In the first part of this Thanksgiving program from 1995, Arlene is making a four tasty desserts to accompany the holiday meal, and each one of them has a special twist!
If you’re tired of regular old pumpkin pie, why not try unique this pumpkin-apple pie recipe from a viewer?
Or instead of a plain cheesecake, why not a pumpkin cheesecake?
If you’re watching calories, check out the light and sweet cranberry yogurt mousse!
And for something truly different, the “surprise” in Arlene’s surprise applesauce cake is a touch of chocolate!
We hope you enjoy all of these delicious recipes. Be sure to watch Part 2, which includes the turkey and all the trimmings for a perfect meal.
Pumpkin Apple Pie
This pumpkin pie has a surprise at the bottom, apples!
Ingredients
- 1 pie crust (pre-made or homemade)
Apple Filling
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 Tbs corn starch
- 12 Tbs butter (1.5 sticks)
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 4 tart apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Pumpkin Filling
- 1 cup canned pureed pumpkin (unsweetened)
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 cup evaporated milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small saucepan, combine water and cornstarch. Over low heat, stir in brown sugar, butter, salt, cinnamon, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Stir in apple and cook briefly for 5 minutes until apples start to soften just a little and cornstarch thickens the mixture.
- In a medium bowl, combine pumpkin, egg, white sugar, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and evaporated milk.
- In a prepared pie crust in a 9" deep dish pie plate, pour cooked apples evenly over bottom. Pour pumpkin filling evenly over apples and pat gently with spatula to remove any air pockets. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 40 minutes. Allow to cool at room temperature at least one hour before cutting and serving. Keep refrigerated. Enjoy!
Surprise Applesauce Cake
The "surprise" in this cake is a touch of cocoa powder, which gives it a lovely chocolate flavor.
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups applesauce
- 1 cup raisins, soaked in hot water until plumped, drained and patted dry with paper towel
- 3 1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp allspice
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 cups cocoa
- 2 Tbsp cocoa (additional)
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Generously grease and flour a 10-cup angel food or a large bundt cake pan, tapping out excess flour.
- In a bowl, with an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then beat in applesauce. Stir in raisins.
- In a large bowl, whisk remaining ingredients. Stir in applesauce mixture. Pour into prepared pan and bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes or until tester comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 5 minutes and invert onto rack to cool completely. Makes 12 to 15 servings. Enjoy!
Light Cranberry Mousse
This a nice, light dessert to include with your Thanksgiving buffet.
Ingredients
- 1 32oz plain yogurt (not Greek)
- 1/4 cup old fashioned rolled oats
- 1 cup whole berry cranberry sauce
Instructions
- Line a wire mesh strainer or colander with a coffee filter or paper towel. Placed above a bowl and pour yogurt into strainer. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours and allow excess liquid to drain out of the yogurt.
- In a dry skillet over low heat, toast oats until just slightly brown. (They can also be toasted in the oven at 300 for 15 minutes.) They should smell kind of like popcorn, but not burnt. Remove from heat. Put drained yogurt into a medium-sized bowl and beat with a mixer for 2 minutes.
- Beat oats and cranberry sauce into yogurt until smooth. If you like it sweeter, add more cranberry sauce. Spoon into 4-6 individual goblets or parfait glasses. Enjoy!
Pumpkin Cheesecake
This makes a nice, big, delicious cheesecake that is a nice addition to a fall dinner table.
Ingredients
Crust
- 1 box spice flavored cake mix
- 1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick)
Filling
- 3 packages cream cheese, softened (8 oz each)
- 1 1/2 cups white sugar
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
- 4 large eggs
- 2 cups canned unsweetened pumpkin (about 1 can)
- 1 Tbs pumpkin pie spice
Instructions
- Preheat oven (see note below) Combine spice cake mix and melted butter in a bowl with a fork until everything is evenly mixed. Press mixture into the bottom of a greased 10" springform pan, or a greased 13×9" baking dish. Press in with a spoon or the bottom of a measuring cup until evenly packed.
- With an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in sweetened condensed milk until mixture is smooth. Beat in eggs, pumpkin, and pumpkin pie spice. Blend until smooth. Pour mixture into prepared pan over top of the crust.
