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Does Thanksgiving Dessert Have to Be a Classic?
When a friend graciously offered to host Thanksgiving dinner this year, I told her I would make a dessert. I was excited to reprise the triple chocolate mousse cake I’d baked last Christmas, which is a fantastic recipe and especially festive. So I was a little surprised when she gently suggested I bring something more traditional, like a pie or apple crisp. Really? My perspective is that chocolate transcends tradition. What do you think? On Thanksgiving, do you prefer the classics?
Image: Hostess, maker of Twinkies, announced today that it was going out of business
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This year I’m shaking up a tradition. I’m going to do a chocolate pumpkin pie and I’m considering a graham cracker crumb crust as opposed to a pastry crust. I just felt like doing something different this year but I still love pumpkin so I didn’t want to go too avant garde. My recommendation would be to troll around on line a little bit and maybe you can find something that can mix both your chocolate mousee cake, which sounds absolutely amazing BTW, and a bit of Thanksgiving tradition.
I’m all about having a lot of dessert options. I do feel pretty strongly that there should be pumpkin pie available, but a high quality second dessert would be great. Perhaps a pumpkin cheesecake would be a good compromise?
I do like something akin to tradition on Thanksgiving, but we often had non-traditional desserts on that holiday (my family didn’t eat pumpkin pie). In fact, I’m fairly certain we’ve had a yellow cake with chocolate icing at some Thanksgivings. The rest of our meal was semi-traditional: turkey and mashed potatoes to be sure, but also red cabbage and spätzle, along with several vegetables. No sweet potatoes (and certainly not any casserole with brown sugar during the savory part of the meal).
I’m hosting this year and making two desserts–one a traditional apple pie and the other homemade bourbon butter pecan ice cream. I see no reason to exclude chocolate, however. It IS at the bottom of the food pyramid.
I wonder if your host is also expecting guests that are allergic to chocolate or nuts or something like that? Seems like she would have just said so if that were the case. I personally would be hard pressed to turn down any dessert.
I don’t think it’s about allergies. I think it’s about preference. For my taste, chocolate is always appropriate. But I want to make my host happy. So I’m bringing two desserts.
We have pumpkin and mince meat, but I also make lemon chocolate tarts and a banana cream with a layer of chocolate and nut crust. Never had apple pie so it’s not a tradition in our book.
Stacy, sounds like you’ve got a lot of baking to do.
It’s all about the chocolate. Most traditions are pretty arbitrary anyway, so it’s best to just go with what you like the most and forget about what “everyone” else says. And for me, that would be chocolate. No offense, but your friend is in the dark ages. The End.
So, I decided to make the chocolate mousse cake AND an apple crisp. Everyone was happy. And we all ate leftovers the next night, as well. So both desserts got polished off.