda slips away

and that makes it easy for me to just slip right in

and lift out that piece of pie. Yum. It looks great, doesn't it

And you know, I don't even have any fresh whipped cream to serve on it, so you know what I think I'm gonna do

I had some custard left over from those pears. I'm going to come over here, and I think I'm going to get just a little bit of that

and get me a couple of cherries going here. We'll use a little piece of mint on it, too

just to make me feel like I'm eating my vegetables, you know, and eating healthy

Look how pretty that looks. Oh, Carol, this looks so good

It's delicious. Coming up next, y'all, blueberry dumplings. All right, y'all, it's time to make those blueberry dumplings

I just love the word dumplings. You know, when you hear that word, you know it's going to be decadent

And these are, we're going to add a quart of fresh blueberries into a medium-sized saucepan

We're going to add a cup of sugar. And for your water, now it depends on if you like a lot of liquid with your dumplings

You can put anywhere from one cup of water to two. and I think I'm gonna use about a cup and a half

That looks about right. And I'm just gonna give that a stir

So I'm gonna put the lid on so that'll boil faster. And the next thing we're gonna do

is just make up our dumplings. And it's so easy, it's just not even funny

We're gonna start with about a cup of flour, a teaspoon of bacon powder

a little bit of sugar, and just a pinch of salt. And I'm gonna just incorporate those for a minute

And then we're gonna cut a stick of butter into that little bit of flour

Now you can do this a couple of different ways. You can use a pastry cutter or you can use a fork

And we're just gonna kinda cut that in until it looks like a real coarse cornmeal

That was a good bit of butter for that little bit of flour wasn it You know it gonna be so good Let me check on our blueberries because we can put our dumplings in until our syrup is nice and bubbly

We want a full rolling ball when we drop our dumplings in

Alright, so now I'm just gonna add the milk and give that a quick stir and they're gonna

be kinda just a little sticky. This is so good on a cool night

Michael loves a bowl of ice cream, but when the weather gets nippy, it's nice to make this

and you got your hot from your dumplings and your cold from your ice cream

It's a great combination. All right, let's check on our blueberries. Ooh, we're to a nice rolling ball

So we're just going to take our dumplings and just drop them down in that liquid

It looks like a grape soda, doesn't it? Mmm. And with dumplings, we don't want to stir

We want to just shake our pot and get them down in there and make sure they're all covered good

Mmm, mmm, mmm. All right, now I'm gonna turn that down a little bit

and all we're gonna do is put that lid on there and let it cook for about 20 minutes

And I'm not gonna raise the lid. As I'm working here in the kitchen

I may just give it a shake, but I'm not going to open it up and stir it or anything

But in the meantime, I've got another pot ready. Oh, look. It's piping hot

Oh, look at those dumplings. Is that gorgeous or what? Mmm. I think I just swallowed my tongue

Oh, my gracious. Mm-hmm. I just love those dumplings. I'm gonna get me out one more

Oh, my goodness. Now, you can't eat this without ice cream. I just love ice cream with my dumplings

And I've got some vanilla ice cream right here. And here we go

How gorgeous is that? And I'm gonna need me a spoon for tasting

And I'll cool it off with that ice cream a little bit

I wish y'all were here. It is so wonderful. What am I doing next

I can't even remember. The perfect cup of coffee to go with this perfect dessert

And I told you I was going to show you how to make the perfect cup of coffee

This is called a French press, and it's amazingly fast. Now we're just going to take our lid off, and we have ground up our beans

and I'm going to put three tablespoons in ours. Now we're going to take our just boiling water and pour it over our grounds just a little bit

and we're gonna let that steep, depending on how strong you like your coffee

And I'm gonna go ahead and push the cylinder down. All right, so let's see what we've got

Oh, now that's just the color I like it, a nice medium brown

You can't get any quicker than this. And I've got a little sweetened whipped cream

but you can use a frothy milk that's real good on it

You know, I live with a man that's got the biggest sweet tooth

And it's important to me that I have some desserts around for him to eat on

without spending my whole day making them. Michael and Michelle, his daughter, love those coconut macaroons

Now, for those real chocolate lovers in your house, you can take these luscious little macaroons that we did

and you can dip them in chocolate. And the pear sauvignon are delicious

You can also use them as a salad. And the Hoosier sugar cream pie, so good

And the blueberry dumplings will truly knock you into next week. And I hope that y'all are able to use

some of these recipes from today's show and I hope they'll fit into your lifestyle just perfectly

So until next time, America, I send you love and best dishes

from my kitchen to yours. Thank you