Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts. In some parts of the world there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.
Cheesecake is a dessert made with a soft fresh cheese, eggs, and sugar. It may have a crust or base made from crushed cookies, graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake may be baked or unbaked, and is usually refrigerated.
Devil's food cake is a moist, rich chocolate layer cake.
Baked Alaska, also known as Bombe Alaska, omelette norvégienne, omelette surprise, or omelette sibérienne depending on the country, is a dessert consisting of ice cream and cake topped with browned meringue. The dish is made of ice cream placed in a pie dish, lined with slices of sponge cake or Christmas pudding, and topped with meringue. After having been placed in the freezer, the entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven for a brief time, long enough to firm and caramelize the meringue but not long enough to begin melting the ice cream.
The Nanaimo bar is a bar dessert that requires no baking and is named after the Canadian city of Nanaimo in British Columbia. It consists of three layers: a wafer, nut, and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. Many varieties exist, consisting of various types of crumb, various flavours of icing, and various types of chocolate.
Chocolate puddings are a class of desserts in the pudding family with chocolate flavors. There are two main types: a boiled then chilled dessert, texturally a custard set with starch, commonly eaten in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Sweden, Poland, and East and South East Asia; and a steamed/baked version, texturally similar to cake, popular in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Germany and New Zealand.
A layer cake or sandwich cake is a cake consisting of multiple stacked sheets of cake, held together by frosting or another type of filling, such as jam or other preserves. Most cake recipes can be adapted for layer cakes; butter cakes and sponge cakes are common choices. Frequently, the cake is covered with icing, but sometimes, the sides are left undecorated, so that the filling and the number of layers are visible.
Entenmann's is an American company that manufactures baked goods and delivers them throughout the United States to supermarkets and other retailers for public sales. Often, they are known to have display cases at the end of store aisles. The company offers dessert, cup, loaf, and crumb cakes, and donuts, cookies, pies, cereal bars, muffins, Danish pastries, and among other baked goods, buns. In the past several years, they have added designer coffee flavors along with scented candles to their product line in an effort to broaden its appeal.
A Boston cream pie is a cake with a cream filling. The dessert acquired its name when cakes and pies were cooked in the same pans, and the words were used interchangeably. In the late 19th century, this type of cake was variously called a "cream pie", a "chocolate cream pie", or a "custard cake".
Dirt cake, also called dirt and worms, is an American cake made from cookies and vanilla pudding in combination with other ingredients to create a dessert that has a resemblance to soil or earth. It is made by combining crushed Oreo cookies on top of vanilla or chocolate pudding, and adding gummy candy worms on top. Variations include vanilla wafers, vanilla pudding, whipped cream or Cool Whip, and cream cheese pudding in the recipe.
The Boston cream doughnut is a round, solid, yeast-risen doughnut with chocolate frosting and a custard filling, resulting in a doughnut reminiscent of a miniature Boston cream pie.
Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.
Pie in American cuisine has roots in English cuisine and has evolved over centuries to adapt to American cultural tastes and ingredients. The creation of flaky pie crust shortened with lard is credited to American innovation.
