Do you love baking desserts? Do you enjoy trying new and exciting flavors? If you answered yes to both questions, then you are in for a treat! October 14th is National Dessert Day and we’ve prepared five amazing dessert recipes that will surprise you with their freshness and flavor.
These recipes are far from your typical desserts! Each features greenhouse grown fruits and veggies (yes, veggies!) that add a unique dimension to the flavor profile of the recipe. You’ll be amazed by how these fresh ingredients transform simple desserts into a truly extraordinary experience. National Dessert Day is the perfect opportunity to get a little adventurous in the kitchen and experiment with these fresh new flavors, so let’s get baking!
You might be thinking that desserts and fresh veggies don’t go well together, but trust us, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results. The trick is to select greenhouse grown produce, which is carefully nurtured in very specific, controlled conditions to ensure the highest quality, freshness, and sweetness year-round.
One of the most surprising and delightful ways to use greenhouse grown produce in your desserts is to make a cheesecake with tomatoes. Yes, you read that right: tomatoes! But not just any tomatoes ー we’re talking about award-winning Cloud 9® Bite-Sized Fruity Tomatoes. These premium tomatoes burst with a unique, fruity flavor that surges with sweetness in a recipe like Goat Cheese & Sweet Tomato Cheesecake. Sweet, salty and smooth, this is not like any other cheesecake you’ve tasted before. It has a crunchy crust made with dates, pretzels, and pecans, a creamy goat cheese filling, and a delicious topping made with roasted Cloud 9® tomatoes, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and thyme.
If you want to cap off a dinner date with friends with a grand finale for dessert, or if you simply want to indulge yourself once the kids have gone to bed, you absolutely need to try Salted Caramel Cheese Board with Melons. This simple recipe features Alonna™ Canary Melons, sustainable, greenhouse grown melons that offer a crisp, refreshing, and smooth flavor that’s Exotically Delightful™. With a cream cheese caramel sauce, pecans, pomegranate, chocolate chips, fresh mint, and, of course, tropical melons, this recipe has everything to make your busy day end on a high note.
When you find yourself longing for the fresh flavors of summer, our favorite go-to dessert is Strawberry Pound Cake made with Sweet Blooms® Strawberries. These greenhouse grown strawberries are available year-round and taste just as delicious in October as they do in July. This pound cake is moist, buttery, and rich, with a burst of strawberry flavor in every bite that brings out the fresh lemon in both the cake and the decadent glaze.
Cucumbers may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of desserts, but they can actually add a subtle freshness that works incredibly well in many different healthy dessert recipes. For a tea time treat, combine crisp and refreshing Uno Bites™ Nano Cucumbers with bananas, coconut, dates, vanilla, and lemon to make an out-of-this-world Cucumber Lemon Banana Cake. This plant-based cake is light and fluffy with a creamy icing and garnished with candied cucumbers.
We have one more dessert recipe for you that’s as simple and easy to make as it is delicious and elegant. Melon & Ricotta Sheet Pastry is the perfect dessert to enjoy after dinner on busy weekdays because it only takes fifteen minutes to prepare and another twenty minutes to bake. The sweetness of Alonna™ Canary Melons is balanced by the creaminess of ricotta cheese, a winning combination that you can experiment with in so many other exciting recipes.
For more inspiration to help you celebrate National Dessert Day, explore some more of our dessert recipes. You can always stay up to date and get the latest recipes by signing up for our newsletter.
