The Dessert Table: Cranberry Torte
Growing up outside of Pittsburgh, I assumed that all wedding receptions featured those decadent displays known as cookie tables. Weighted down by platters of cream-filled lady locks, lemon bars, nut horns, Mexican wedding cookies, spritz cookies and anise-laced pizzelles, these linen-covered tables attracted guests in droves. Introduced as a low-cost alternative to an expensive wedding cake, the cookie table eventually became a companion to cake. Custom dictated that family members make the cookies but, if you didn’t have gifted bakers at home, you could do as my mother did and enlist the help of a local bakery and family friends. At parties it was the dessert table around which people clustered. Here the cookies were less ostentatious — think chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter blossoms, pecan sandies and butterscotch — but just as plentiful. So too were the brownies, fruit and custard pies, marshmallow-studded ambrosia and heavenly angel food cakes. What didn’t make it to the dessert table? For obvious reasons I never saw ice cream, make-your-own-sundae bars or chocolate fondue pots. Generally, anything …