A Harte Appetite: Just desserts for 2024

Now that we’ve crossed over to a new year, you’re likely to be bombarded, and may already have been, with compilations of last year’s best: movies, books, Tik Tok videos, and Instagram posts, not to mention Alyssa Lunsford-Stevens’ year-end entertainment review in this newspaper.

Similarly, Spotify will send you a playlist of what songs you listened to the most in 2024 and Starbucks offers a list of what you consumed last year at their coffee counters. Given that the year gone by was an election year, there’s even a compendium of the year’s greatest political prevarications, a difficult category for judges since there were so many contenders. So once again, this year I’m offering my collection of the best recipes I made last year, two previously published in this space, the others not.

I was not surprised to see a preponderance of dessert recipes in my inventory. After all, I look first at the back of a restaurant menu to preview the dessert section before browsing the front. Moreover, I don’t have a tattoo, but if I did it would surely say, “Life is uncertain; eat dessert first.”

Like food writer and St. Louis native Claire Saffitz, I’m a “dessert person,” the title of her first book. In it she says, “No meal is complete without something sweet at the end.” I couldn’t agree more.

It’s not that I didn’t make plenty of savory dishes, like pork tenderloin with apples, shallots, and spinach or miso-glazed steak on a bed of arugula or prosciutto-wrapped chicken, not to mention plenty of inventive pasta recipes. But what stands out to me most are the desserts.

So this year my list of best recipes features just desserts. And I offer it with no apologies.

Chocolate Phantom Cookies

These cookies from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cookie Bible owe half their weight to whole macadamia nuts. The rest is chocolate, mostly dark. These are the most decadent chocolate cookies I have ever made. Naturally I made them twice the size as directed by the recipe, but that is up to you.

Pineapple Upside Down Cobbler

Published in Bon Appetit, this recipe served at Barbs B Q in Lockhart, Texas (one of the best restaurants of the year according to the magazine), simplifies the classic pineapple upside down cake by turning it into a cobbler flecked with candied sour cherries. As easy to make as a dump cake, it streamlines preparation without sacrificing flavor.

Mom’s Apple Cake

Recipes for apple cake, just like apples themselves, are abundant in the fall. Almost all of them are good, but a few are exceptional. From the popular Smitten Kitchen website, this is one of them. A beautiful cake, it actually gets better by the day. Laced with walnuts and a bit of orange juice, it’s impressive baked in a tube pan.

Oatmeal Baked Apples

When you don’t have the time or the inclination to make a whole cake, this somewhat deconstructed version of the classic baked apple, from Bon Appetit, will fill the bill. Apples are sliced in half and topped with a mixture of cherries (preferably Michigan), pecans, pepitas, and pumpkin seeds, drizzled with maple syrup and baked. Dolloped with sour cream when served, this dish can be eaten for breakfast as well as dessert.

Far Breton

This sumptuous dessert has an unlikely major ingredient, at least as far as most Americans are concerned: prunes. A French creation, this rich custard cake, essentially a flan, might explain why in France, it is no exaggeration to say prunes are treasured. The distinguished New York Times columnist Florence Fabricant contends that in France prunes are held in the same esteem as foie gras. This recipe, from Aleksandra Crapanzano’s charming little book, Gateau, could make you a believer.

Ozark Pudding

I forgot about this dish which I used to make all the time. More a cake than a pudding, verging on a dacquoise, it was a favorite of Harry Truman. Then recently I was reminded of it while reading Alex Prud’homme’s Dinner with the President. This time I tinkered with Mrs. Truman’s recipe, adding more apples, eggs, and nuts, and rediscovered how good it was, thanks to the recipe on www.food.com.

Tom Harte’s book, “Stirring Words,” is available at local bookstores. A Harte Appetite airs Tuesdays at 7:42 a.m. and 5:18 pm on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Contact Tom at semissourian.com or at the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699.