Chocolate cake

Plain old chocolate birthday cake Sometimes you’re not trying to impress anybody, you just need a really basic chocolate cake, like for a child’s birthday party, or for a child to make on his own. This is a very simple cake, and only takes a few minutes to throw together. You could have it all …

Cherry pie

Finally some fresh fruit! Cherries are the first local fresh fruit to come ripe in the spring – if you’re really eating local, this will be the first fresh fruit that’s not apples or pears you’ve seen since the huckleberries last August! By May, you’ll be really glad to see cherries! This is a sweet …

Cheesecake

Alpha House cheesecake In Ithaca, drug addicts were frequently remanded to a place called Alpha House where they were supposed to be rehabilitated. The addicts were supposed to support themselves during the process, and learn to work a steady job, by baking lots of cheesecakes. Alpha House cheesecake was ubiquitous all over town, and it …

Celery ice

A fancy early-spring dessert The first edible plants that grow in the spring are stems – because stems are what plants grow first – like chives and celery. This is a simplified version of a New York Times recipe: a dessert made out of nothing much more than celery and sugar. It requires practically no …

Blueberry pie

Unlimited dessert The first term I was at college, once I realized that at college you could just take unlimited desserts and nothing else at dinner, I pretty much lived on blueberry pie and lemon meringue pie. The cafeteria blueberry pie was nasty, gluey stuff though, and once I gained fifteen pounds eating it, I …

Blackberry cobbler

Pick them yourself! Blackberries grow everywhere in Oregon – they’re invasive Himalayan blackberries, and if you don’t keep fighting them they’ll eat your house in a few years. But they do grow big, delicious blackberries in July. When I made first blackberry cobbler of the season, a couple of years ago, the kids were so …

Baked apples

Fairly healthy dessert Baked apples aren’t health food – if you want that, just eat an apple, which is also good! But they are better for you than pie and certainly better than cookies or ice cream. And baked apples only take a few minutes to put together, cook while you are eating dinner, and …

Applesauce

Put up applesauce for the winter Apples are new and exciting in September, but you’ll be getting tired of them by February, and there still won’t be any decent fresh fruit available until the end of April. Applesauce is a great way to eat apples when you’re tired of apples. Plus, you can use applesauce …