- If using a 10" spring form pan, bake at 375 degrees for 65 minutes. If using a 13×9" baking dish, bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Allow to cool at room temperature for 1 hour, then refrigerate for at least 2 hours. (Overnight is better.) Keep refrigerated. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Well hello and happy Thanksgiving. You say it’s not time yet. Well, in a couple weeks it will be and since we’re going to be doing a two-part series of Thanksgiving dishes in preparation for this wonderful holiday, we thought that we would do one program, which is today’s, on all the desserts that you might like to try for your family this year. Some traditional things with a little twist to them. I think you’re gonna be interested in it and then next week, we’ll do part two where we’ll do the turkey and the vegetables and the potatoes and put it all together and have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday celebration. That will be, part two will be next week. Let me tell you that one of the things about Thanksgiving and all holidays are traditions and it’s great because when your children are small, that’s the time to establish them and let me read to you what one of our viewers wrote and told me she did. She said “We set a bowl of pens and small strips of plain “white paper near the front door on Thanksgiving Day. “When family and guests arrive, “they’re asked to write something that they’re “thankful for on these little slips of paper, “fold the paper in half and put it unsigned in another bowl. “I collect the notes and then I bake each one,” each one of the little notes into the croissant rolls that she is warming up for her meal. Now you can use those tubes of refrigerated dough. You know the croissant rolls? That’s what she uses. She says “After we bless our meal, I ask everyone to break “bread, take one of their croissant rolls and break it “and read what the writer of their note is thankful for.” She said “This has helped to make “many special memories with family and friends.” Isn’t that a great tradition? Because before you even begin to eat your meal, you’re being thankful for something that’s happened in your life or thankful for something about life in general. I think that’s a great tradition and maybe you’d like to try that this time. Some traditions start this holiday, okay? And keep the theme around the tradition about being thankful. Our tradition was every Thanksgiving, my dad would read from the Bible verses about being thankful. The Book of Psalms is full of thanksgiving. David was a thankful man to God. So, maybe you’d like to establish a tradition. Whatever it is, you know, we’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving since 1621 and way back then, the Pilgrims knew why they had a bounty, why they had something to be thankful for. Lets don’t get so caught up in the activities of the day and the preparation of the day to make this perfect meal that we forget what it’s really all about, being very thankful. Okay, we’re gonna get started. Get the paper and pencils together. I’ll tell you what, this is gonna be a fast moving program today. So please, we’ll be right back in just a minute to get started with Thanksgiving desserts. We’ll be right back. Here’s today’s “At Home” Hint. Thanksgiving is a family affair, so encourage the kids to pitch in peeling and trimming vegetables, making place cards or arranging baskets of fruit and flowers. They’ll really feel a part of this big day. If you’ve got a helpful hint you’d like to share with us, we’d like to hear from you. Send your hint to “At Home Hints,” CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. All right, the first one that we’re going to be preparing for dessert is called a pumpkin apple pie. Not two separate pies, one pie and if you want to get a shot of it, here is the finished product here. It really looks like a traditional pumpkin pie but there is a layer of apples on the bottom and then the pumpkin on top and Jane Yoder, her husband is the pastor of the Valley Brethren Church in Jones Mills, Pennsylvania, sent me this wonderful recipe. We made it and we’re impressed and she also did the cheesecake, pumpkin cheesecake that we’re going to be doing a little bit later and I wanted to thank her personally. Okay we have some water that we’ve got in our saucepan. It’s a half a cup of water and we’re going to add some cornstarch, a tablespoon of cornstarch to that and this is what you are doing here is getting ready for your apples. Lets dissolve the cornstarch first. Okay? Stir it around, get the lumps out of it. Then we’re gonna add some butter to this just like that and some brown sugar. Now what this is gonna do is make a thickening. This needs to come to a boil in one minute and you need to stir this with a whisk so you get the lumps out of it, okay? We’re gonna boil it and again, this was a half a cup brown sugar, one tablespoon of cornstarch, one teaspoon of cinnamon. We’re gonna go ahead and add that teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt and this will boil for one minute. Then you’re going to lower the heat just a little bit and here I have four tart apples that have been peeled, just skinned and peeled and then you slice them for like apple pie of course and they are gonna go right into this pan because what we’re gonna do is cook them just briefly for