• robm on July 14, 2011

  This may become my "go-to" dessert cookbook! Wonderful recipes for some of my favorite things, including flourless chocolate cake with dried cherries (famous in certain Hungarian-speaking places as ludlab), German chocolate cake, coconut cake, and much, much more! Recipes are clearly written, and with some minor tweaks could easily be made kosher pareve or vegan.

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Coconut angel food cake

  • hillsboroks on July 24, 2020

    This is a coconut lover's cake, with just the right amount of toasted coconut in the batter to give it that tropical flavor. I did swap out 1 teaspoon of the vanilla for 1 teaspoon coconut extract to really accentuate the coconut flavor. It is quite a sweet cake so I served it with homemade apricot ice cream the first night. It would also be very good with a fresh fruit compote of something like pineapple, mango or berries to offset the sweetness. The next day I made a couple of tablespoons of drizzle with powdered sugar and coconut rum as an experiment. It was tasty but too sweet so I will stick with fruit or fruit ice cream in the future.

• Lemon pound cake

  • kbrooks on May 09, 2025

    Delicious. Very lemony. Fragile.

• Fresh berry and lemon pound cake

  • kbrooks on May 02, 2026

    Disappointing.

• Caramel-apple sauce

  • hillsboroks on November 22, 2020

    This sauce makes you want to just start eating it spoonful by spoonful. I made it to go over Apple Cider Bourbon bundt cake that I baked in bundtlette size pans. They were just a touch dry so I looked for a complementary sauce and found this recipe. The combination was perfect. I found the cake recipe on the Nordicware site.

• Pâte brisée

  • hillsboroks on September 06, 2014

    Great crust recipe! I did not make it using a mixer per the instructions but used my food proccesor instead and used the technique I picked up from The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie where you save out about a third of the butter and add it at the end with very little processing. The addition of just a small amount of shortening (I used Butter Flavor Crisco) keeps the crust tender while the butter adds flakiness and flavor. I think this May be my new all purpose pie crust. Even on Day 2 the bottom crust is crispy and not soggy.

• Maple-bourbon apple pie

  • hillsboroks on December 16, 2016

    My husband just declared this apple pie the best I've ever made. The flavors of the maple syrup, bourbon, pecans and apples are made for one another. I did reduce the amount of cinnamon to 1 teaspoon but other than that followed Caprial's recipe faithfully. It went together in a snap and I will be making this pie again and often.

• Pear pie

  • hillsboroks on September 06, 2014

    Wonderful pie with great pear flavor enhanced by the spices and oat streusel topping. I used her pate brisee and made it in the food processor instead of using a mixer per the instructions. It turned out just perfect and was flaky and tender with lots of butter flavor from the mixture of butter and shortening. I used butter flavor Crisco which also helped. Even the next day the bottom crust is crisp and not soggy. Will try putting nuts in the streusel next time.

• Jenny's great-grandma's gingersnaps

  • jnetlw on September 11, 2012

    My favorite ginger snap - crispy & chewy cookies.

• Tropical rum brownies

  • radishseed on July 20, 2020

    Rather tooth-achingly sweet.

• Espresso coffee cake

  • kbrooks on May 02, 2026

    Lovely coffee cake with balanced flavors.

• Chocolate ice cream

  • kbrooks on May 02, 2026

    Yummy! Reduced milk to 2 cups, egg yolks to 5,sugar to 1 cup. Used Guittard semi sweet chocolate.

• Vanilla bean ice cream

  • kbrooks on May 02, 2026

    Very rich and delicious. I reduced the milk to 2 cups for an even balance of milk and cream. Used only 5 egg yolks and 1 cup sugar. Added 1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract. Strained the custard before chilling. This is a keeper!

• Fresh peach ice cream

  • hillsboroks on August 09, 2016

    This makes a very luscious, rich ice cream but yields far more than 1 1/2 quarts as the recipe says. The vanilla base alone makes about 2 quarts and when you start to add the peach mixture a two-quart ice cream freezer cannot take all the peaches. I ended up spooning some ice cream (with a few peaches mixed in) into my quart freezer containers and adding the rest of the peaches in spoonfuls along with the ice cream. I ended up with 2 1/2 quarts. The flavor was lovely. Following Caprial's lead on her Peach Tuaca Cobbler I substituted Tuaca for the bourbon. Next time I would make 1/2 of the vanilla base and 1/2 of the peaches in order to have it all mix and freeze properly in my 2 quart Cuinart freezer.

• Fresh mint ice cream

  • kbrooks on May 02, 2026

    This was good but not outstanding.

• Coconut-lime-rum sorbet

  • kbrooks on May 02, 2026

    Okay.

• Mocha sorbet

  • kbrooks on October 08, 2025

    This is so deliciously decadent! It's quick and easy to make the base. Very very rich , despite not having any egg yolks in it. Definitely will make again (and again!).

• Lemon gelato

  • kbrooks on May 02, 2026

    Delicious! Easy.