Pillsbury's Bake Off Dessert Cook Book: Shortcutted Prize Winning Favorites, the Best of All the Bake Offs.

by Pillsbury

Y4 Hardcover no dust jacket. 1968 144p. 11.25x8.50x0.50 Basics; Terms; Measures; Sauces and Topping; Desserts Warm from the Oven; Pies, Pies and more Pies; Pies and Pastries; Pastry Hints; Fruit Pies; Custard Pies; Meringue Pies; Chilled Pies. 1.

Genres: Cookbooks

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Pillsbury is a brand name used by Minneapolis-based General Mills and Orrville, Ohio-based J.M. Smucker Company. Historically, the Pillsbury Company, also based in Minneapolis, was a rival company to General Mills and was one of the world's largest producers of grain and other foodstuffs until it was bought out by General Mills in 2001. Antitrust law required General Mills to sell off some of the products. General Mills kept the rights to refrigerated and frozen Pillsbury products, while dry baking products and frosting are now sold by Smucker under license.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Jerry]

Mostly because I enjoy pie more than cake, the recipes I tried first ended up being pie. There are a lot of other good-looking recipes for things like crumbles and crunches, bread puddings, and cakes.

I almost didn’t use the pie crust section in this book, because I already use Eddie Doucette’s beer pie crust to great effect, as well as a few other favorites. But I decided that making two different pie crusts from the book for the two pies I made would let me shelve the book more quickly. Also, they have a full-page spread on how to make pie crusts and their variations, so it seemed worthwhile to try it.

I had some leftover canned pineapples after making the Potter County Bicentennial Cook Book Hawaiian Fudge, so the first pie I made was their Pineapple Crunch Pie. This is a two- or three-layer pie, depending on whether you count the double crust as adding a layer. The “filling” is pineapple and lemon juice, with cornstarch as a thickener. Then the second layer of crust goes on top. The top crust is topped with brown sugar, butter, and pecans—basically, it’s topped with pecan pie filling.

I used their basic double crust for this. There’s nothing obviously special about the ingredients or instructions, but they did turn out to be as flaky as the best pie crust I’ve made in the past and far flakier and far easier than the worst.

Pecan and pineapple is a great combination flavor. The pineapple filling would have been great on its own—flavorful and creamy—but with the crunchy top I’m kind of glad I only made a half recipe (to match the amount of pineapples I had left). I would probably have finished it in the same amount of time regardless of how much I’d made.

I occasionally enjoy a malted milk shake, so I always keep malted milk powder on hand, but don’t use it very often because I pretty much only use it for shakes. Their Chocolate Mallow Malt Pie uses malted milk powder, so I tried that second. It’s an easy refrigerator pie; it uses miniature marshmallows instead of gelatin and sugar. I also filled out the semi-sweet chocolate pieces with a bit of baking chocolate to make it more chocolatey.

It calls for a single-crust pie, but since I wanted to use a different crust than the one I’d previously used, I browsed through for something interesting to go with chocolate filling. I found it under their Pineapple Fluff Pie, the same basic crust but it used grated orange peel and then orange juice in place of the water that pie crust normally uses. Orange juice is acidic, so besides adding a nice flavor that goes well with chocolate, the orange juice also adds the extra flakiness and tenderness that vinegar is often used for.

It literally just replaces the water with the orange juice; if you have a favorite pie crust, I recommend trying that substitution. It made a great pre-baked pie crust for the chocolate pie, with a wonderful color to go with the great flavor and flakiness.

The chocolate filling was exactly as advertised: chocolate, light, and malted. The photo of a slice of this pie also featured some sort of cream dollop on top. It looks, from the texture, like it might be a combo of whipped cream and sour cream; they have a recipe for this under their Cherry Honeys, but since I had about a third cup of whipping cream left after making this pie, about a quarter cup of sour cream left after a casserole I’d made a few days before, and about a quarter cup of peach-jalapeño jam left in a jar, I helped clear out my fridge by using all three of those completely. It was close enough to the quantities of cream, sour cream, and sugar called for in the Sour Cream Topping recipe.

The pie is great with or without a dollop of cream on top, but peach and jalapeño is a good match for it.

This is a well-thought-out book. Besides a section at the front about sauces and toppings, there’s a table that lists the toppings used for various recipes, such as the Sour Cream Topping from the Cherry Honeys. The Pies and Pastries introduction explaining how to make pie crust clearly works well.

And there’s a very nice list of substitutions for things like “Apple pie spice” or “Pumpkin pie spice”. There is one substitution for something I’ve never seen before: apparently there used to be a “pre-melted unsweetened chocolate” available in envelopes, with one envelope being about the same as a square of baking chocolate.

I have several recipes bookmarked, unsurprisingly. Some of the potential standouts include a Caramel Apple Pudding, a Saucy Perk-Up Pudding, a Raspberry Walnut Torte, a Brazilian Mocha-Nut Pie, and a Butterscotch Nut Chiffon Pie.

The Caramel Apple Pudding is a lot like a Pennsylvania Dutch cinnamon drop cake I like a lot, but with the addition of apples and almonds. The Saucy Perk-Up Pudding combines rhubarb, pineapple, and mint leaves. The Raspberry Walnut Torte is what appears to be a shortcake bottom with a berry/walnut custard over the top, all topped with a raspberry sauce.

The Brazilian Mocha-Nut Pie and the Butterscotch Nut Chiffon Pie appear to be variations on refrigerator pies, with gelatin, yolk, and meringue mixed together.

Pillsbury’s Bake Off Dessert Cook Book is available for checkout on the Internet Archive. If you’re looking for a unique recipe, or a unique variation on an old classic, it’s worth a look.

[Kathy Shea]

This book has many recipes I plan on creating. Here is one that I make several times a year:

Top Me Twice Cake

I would refer to this as a pineapple pecan coconut coffee cake.

Yes, I will make this again. This cake is delicious! It is moist and holds the shape when cut in to sections. This recipe is very easy and quick to put together. The smell of the pineapple baking is wonderful and while pouring the glaze over the top of the warm cake, you really can’t wait to taste it.

[Susan Molloy]

Good and varying collection of easy to make recipes for any occasion. This was useful for me.

[Robert Davis]

I like the Raspberry Walnut Torte