about five or six minutes. We’ll get rid of that whisk now and we’ll use a spoon. What you wanna do is put that brown sugar over them. I really need to lower my heat here. See that thickening that’s already been already made because as soon as that comes to a boil, that cornstarch thickens the brown sugar and the butter and the water and ah, the aroma. That cinnamon smells so good. These will cook for about five or six minutes. Now we’re not gonna forget them but we’re gonna make the pumpkin part of this pie now and here I have, let’s see, I have one cup of pumpkin and we’re gonna put one egg and we’re gonna beat it, just like that. Add that to it. All right. Here we have, it’s half a cup of sugar, white sugar and 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt. This is pumpkin spice, this is one teaspoon, you can buy that in your spice rack at the store if you’re not familiar with that. And let’s see, then we’re gonna add a small can of evaporated milk just like that, okay? And all you do with this, keeping an eye on your apples over there ’cause you don’t want them to burn, we’re just going to mix this about, just like that. In fact, I’m gonna go ahead and use this whisk because I think it will, whisks are great to keep lumps and to get the little, sometimes the stuff doesn’t dissolve. Like if you put cinnamon in things, sometimes it just doesn’t dissolve like it should. So here we have our pumpkin, see how smooth that is? That’s the way it should look, just like that. Okay, for time’s sake, we’re gonna say that this is cooked. You would really cook this five to six minutes like I said because they need to be just a little bit, just a tiny bit tender. You don’t want them cooked a lot because then they’ll get mushy and they won’t hold up in the pie. But you need a deep dish pie shell. You see how deep this is? This is the small regular nine inch, this is a deep dish and you don’t cool these or anything, you spoon them immediately right into that crust. I hope you can smell this because it certainly smells good and it’s important to try to make an even layer just like that, all across the pie. Try to evenly space them down. You want to use more than four apples because if you did, you’d end up with more apple pie and the pumpkin would be all over your stove and we all know what a terrible smell that is when that happens. It happens to me quite frequently to tell you the truth because I get overanxious. Then you’re gonna take your pumpkin that you’ve just, sorry, before we do that, let’s do a little lemon juice just over this, about a teaspoon of lemon just like that and now, we pour the pumpkin over the apples. Okay, the smell is wonderful. You have that cinnamon smell, you have that pumpkin pie smell, wow. And you smooth it out. This goes into a preheated 375 degree oven and you’re gonna bake this for about 40 minutes, all right? We’re gonna use our lower oven here today since we have so many things going on, 40 minutes on that. All right, the next one we’re gonna do is the cheesecake, the pumpkin cheesecake and again we want to thank Jane Yoder for these great recipes. She’s a lovely lady, she sends all kinda goodies, good recipes to me and if you’ve never done a cheesecake before, especially a pumpkin one, here it is right here and it makes a nice big one, this is a 10 inch cheesecake and we used pumpkin in it. We’ve got our springform pan. Now the nice thing about this, if you don’t have a springform pan, you can do it in a 13 by nine pan and if you do that, you adjust the baking time which isn’t gonna be in our newsletter. So when you get the recipes, you look for that. But what we’ve taken is a box of spice cake mix and you take about a half a cup of melted butter in a bowl and you mix that together. When you have that mixed, you press it in the bottom of your pan. If it’s a 13 by nine, press it there. If it’s the springform, just press it. You don’t bake it, you just press it like that. Then that’s your crust, okay? Then we’re gonna take three packages, eight ounce packages of cream cheese which I have here and we have ’em soft so that they will blend well, all right? You can see that. To that we’re gonna add, now we never said this was low fat, right? Okay, one can of Eagle Brand milk. I feel like I’m running around this kitchen today with roller skates because I wanted to show you so many different things to make and give you good ideas because sometimes we get in a rut making the same desserts and I like to keep the traditions but just do the traditions with a different twist to them. Like the pumpkin pie, I saw it, I thought oh, I’ve gotta share that one with the viewers because it’s still a tradition but it’s just a little different and to me, apples says, when there’s apples, it says fall, okay? Now we’re gonna mix these together. That’s the milk, sweetened condensed milk and the three packages of the cream cheese and then we’re gonna add, we’re gonna add two cups of pumpkin. Now I’m hurrying, so you would probably beat that a little bit better than I have just done. But it will be all right. Two cups of pumpkin and we have some, a tablespoon of apple pie spice or pumpkin spice, sorry. Four eggs go in here just like that and I think that’s it and we’re gonna blend this ’til it’s smooth. You have to use a mixer because it won’t blend really well unless you do. So you blend this ’til it’s very