When my family and I get invited over to someone’s home for dinner, I’ll always ask what they would like me to bring to contribute to the meal. Usually I’ll get asked to bring a dessert. That was the case last night, when we went over to our friends’ home for dinner and cards. I decided to bring a tray of several kinds of desserts.
I really enjoy serving up dessert trays. People like having a choice of desserts, and if you make your sweet treats small enough, your guests can often sample several. Also, I think a tray with several bite-sized desserts on it can be very appealing visually.
I actually made two dessert trays for this past Saturday night: one with chocolate caramel thumbprint cookies and cannoli, and the other with raspberry mousse cups, mini cherry cheesecakes and more cannoli. I’ve posted the recipe for all of these desserts at some time in my blog, except for the caramel thumbprint cookies. I thought I would post that recipe here. The recipe for these cookies came from Better Homes and Gardens’ special interest publication, “Our Best Desserts,” which is on the newsstand right now. If you’re a fan of “Turtles” chocolate candies, you’ll love them!
With these two trays, the mousse cups, mini cheesecakes and thumbprint cookies can all be made ahead of time and frozen. I just pulled the desserts out of the freezer and put them on the trays, an hour before serving them. I also made up (fried) the cannoli shells ahead of time too and froze them; then I filled them just before serving. Being able to make the shells up ahead of time is a great time-saver, because rolling out a recipe’s worth of cannoli shells and frying them can be a 3-4 hour project. You need to fill them no more than 15-20 hours before serving, because 1-2 after filling, the shells will start to get soggy. If you fill the cannoli shells while they’re still frozen, they’ll stay firmer longer.
Here’s a photo of some of my cannoli, right after filling and before rolling in powdered sugar and garnishing them with mini chocolate chips:
And here’s the recipe for the cookies:
Chocolately Caramel Thumbprint Cookies
½ cup butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 T. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 large egg, separated
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa
¼ tsp. salt
16 vanilla caramels, unwrapped
3 T. heavy whipping cream
1 ¼ cups finely chopped pecans
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 tsp. shortening
Cream together butter and sugar. Stir in milk, vanilla and egg yolk and beat until well-combined. Add flour, cocoa and salt, and blend well. Chill an hour in the fridge to make the dough easy to handle. Then roll the dough into teaspoon-sized balls. Beat the egg white until frothy. Dip each dough ball into the beaten egg white, and then roll into chopped nuts. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Place dough balls an inch apart on cookie sheet and bake 10 minutes in 350 degree oven. Remove from oven and using the end of a wooden spoon, make an indentation in the center of each cookie. Place cookies back in oven another 2-3 minutes.
While dough balls are baking, melt caramel pieces and whipping cream together in small saucepan, until caramels are melted. When cookies are done baking, spoon melted caramel into the center of each cookie. In another small saucepan, melt chocolate chips and shortening together over low heat, stirring constantly. Put chocolate into small decorating bag and drizzle over each cookie. Makes 32 cookies.
Enjoy!
~Becky
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