Product Description

From a simple afternoon snack to the crowning touch on an elegant evening meal, Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts includes more than 250 recipes for the absolutely irresistible desserts that are the hallmark of the Moosewood Collective's homey, satisfying fare, including low-fat and fresh fruit treats. 50 line drawings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34731 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-28
• Released on: 1997-10-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.com Review
The Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts has the homey but not hokey style you expect from this much-loved restaurant. It is refreshing to enjoy the authors' unvarnished pleasure in food and in sharing about life at the Moosewood as it relates to their desserts. It may be startling to find that the first dessert in this appealing book is nature's best dessert: fresh fruit served with cheese. But these cooks also put butter and eggs to good use, adding enough to make desserts that appeal in their richness. You'll find abundant choices of recipes for every kind of dessert: pies and cakes, puddings, custards, cookies, even special drinks. Chocolate lovers may feel a bit ignored, but fruit, pudding, and cake lovers will be pleased by the 250 recipes in this book.

From Library Journal
One of the Moosewood pastry chefs coauthored her own low-fat dessert book last year (Kip Wilcox's Sweetness and Light, LJ 8/96); now here are more than 250 desserts from the whole cooperative. The well-known restaurant in Ithaca, New York, has always specialized in homey desserts like Cherry Almond Crumble and Old-Fashioned Apple Cake; there are also some more elaborate creations for special occasions as well as recipes inspired by the different international cuisines served at the restaurant each Sunday and a chapter of "classics" that have remained favorites over the years. For most collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Recipe from Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts
By The Moosewood Collection
ISBN 0-517-70209-6

Butterscotch Tapioca
Serves 4
Yields 3 _ cups
Preparation time:  10-15 minutes
Chilling time:  about 1 hour

Here is a comforting childhood favorite with the rich flavor that grownups crave.  It is especially good made with raspberries, which add gems of color and their own distinctive tart-sweetness.

3 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
2 cups milk
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries (optional)

In a heavy saucepan, combine the tapioca nad milk and set aside for 5 minutes.

Add brown sugar, salt, and egg yolks and mix well.  Cook on low heat, stirring often, for 15 to 20 minutes, until the mixture begins to bubble and thicken.  The tiny pearls of tapioca will become more visible as they cook.

Remove from heat and stir in the butter until it melts.  Add the vanilla.  The pudding will continue to thicken as it cools.  Pour equal amounts into four serving cups and top with the raspberries, if desired.  Chill for about an hour.

Variation:  For a very low-fat pudding, omit the egg yolks and butter and use skim or 1% milk.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Not a "healthy dessert" cookbook! This is the real thing!
I love a cookbook that is more than just a collection of recipes. The recipes in this cookbook all start with some background about where the recipe came from, how it can be used, and other ideas for how to serve it. This makes the book fun to browse through. Also, the book is well-organized and well indexed. There's even an ingredients index so you can look in your pantry and pick a dessert based on what you have on hand. The variety of recipes is good: some are easy, some are more complicated, some are good for kids, some are fancy for adults. I've tried several things from each chapter of the book and everything has turned out well. Basics are included, such as a flawless pie crust recipe, as well as more unusual desserts such as Pink Chiffon Cake. Another bonus is the multicultural aspect of the book. There are several recipes from the Middle East, and some from Italy, Greece, too. These Mediterranean desserts tend to be less sweet than what our US taste buds usually like, and I've found them great for informal suppers and luncheons. (By the way, the name "Moosewood" in this cookbook does not mean "healthy"! There's plenty of sugar and other good stuff in these recipes!) I make desserts only when entertaining, so I usually have to take the risk of trying new recipes with guests, but with this cookbook I never have any worry about whether it will be a hit or not. This book has proven itself to be a Dessert Bible for me!

Great dessert cookbook without the pretentions
I have several dessert cookbooks, all with great recipes, most costing considerably more than this one. In spite of that, when I am looking for a recipe, this is the cookbook that usually comes through for me. I have made cakes, muffins, coffee cakes, cookies, pies, and other assorted sweets, all with rave reviews. The recipes are tailored for the home cook, so they are easy to prepare, but amazingly there is no loss of quality. You can get fancy if you want (the chocolate cake with chocolate ganache is quite impressive) but most of the recipes are quite simple. No great color photos, but the price more than makes up for that.

Great book, I use it often
This is another fine Moosewood publication. It offers unique and varied dessert selections. The recipes are generally well-tested, though a few had a decidedly flat taste that I didn't prefer, such as the chocolate bread pudding and the apple cake. One recipe failed outright, in my opinion (the everyday rice pudding--it was WAY starchy). My step-daughter really loved the bread pudding and apple cake, though, so maybe it's actually a strength of the book, that there's something to suit everyone's taste in it. Most of the recipes have been outstanding, however, and so I would recommend this book totally. The Indian peach dessert is sensational, for instance. The soft, sweet peaches and the crumbly cornmeal topping is a heavenly pairing.

I like the look and feel of the book. It's soothing to work with--it's not glossy and pretentious, it's not merely designed to impress. I reach for this book often, and it has come through for me time and again.