creamy and very smooth. Now this also goes into the preheated oven and this is going to bake for 65 to 70 minutes at 375 or 350 for 35 minutes if you use a 13 by nine. Remember I told you there’d be a difference? You let this cool at room temperature and then you have to chill it for at least two hours, overnight’s best. The longer you chill cheesecake, the better it tastes. It has to be good and cold and you want this to be very creamy and there you have it. That’s about it right there. Don’t worry about the little bits of cheese in there, that’s okay. This is a cheesecake, right? Okay, now carefully, we’re gonna pour this into our crust. Make sure I get all these goodies here. And remember, stir at the bottom of your bowl because sometimes you don’t get down there with the beater and you know what happens? You get down there and you say oh, there’s a whole bunch, see, look what I’m talking about, see? Cream cheese in there, we’ll save some of the batter and just stir it around so that it gets incorporated and that’s your pumpkin cheesecake, how easy can it be? Jane, you’re a doll, thank you so much for sending that to us. I know the viewers are really gonna enjoy this, if I can hold onto this bowl here, and while we take a break, we’re gonna put this in the oven and when we come back, how about a surprise applesauce cake, why not? We’ll be back in just a minute. Oh, I wish you could see what goes on when we stop these cameras to take a break. If you could see the Floor Director right now. You think we can get a picture of someone who’s celebrating Thanksgiving just a little bit early? There’s Dale, would you trust this man to tell you anything is true? A man that has leaves on his head cannot be all bad. Thank you Dale for your contribution to our Thanksgiving program. Well, we’re back now and we’re gonna make a surprise applesauce cake. You say well, what’s the surprise? Well the surprise is that in most applesauce cakes, it’s a white batter. Well in this applesauce cake, we have chocolate, we’re adding cocoa to the batter. Let me tell you that I have 2/3rds of a cup of butter and two cups of sugar, this makes a big cake. You can see it right here that I’ve just dusted with some powdered sugar, isn’t that beautiful? We do it in a Bundt pan. One of the keys is you absolutely have to have this pan thoroughly greased, every little nook and cranny and thoroughly floured clear to the top. This is a 10 cup fluted Bundt pan. If you use anything smaller than that, you’re gonna have cake running everywhere. This comes up, you can see how it’s cooked over, you can see this is the ridge here that there was so much cake. So you have to have this totally greased and totally floured, I can’t stress that enough, generously. Well, we have the sugar and the butter that has been creamed here. Now we’re gonna start to add some other ingredients and we’re gonna add two eggs just like this, okay? And let them kinda beat around there to incorporate. Every once in awhile, you may have to stop and clean the butter off of the blades and I would suggest that you use the paddle. If you use the real thin, if you have a KitchenAid at home, don’t use the thin, the beater, never do it. It will not cream well with that. So we’re gonna let them go a little bit there. Now next to that, we’re gonna add two cups of applesauce and I just like to stop it when I’m putting this stuff in ’cause I have memories of things flying everywhere that they’re not supposed to be. So I tend to stop this and I think it’s just safer. Two cups of applesauce and that can be your own homemade or you can get it out of a jar, whichever you prefer. Let that incorporate. I don’t know if you can see how that’s doing or not. There’s little bits of butter in there. It’s looking well though, it’s gonna be all right. Don’t beat real fast, just let it continue at a slow speed like that because that’s gonna incorporate the butter and the apples together. What we have to do now is get a cup of, one cup of raisins that we have soaked in hot water to plump them and we’ve drained them very well because these are gonna go in next. But before we do that, I want to do our flour mixture because we take two cups of flour, sorry, three and 1/2 cups of flour, half a teaspoon of salt, three teaspoons of baking powder, two teaspoons of baking soda, two teaspoons of cinnamon, one teaspoon of allspice and a half a teaspoon of ground cloves, that’s your flavorings. It makes a really nice flavor. Then we take 1/2 cup plus two tablespoons of cocoa. You put that there, let me get a fork here just to mix this up because you want to blend this together. These are the dry ingredients, blend it together just like this and remember what I’ve told you about walnuts? We’ve had them as a tip a different time. If you cover them with flour before you add them to the cake, the nuts won’t settle to the bottom of your cake. So we’re gonna put our walnuts right in here so they’ll get a good covering of flour and we’re also gonna do that with our raisins, so the same thing doesn’t happen with them, okay? And then we have it all mixed together, now we’re gonna stop and we’re gonna add this flour mixture to our creamed mixture. This makes a nice, big cake. I thought you know, we don’t very often have cake at Thanksgiving time but why not? Maybe that’s gonna be a tradition that you’re gonna start. And you wanna go very