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 gonna be nutty coconut macaroons. macaroons. After that, things are going to get fruity with my

pere sauvignon. And then I want to pay tribute to my friend Mae Dawson by preparing her famous sugar cream pie. And finally

my yummy blueberry dumplings. So I hope you brought your sweet tooth

because 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 Colombia, 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 going to be wonderful. Laura was so helpful, and, you know, I decided on the Georgia pecan

It's going to 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 going to do is we're going to start by separating our eggs

we're gonna do a little meringue to go into our coconut. We're gonna start by beating these egg whites

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

we're gonna 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've put just a little crematata 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 gonna 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 gonna do. Oh, yeah, they're gonna 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 going to 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 gonna 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 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 want to 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 gonna 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 nine-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 gonna put this into a 450 degree oven

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

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

so you'll wanna 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 going to use about a cup and a half

That looks about right. And I'm just going to 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, 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

All right, so now I'm just going to add the milk and give that a quick stir

And they're going to be kind of 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 going to turn that down a little bit

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

And I'm not going to raise the lid. As I'm working here in the kitchen, I may just give it a shake

but I'm not gonna 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. Mmm

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. Oh. Oh. Oh

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 going to let that steep, depending on how strong you like your coffee

And I'm going to 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