I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
October 24, 2005
Each year, my husband and I host a Christmas dessert party. We invite every single person we know and like within a 75-mile radius. Our guests are asked to bring a dessert to share. We provide the drinks and the ambience. And it is one big debauched hootenanny.
Because it has all the elements of a great party- plenty of alkie-hawl, a playroom for the kids (ensuring that there will be no tiny witnesses to tell mommy that “You said driggig was BAY-ud!”), and a shitload of calorie-packed desserts.
Some of the desserts are store-bought, but most are homemade. There’s just something about the Christmas season that makes you want to try out that recipe for Great Grandmother Ethel’s Banana Fudge Supreme Pie, you know what I mean?
And there’s also a ravenous, greedy monster inside most of us that cannot resist the idea of a roomful of sweets.
As the hostess, this party is supposed to be my time to shine. I pour drinks, wear a chic new outfit, and whip up (i.e., slave over) a dessert guaranteed to outshine every other paltry offering on the table. After all, I am an Excellent Cook, and this is what Excellent Cooks Who Have Parties do.
______________________________
The first year we had our party, I don’t even remember what I made. The truth is, I wasn’t expecting any real competition. Most of our friends are Career People. Their cooking repertoire consists of Hamburger Helper and… Tuna Helper.
What I do remember is the appearance of Jim, our friend from work, and his wife Anne. Anne is serenely quiet. I expected her to show up with a tupperware of Betty Crocker brownies or something. Instead, she lovingly cradled a crystal cake stand in her arms that held the most beautiful, moist, creamily frosted German Chocolate Cake that I have ever seen.
As she gingerly put her cake down in the center of the table, I stood agape and forgotten in the corner while a pack of wolvish men made approving grunts and eagerly awaited the heaping slices she served them. Within minutes, the cake was gone. Meanwhile, my uh, was it candy cane cookies? remained on the table, growing staler by the second.
Damn her. I thought, returning her smug smile with a bared-teeth grimace that would have to do. Damn her!
“Boy, that Anne really let you have it this year,” my husband said later that night as we were cleaning up.
“What do you mean?” I asked, stiffening.
“I mean, you’re a great cook, but honey, Anne’s cake was fabulous.”
I didn’t talk to Hubs for three days.
____________________________
The next year, I started early, combing dust-covered cookbooks for a double whammy recipe that would send Anne right back to the pits of hell from whence she and her stupid cake came.
Desserts were auditioned by my family and rejected. Too fluffy, too dry, too sweet, too ordinary. At the last possible second, I found an interesting-looking recipe from an obscure cookbook I’d picked up at a century-old boarding house in rural Tennessee. Hummingbird Cake. Looked pretty good. I tried it at Thanksgiving and the looks on my family’s faces said it all. This cake clearly was the first thing served upon one’s arrival in heaven.
Revenge would be mine!
This time, Anne came through our garland-trimmed door with a homemade strawberry cheesecake and a smarmy look on her face. She marched past me to the dessert table, then stopped short when she saw my Heavenly Hummingbird Cake, glowing with goodness, perched atop a brand new cake stand twice as tall as her own.
Oh her cheesecake was good all right, but…
“This year, you win,” her husband gleefully said as he helped himself to more of my cake.
I’m sure she didn’t talk to him for three days.
______________________
Last year, she fought back with an Epicurious concoction called Autumn Trifle with Roasted Apples, Pears and Pumpkin Caramel Sauce. The bitch was going all out.
I countered with Chocolate Stout Cake, having wrangled her online recipe source out of her the year before after she’d had one too many glasses of chardonnay.
I call last year a tie because, while I had the popular vote as well as a whispered first place award from her husband (who had clearly learned his lesson and was operating covertly), my husband, traitorous traitor that he is, told me later he liked the trifle the best. The bastard.
___________________________
And that brings us to this year. This is where you come in. I need something show-stopping. Something spectacular. Something that will leave Anne gasping for breath in the downstairs half-bathroom or better yet, sobbing outside in her minivan.
Please, dear readers, please tell me you’ve got the recipe I’ve been searching my whole life for, the one that will make my party complete. The one that will crown me, Lucinda, Christmas Party Queen, 2005.
Anyone?
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.