Desserts

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Desserts are essentially a French concept. It was the French in the 1600s who separated the sweet part of food from the sour and salty part.

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Until then, European cuisine followed the Roman tradition of not making such a distinction.

Chinese cuisine and some Middle Eastern countries still do not have this separation. Thus, we have the famous “sweet and sour” dishes of Chinese cuisine. Chinese food “originally” didn’t have the concept of a sweet dish at the end of a meal, hence the invention of prediction cookies in North American Chinese restaurants.

English desserts

The term “dessert” is used in America, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and France. In England, some consider the word “dessert” to be vulgar and call it “afters”, “sweet” or “pudding” instead.
The upper class prefers “pudding”. But a dessert spoon will still be called a dessert spoon. However, in the food business in England, the term “desert” has become a term used by marketers, etc.

Famous desserts

Desserts can be served at room temperature, warm, hot, chilled or frozen. It is usually sweet food, but dessert can include savory foods such as cheese or nuts. In America, traditional desserts are jellies, puddings, pies, cakes, and ice cream. But dessert is such a broad concept that it is simply impossible to describe it in one gender. Here is just a small list of the variety of directions for making desserts:
  1. alcoholic desserts (such as the English “Christmas cake” or “Pudding”),
  2. calorie-free desserts,
  3. vegan desserts,
  4. dietary desserts,
  5. light desserts,
  6. low-calorie desserts,
  7. sweet desserts

And if you divide them by country of origin, or by the method of serving, not to mention the main product, then the list will be endless.

Delicious desserts

For Ukrainian cuisine, verguns and khrysts (confectionery made from yeast-free dough), traselenets (pie made of yeast dough, laid out in layers, dough-filling), platki, pancakes, pampuhs, cheese cakes are considered traditional for Ukrainian cuisine.

By the way, the definition of pampukh (doughnut) is very difficult to define, especially since the name itself does not really make any sense. Theoretically, the word “doughnut” can be applied to any fried piece of sweet yeast dough.

Cake without sugar

Cake is a term used to describe a very broad category of food.

A cake can be a large sweet product or a small non-sweet product that is used more like bread. In a minimal number of cases, it can even be made in the form of a lozenge – for example, Pomfret cakes. A “cake” is a mound or mass of what is left of something after all the oil has been squeezed out of it. We even use the word “cake” in English to mean “bar of soap”.

The word “cake” was formerly used to refer to the unripe things we now call cookies, biscuits or crackers, and this usage still survives (in English) in very few examples, such as oatcakes. There are also fried cakes – pancakes.

Coffee cakes are something between a cake and bread.

The difference between fruit bread and tea cake is often just a matter of size.

Eccles’ cakes are more like what we might now call ‘cakes’.

However, in the post-1900s Western world, it’s safe to assume that a pie is a sweet, risen pastry containing flour, sugar, some type of fat, flavorings, and generally eggs.

Fruit desserts

Fruit is typically used in desserts, in order for a fruit to be perceived as tasty, it must have the right balance of sugar and acid for that particular dish.

The balance of sugar and starch is also important, especially in fruits like bananas.

Even preparing such a simple recipe as a cottage cheese dessert with fruit requires attention in those matters.

You can prepare all these desserts thanks to the recipes on our website.