Our favorite desserts

The Drexler clan had few favorite desserts. However, one my father was especially fond of was Junket. It was a custard-type dessert -- sort of like creme brulle without the brulle (crisped sugar), and it was made with a tablet stirred into a mixture of milk and eggs and sugar to thicken it. It was not baked in an oven as custard is today, but cooked on top of the stove. Mom made that at least once a week.

We children all like jello -- any kind, we didn't care. One small package of jello stretch just right for all six of us. Mom almost always included a can of fruit which expanded the dessert just a little bit.

We also loved pudding. The stir kind, not the instant kind. However, I have to admit that after instant pudding became very popular, mom switched over. She like to mix the chocolate and vanilla together, making it chocola pudding. Not too bad, but I would have preferred plain chocolate. There were times when she'd make instant lemon pudding and try to pass it off as lemon meringue pie without the meringue. Didn't work! We might have been little, but we weren't stupid. It was sweet, however, and thus we dug in and finished a little dish off in three swallows.

My sister tells me that she really loved the crumb cake mom made every Saturday night (for Sunday morning, but it could have been a dessert). If mom dressed it up -- i.e., she added apples to the mix -- it became a dessert. I could tolerate it then (with apples) because it wasn't as dry as it was just plain.

Mom also made a yellow cake and usually made a simple butter icing for it. She would often let us children put a few drops of food coloring in the icing just for a change.

So, the deserts were simple, but they satisfied our hankering for something sweet.

Oh, yeah, let's not forget ice cream!

ttfn