Easy Thanksgiving dessert recipes from local cooks
Easy Thanksgiving dessert recipes from local cooks
Holiday cooks get stuck in traditional Thanksgiving recipes, but with so many different recipes available maybe this year is the time to switch up the food routine.
Below are three examples of fast and easy desserts that can be eaten during Thanksgiving from a few good cooks who are really good at baking.
Chocolate Chip cookies by “Gramma”:
Ingredients:
Flour: 2 1/4 cups
Baking soda: 1 tsp
Salt: 1 tsp
Butter: 2 sticks (softened)
Granulated Sugar: ¾ Cups
Brown sugar: ¾ cups
Vanilla extract: 1 tsp
Eggs: 2 large
Chocolate chips: “However much you want to put in there”
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit
2. In a small bowl combine the flour, baking soda, and salt
3. Mix butter, sugars, and vanilla in a large bowl until creamy
4. Add the 2 large eggs into the mixture
5. Beat in the dry ingredients (flour mixture)
6. Stir in the chocolate chips
7. After mixing, put the cookies in a scooper or spoon and put on ungreased cookie sheets.
8. Bake for 9 minutes or until golden brown
9. Cool on baking sheets
Photo by Katie Grey / The Mainstream
“Gramma” shared her favorite memory with the chocolate chip cookies: “I just moved to Roseburg and had a restart on life during quarantine and all I could do was make cookies. I basically made cookies everyday for a month, so now I am really good at making cookies, and they are super easy.”
“Gramma’s” favorite Thanksgiving food is stuffing: “I feel like it only comes during Thanksgiving time, and it is just so good.”
“Gramma” during Thanksgiving gets together with her family, and eats food and watches football.
Recipe Review: Super gooey chocolate chip cookies, they were amazing, and I couldn’t just have one. I had three … definitely a comfort food.
Pumpkin Silk Pie by “Nana”
Ingredients:
Butter: ¼ Cup (melted)
Cream cheese: 1 8oz package
Cool whip: 1 container
Canned pumpkin: 1 can
Box of gingersnap cookies
Pumpkin pie spice : ½ tsp
Powdered sugar: 1 cup
Sugar: ¼ Cup
Vanilla: 2 tsp
Directions:
- Crush box of ginger snap cookies into a fine layer
- Mix in melted butter and sugar
- Press into pan (9 in Springform pan)
- Bake at 325 degrees for 5 minutes
- Beat softened cream cheese until light and fluffy with electric mixer
- Add powdered sugar, pumpkin, vanilla and pumpkin pie spice; beat until smooth
- Fold in one large container of whipped topping and spread into springform pan
- Place in fridge for a few hours or overnight to set up
- Remove springform pan sides and top with cool whip
- Sprinkle pumpkin pie spice on top of pie
Photo by Katie Grey / The Mainstream
“Nana”shared her favorite memory with this recipe: “I bring it to Thanksgiving every year and everybody loves it.
She also shared her favorite Thanksgiving memory: “My mom put cornish game hens inside the Turkey and told my Dad that the turkey was pregnant, once he found them inside of the Turkey while cutting it up.”
During Thanksgiving she gets together with all of her sisters and their families, along with her parents to play games and eat together.
Recipe Review: The pie is better than regular pumpkin pie in the way that it has a light pumpkin taste to it and the crust adds extra flavor to the fluffy top part. It is like the whipped cream and pumpkin part of Pumpkin pie was just mixed together to create it. It’s almost like pudding with crust.
Fruit Salad by Grandma C:
Ingredients:
(All the fruit is cut)
Apples: 2 Red and 2 Green
Bananas: 6
Cran Raisins: a handful
Grapes: 36 Red and 36 Green
Mandarin oranges: 1 small can
Mini marshmallows: ½ a 16 ounce bag
Homemade whipped cream: 1 pint of heavy whipping cream and 1/4 cup of sugar (whip it in mixer then add to salad)
Put in fridge to store until consumed.
Directions:
1. Cut up all fruit (grapes can be choking hazards for small children)
2. Combine all ingredients and stir
Photo by Katie Grey / The Mainstream
Recipe Reviews: This dessert is so easy and so yummy; I love that you can put anything inside of the salad and just switch it up too, or take stuff out. It is actually really convenient!
Grandma C makes this salad two to three times a year, and her mom made it for her only a couple times a year: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. “There are exceptions when I will make fruit salad when my grandkids ask me because grandmas make things for their grandchildren,” she said.
Grandma C chooses to make fruit salad because “it has all the tastes, and it is colorful, pleasing to the eye. It is super easy, but it is special too”.
What does Grandma C and her family do for Thanksgiving? “We do not eat Turkey, but we still get together and watch football, or do our own thing all together. Oftentimes people are doing homework, grandkids are playing, or people are taking naps.”
In conclusion, of all three recipes, the most versatile is the fruit salad and there is no baking. The recipe is so easy and anyone could follow it. It is super simple for a last minute dessert. The pumpkin silk pie is an extremely easy pie to create without any baking, just a refrigerator, and it is so smooth and light as a dessert; it was delicious to eat. The cookies are cookies, no big deal, but they taste absolutely amazing.
Why not include at least one new dessert to the plethora of others this year? Make it special!
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UCCMainstream@yahoo.com
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