A dessert desert...

So I received my copy of Shape magazine in the mail yesterday – I have a subscription to Shape, and a subscription to Fitness magazine. Oh, and also National Geographic. So after I’m done with the girly “I wish I could lose weight” magazines, then I can move on to stories about pandas and mummies and ancient Rome. Actually, what I like about Shape and Fitness is that they’re not TOO “girly” – they don’t devote half the magazine to shopping, or men, or shopping for men. Although I will admit I was once flattered into buying subscriptions to two trashy magazines by a college student who was selling them outside a Wal-Mart. Somehow he got on the subject of age, and he thought I might be around 23. He also invited me to a frat party. This was a few months after my 30th birthday. (Um, how many magazines do you want me to buy?) Yeah, I ended up buying two subscriptions. (And no, I didn’t go to the frat party. But I was INVITED. Me. Invited to a party by a college guy. And that’s all that matters… Unless he was just doing that to sell the magazines?? Sigh… flattery will get you everywhere.)

But I digress… as I was saying, I received my copy of Shape in the mail yesterday, and flipped through it quickly, looking for interesting articles, and I saw a few recipes for low-fat, low-calorie desserts. One of them was something called a “cherry clafouti.” I glanced over the ingredients list, and realized I had everything I needed to make this particular dessert. I even had a bag of fresh cherries in my fridge, which were a few days old and needed to be eaten, anyway. So after dinner, I turned on the All-Star game so I’d have something to watch while I worked, and pulled the cherries out of the fridge. I washed them, and then spent the first couple innings pitting them, until there was cherry juice splattered all over the counter. And my hands. And, I think, on the blinds covering the window in the kitchen. It looked like some sort of horrible fruit-related crime had taken place there. But I knew, once I’d made my delicious cherry clafouti, it would all be worth it.

I moved on to the rest of the recipe – two eggs and four egg whites (six eggs? Are you sure? Seems like an awful lot of eggs…) a little bit of sugar, some milk, vanilla extract, three-quarters of a cup of flour (that’s it? All those eggs and not even a whole cup of flour? Well, if that’s what the invisible editor of recipes for Shape magazine says, then it must be okay…) a pinch of salt, and a couple tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar to sift over the top of the whole thing when it was baked to perfection. My cherry-stained hands worked to mix everything in a large bowl (this seems awfully runny…) and then I poured the whole thing over the cherries I’d arranged in the bottom of a pie pan (just like the recipe says. Gosh, I’m so good at following directions…). I placed the pie pan on a baking sheet (in case it runs over – sure, I get it) and put the whole thing in my pre-heated oven. Then all I had to do was sit back and wait for the lovely aroma of cherry clafouti to fill the kitchen.

Of course, I’ve never even HEARD of cherry clafouti, so I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to smell like. At first, it smelled like nothing. But eventually, my kitchen started to smell like, well, like baked eggs. But I was sure that was only temporary. This was DESSERT after all – so eventually the sugar and vanilla (the tiny little bit of sugar and vanilla) would mingle with all that egg and create something sweet, right? I turned the oven light on and ventured a peek through the window. The concoction in the pie pan was bubbling ominously, much of it spilling over onto the baking sheet. I turned the light off and hoped for the best. Maybe if I didn’t watch it bake, it would simply run its course, eventually winding up at the obvious conclusion – a perfectly delicious low-fat dessert. After the 40-minute bake time, I pulled the pan out of the oven and realized it wasn’t even done yet. I had to bake it for another fifteen minutes before the eggy mixture solidified.

I was still optimistic, however. I mean, this was a recipe out of Shape magazine – a very reputable health and fitness publication. Certainly they would know the difference between something that tastes good and something that should be tossed in the garbage. I waited for my dessert to cool, then cut a small piece from the pan. My optimism began to fade as half of the cherries fell away, revealing the slimy, mushy, eggy disaster underneath. I replaced the cherries and took a small, tentative bite. Wow. It was horrible. It was like eating an omelete filled with cherries. If I wanted an omelet filled with cherries, I’d go to Denny’s and ask for a special order. Needless to say, the whole thing WAS sent straight to the garbage…

I learned something last night – dessert is dessert for a reason. It’s not supposed to be “good” for you. I don’t eat dessert to be healthy – that’s what I eat vegetables for. That’s why I buy broccoli and green beans and tomatoes and spinach and mushrooms at the grocery store. That’s why I eat whole-grain bread and brown rice and cook with olive oil. That’s why I’ll choke down an occasional carrot, even thought I think they taste like dirt – because they’re good for me. I eat dessert when I want something that simply tastes good – there’s a REASON most desserts use a certain amount of sugar and butter and flour. Because without those things, your “dessert” runs the risk of ending up in the garbage.

I’d much rather eat a real, regular-fat, regular-calorie brownie and spend a few more minutes on the treadmill, than eat something that belongs in the garbage…


Thank goodness Ghirardelli understands what a dessert should be like...