Everybody loves a dessert
An Eton Mess can be a good thing: 10 odd dessert names
Published on January 8, 2025
Credit: Frederick Medina
Nobody raised an eyebrow or batted an eyelash when the lemon ice cream was introduced to the world. After all, the name was explanatory enough to describe its subject: it was a lemon-flavored ice cream, and that’s all there was to it. But what about the Floating Island? Or the Angel Food cake? One can only wonder what a dinner party guest would imagine when the host announced that the chosen dessert was called Summer Berry Grunt. Listed below you will find ten oddly chosen names for desserts, for your perusal. So, read on, and see if any one of these tempts you!
Summer Berry Grunt
Credit: Enrique Briseno
Truth be told, the name sounds more ominous than it should. A grunt is a cobbler that's slow-cooked on the stovetop, or in a slow-cooker. Supposedly, the name comes from the sound the berries make as the dish cooks.
A Summer Berry Grunt is a delicious and easy-to-make dessert. The summer berries add a sweet and tart flavor to the filling, making it ideal for the warmer months.
Floating Island
Credit: Yi Mun Loo
A dessert with a quite spectacular name, the Floating Island is a dessert consisting of meringue floating on a vanilla custard. The meringue used is baked in a vessel over warm water. It can be served at room temperature or chilled.
Eggs in Snow is a similar dessert where the meringue is shaped into egg-sized pieces and poached, rather than in one large baked piece. A 1771 letter from Benjamin Franklin reported "At dinner had a floating island", meaning that it was a special treat even back then. Also, an 1847 American cookbook lists Floating Island as a Fourth of July celebration dessert.
Angel Food cake
Credit: Nathalie Jolie
Angel Food cake is a type of sponge cake made with egg whites, flour, and sugar. It differs from other cakes because it uses no butter. The aerated texture that gives this dessert its name comes from whipped egg white.
Angel food cake is usually baked in a tall, round pan with a tube up the center that allows the cake batter to rise higher by 'clinging' to all sides of the pan. It is always sound advice to cut Angel food cake with a serrated blade since the straight-edged blade tends to compress the cake rather than slice it.
Apple Platz
Credit: Brina Blum
Platz is the German word for "place". But, of course, an Apple Platz is not a park made of apples. The Apple Platz is a simple and sweetly satisfying dessert that tastes like a cross between apple crisp, coffee cake, and apple cake.
The topping is crumbly, rich, and sugary, while the apple filling is jammy and infused with cinnamon flavor.
Clafoutis
Credit: Chinh Le Duc
A clafoutis is a French dessert that can assume the appearance of crisp, Yorkshire pudding-like creations and custardy flans, but all topped with a layer of seasonal fruit.
Clafoutis traditionally uses unpitted fruit arranged in a buttered dish, covered with a thick but pourable batter, then baked to create a crustless tart. The clafoutis is traditionally dusted with powdered sugar and served warm, sometimes with cream, as a dessert.
Fruit Fools
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Aside from the pejorative term, a fool can also refer to an English dessert. Commonly, fruit fools are made by folding puréed stewed fruit into sweet custard. Modern fool recipes often use whipped cream instead of custard.
Many authors believe the name "fool" derives from the French verb fouler meaning "to crush" or "to press". The name trifle was also originally applied to the dish, with the two names being used, for a time, interchangeably. In the late 16th century, a trifle was 'a dish composed of cream boiled with various ingredients'.
Eton Mess
Credit: Carissa Gan
A dessert named after its messy appearance, the Eton Mess is a traditional English dessert consisting of a mixture of strawberries or other berries, meringue, and whipped cream. It is commonly believed to originate from Eton College and is served at the annual cricket match against the pupils of Harrow School.
Aside from referring to the appearance of the dessert, the word mess may be used in the sense of "a quantity of food", particularly "a prepared dish of soft food" or "a mixture of ingredients cooked or eaten together".
Fruit Buckle
Credit: Honey Fangs
A buckle is a mix of fruit and cake baked together, somewhat similar to a cobbler, with a streusel topping. As it bakes the fruit and streusel topping makes the cake "buckle."
This silky, moist cake can be studded with any seasonal fruit and is topped off with a buttery crumb topping, a blood orange glaze, and just a pinch of sea salt.
Brown Betty
Credit: Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦
For those who never heard of it, a Brown Betty is a traditional American dessert made from fruit, usually apple, but also berries or pears and sweetened crumbs.
Similar to a cobbler or apple crisp, the fruit is baked, and, in this case, the sweetened crumbs are placed in layers between the fruit. It is usually served with lemon sauce or whipped cream.
Johnnycake Cobblers
Credit: Clint Patterson
Another variation of the omnipresent cobbler uses johnnycakes as its base in place of biscuit or pie dough to produce a cobbler with a rustic cornbread feel.
This old-fashioned, colonial dessert with a cornmeal biscuit topping can include peaches and plums, or whichever stone fruit is in season, to make an excellent dessert.