slowly with this. You don’t want this to beat long because you don’t want to beat the raisins apart. But you’ll see very quickly how it will start to gather and come into a batter and when it does just like that, that’s basically just about all you’re gonna do, all right? Make sure that we have everything. We have the walnuts, the cocoa, the cloves, the allspice, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, flour, raisins, applesauce, eggs, sugar and butter. Ta da, we got it all, all right. Sometimes you feel like with that many ingredients, am I gonna forget something? But the crew today got it all prepared and thank God we got them all in. Now this is unusual because number one, you don’t have to do an icing with it which is nice because you really don’t want icing, a real sweet dessert after you’ve had turkey and all the other trimmings that go with the turkey. You don’t want to do that, so I think that this kind of a cake is nice. This cake will stay nice too. If you don’t use it all for Thanksgiving, pop it in the freezer, wrap it real well and pop it in the freezer and enjoy it some time, you know, there’s another holiday coming very shortly that you need this type of thing with. So I would suggest that just put it away and half the cake is okay, slice it down and serve it that way. It doesn’t have to be the whole cake. But like I said before, you want to make sure that all of the batter in the bottom of the pan has been incorporated. So I would spoon the rest of it to mix it, just like this. Now we’re gonna put this in the pan. This goes in a 375 degree oven. Seems like everything we’re doing today is in a 375 degree oven and this is a very thick batter. So you’re gonna have to spoon it to make sure that it goes in evenly and you’ll say oh my goodness, that’s clear to the top of the pan and it is scary because you think it’s gonna cook all over the place. That’s why I said it’s really important to use a 10 cup fluted Bundt pan. If you use anything smaller than that, you’re gonna have big trouble, okay? The applesauce in this gives this an interesting flavor and it really keeps it moist, which is nice. I told you there was a lot of batter to this. There it is. It’s coming up there, isn’t it? I tell ya, the holidays, this is the fun part of it, making things like this. Get the kids involved, let the kids stir some of this or let the family get involved somehow. Maybe take a night before, a couple days before Thanksgiving and you do some baking and then you put it in the freezer or whatever. Just try to involve the family if you can at all possible. It makes them feel like they’re a part of the big day and they are, they’re a real big part of it and they enjoy the food that you’re preparing, let them be a part of preparing the food also. All right, that goes in the oven. Smooth it out. When you bring this out of the oven, this has to sit in this pan and let it cool for about 10 minutes and then carefully, I cannot tell you enough, just start to loose it by jerking it from the edges. It may cook up enough, you have to take a knife and loosen it. But don’t just dump it and think it’s gonna happen, ’cause it won’t, okay? Do like this, get the air holes out, okay? And then we put this in the oven, all right? I don’t have room in my oven but we’re gonna bake it off in a little bit but there’s the one that’s already prepared. The last thing I have for you today is something called light cranberry mousse and this is for people who are on diets that want just something light to eat and don’t want the heavy pies and all of that or they’re restricted for health reasons. We’ve taken a 32 ounce plain yogurt that’s in the refrigerator area of your supermarket and we have had it in a strainer draining all the moisture, all the liquid out of it for about an hour. Now I’m gonna put that in my bowl and discard this, I’m gonna beat this it says for two minutes because this will make it creamy. Just like this for two minutes, okay? Now we’re gonna pretend like this has been beaten for two minutes, all right? Because now what you’re gonna do is add, that’s pretty creamy, we’re gonna add some rolled oats, oatmeal that we’ve toasted in a pan in the oven for 15 minutes, this is about 1/4 of a cup. We’re gonna put those in and we have some Whole Berry cranberry sauce and this calls for about 1/2 a cup of that. Let me first of all mix this around just like this. This will give it some crunch and you’re gonna serve this in some beautiful goblets because this is a light dessert, very impressive. And then we’re spooning 1/2 a cup of Whole Berry cranberry. Don’t forget we want you to be sure to be with us next time and we’re just going to mix it about and next week, we’re doing the whole turkey, don’t forget now.
- [Announcer] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation and a stamped, self-addressed business-sized envelope to At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, “Enjoy!” featuring an entire month of “At Home” recipes including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the “Enjoy!” issue number with your request. Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania. Appliances provided by Dacor Distinctive Appliances, a reflection of your good taste. Groceries provided by FoodLand, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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