I use the recipe from the Pioneer Woman’s Butterscotch Pudding. It’s easy and eaten warm, it’s delicious and comforting. Oddly, it was the first recipe I NEEDED to prepare during the beginning days of the pandemic lock-down.
Shortly after my parents were married in the late '30s, my mom wanted to make something special for company. So she tried baked Alaska. It was an unholy disaster, and she never made it again. She also learned never to do experimental cooking for company.
Head cheese: GOOD!!
I make grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches and they are sublime
No, and in fact I found a recipe this winter I’ve yet to try because it occurred to me that I haven’t seen one in the wild for 10 to 15 years.
LOL, this reminds me of my stepmom, who learned the same lesson when hosting my dad’s boss for dinner.
She decided to make Cherries Jubilee (another forgotten old favorite), only she forgot to pit the cherries. No one really enjoys eating a fancy dessert when it involves spitting out many pits during consumption.
Another time, she made a layered Black Forest cake. I’m not sure why she was so obsessed with cherries.
In this event, she remember to pit the cherries. However, her cherry sauce was a bit thin and she left the cherries whole. She also didn’t realize it was best to make a dam of cream to hold the cherries and sauce where they belong.
As she triumphantly walked the dessert to her guests, the cherries became little ball bearings. Cake layers slid every which way like 2:00 a.m. drunks. By the time it arrived at the table, the cake looked like a failed architecture project. Which I guess it was.
Still tasted good, though. 
Pineapple upside-down cake. A lady used to bring one to our church potluck. They were so good with lots of pineapple glaze. She’s gone now and so are her cakes. Store bought isn’t the same.
Homemade carrot cake is expensive and a lot of work. My grandmother spent an hour grating carrots and cutting up walnuts and adding chopped raisans & pineapple.
These days nearly everyone uses a carrot cake mix. It’s not the same.
The creme cheese frosting is still a must.
I think I love your stepmom. The ball-bearings Black Forest cake made me laugh. And thank you for reminding me about Cherries Jubilee! I used to make it BC–Before Children. After the babies, anything involving flames got put by the wayside.
Glad the reminder was helpful! I can sure understand why the flambés were put by AC. The flame is always so pretty.
Re my stepmom, yes, she was endlessly amusing in her kitchen pursuits, especially when she was trying to cook swanky. Not appropriate for this thread, but her attempt at making Châteaubriand for the Christmas holidays one year is the stuff of family legend.
There are short cut Carrot Cake recipes using a box of spice cake mix, or yellow cake, as a base. That saves a bit of time and ingredients. You still have to grate carrots, drain pineapple, add nuts and raisins. But you can cut down on oil. Cream cheese frosting is still a requirement! I’ve made them for potlucks and holidays, and get major raves.
I used to make a homemade jelly roll cake. It was a simple sponge cake baked in a sheet pan, and rolled up with something yummy inside. Rather than jelly, I spread it with a homemade eggy lemon pudding - I suppose it was technically lemon curd. Then I’d dust powdered sugar all over the top.
You don’t see jelly roll cakes anymore, really. I should make my lemon curd jelly roll again - it was extremely good.
I have four recipes for carrot cake. Only one of them calls for pineapple, and that’s the one I almost never use. I make carrot cake about every two months. With cream cheese frosting, of course!
In the '70s, my mother made carrot cake using baby food – pureed carrots – as an ingredient. I don’t know where she came upon that shortcut, but she tried hard to not reveal that secret to my sister and me, suspecting that we would have freaked out if we discovered we were eating baby food. 
I used that same recipe, which I got from a sister. I eventually realized that a plain Jane can of carrots in water was sufficiently mushy and ounce for ounce, a lot cheaper than baby food.
Thanks, @teelabrown! I’d forgotten all about jelly rolls. That’s another dessert I made just once. I was really nervous about the possibility of the cake cracking when I rolled it up the first time, but it was smooth sailing. I should make another one sometime.
I remembered another dessert I haven’t seen in ages: date bars, the kind with a short bottom crust, a layer of date filling, and a crumbly topping. Do people still make them?
Matrimonial cake! Yep, that’s fairly common in my experience.
There used to be a Betty Crocker date bar mix sold right alongside the gingerbread mix on the grocery store shelf. I don’t think the date bar is made any more - they were SO good, added a lot of oomph to a christmas cookie plate.
I love these, and also the ones filled with apricot or raspberry.
Krusteaz probably makes these bars.
I fondly remember the Betty Crocker date bar mix from Christmases past, but I don’t find anything like it on the Krusteaz website.
That’s a shame. But they do make raspberry crumb bars, which are scrumptious!