63 Desserts Later, She's Ready for the Party!

It was a recent Saturday earlier this month and dessert-maker extraordinaire Corinne Le was up to her eyeballs in chocolate chips.

And powdered sugar.

And flour, butter and about 30 other baking ingredients strewn about her condo kitchen in the hills of Pepperdine.

Her husband was phoning from Costco, where he and his son were laying in more supplies. Did she need the 4 1/2-pound bags of chocolate chips?

Yes.

Another call about 10 minutes later … did she need the quart of real maple syrup? Why yes, she did!

Another five minutes ticked by … the next call was about butter. How many pounds of butter did she want?

Six calls later, and he had the car filled with last-minute necessities, including rotisserie chickens for dinner, because for certain, nothing but sweets were coming out of that oven for the next 24 hours.

Corinne was baking for her annual December dessert party, in which she spends 1 1/2 weeks baking more than 60 sweet treats for hundreds and hundreds of Malibuites. On this day, she was in the final stretch of the marathon, with 10 or so recipes to go before guests began to descend Sunday at 6 p.m.

If you want to feel like the laziest bum ever, skip ahead and take a quick look below at the list of 63 desserts she made. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Are you back? Don’t you feel like a slacker? I do.

But let's talk logistics for a minute.  

Starting on Thanksgiving Day, as soon as dinner is over and cleaned up, the family begins Christmas decorating. Between putting up lights and putting out Christmas statuary, she might bake a few pans of bar cookies, as a warm up. She prefers not to freeze items. During the coming week, 60 desserts will emerge, one by one, one after the next, from her home kitchen. 

But first, she had to go over each recipe and compile a master list of ingredients needed, with pounds of the most obvious ingredients (cream, chocolate chips, various sugars, butter, flour, nuts and marshmallows) and large quantities of the less obvious (vanilla and other extracts, gelatin, evaporated milk, baking powder and baking soda).

She had to unearth some 40 holiday platters from a perch in the garage and lay them out on the long dining table and along the edge of the counter. Tiered serving pieces are a bonus because she can use her regular dinner plates for each layer of the tier.   

Each one of those desserts had to be not only baked/made/assembled, but plated, displayed and somehow stored until party day. The more perishable offerings (fruit cobbler) had to be made closer to the party; the sturdier items could be made a few days ahead. Some items, such as cupcakes, get baked one day and frosted the day of the party.  

But where on Earth do they put everything after it is baked and awaiting the big day? With four sons in a standard-sized condo, there isn't much room. The answer is friends' homes!

"This is the best community to do this in because we get to use other people's homes; if you don't have an industrial-sized kitchen, you need to have lots of friends," said Hung Le with a laugh.

He is not kidding, and luckily, they do. He is associate vice president and registrar at  and Corinne is an instructional aide at . Both of them are very public jobs, and the guest list for the party grows larger each year with new students and families in her classes and new Pepperdine folks he encounters.  

But with all those friends come requests. There's the carrot cake wants, the German chocolate cake for Alan Wexler, the peppermint cocoa tassies for Dayna Walley, the peppermint patties for neighbor Jane Soper, the cookie dough truffles for my son Nick (her student).

There are chocolate covered cherries for Milan, a former student who drives down from Santa Barbara, there is son Zach's favorite layered mint chocolate fudge, and of course, the most popular confection requested by all the children—chocolate dipped marshmallows! Those she makes sure to put in the prized end spot on the table, within easy reach of little hands.  

And let's not forget the Orange Chocolate Meltaways, Hung Le's favorite sweet. An orange-scented ball of chocolate ganache goodness that do as their name indicates—melt delightfully in your mouth.

Let's make them! They're easy.

Orange Chocolate Meltaways

1 package (11 1/2 ounces) milk chocolate chips
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
2 1/2 teaspoons orange extract
1 1/2 cups finely chopped toasted pecans

Coating:

1 cup (6 ounces) milk chocolate chips
2 tablespoons shortening

Place chocolate chips in a mixing bowl; set aside. In a saucepan, bring cream and orange peel to a gentle boil; immediately pour hot cream over chips. Let stand for 1 minute; whisk until smooth. Add the extract. Cover and chill for 35 minutes or until mixture begins to thicken. 

Beat for 10-15 seconds or just until mixture lightens in color (do not overbeat). Spoon rounded teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper-lined baking sheets (you can use a melon-baller tool for this). Cover and chill for 5 minutes. Gently shape into balls; roll half in pecans. 

Coating: In a microwave or double boiler, melt chocolate chips and shortening; stir until smooth.  Dip remaining balls in chocolate. Place on waxed paper to harden.  Store in the refrigerator. 

Yield: 6 dozen.

Want to feel like a lazy do-nothing? Take a quick look at Corinne’s list of delectables, all of which made an appearance on her groaning table:

1.         Peanut Butter Logs
2.         Butter Pecan Fudge
3.         English Toffee Bars
4.         Magic Cookie Bars
5.         Peanut Butter Marbled Fudge
6.         Chocolate Peanut Bark
7.         Layered Mint Candy
8.         Chocolate Fudge
9.         Mocha Fudge
10.       Creamy Fudge
11.       Peppermint Bark
12.       Two Tone Fudge Brownies
13.       Chocolate Cranberry & Oat Bars
14.       Marbled Chocolate Treats
15.       Saltine Toffee Cookies
16.       Nutmeg Meltaways
17.       Peanut Butter Fudge
18.       Peppermint Fudge
19.       Chocolate Caramel Candy
20.       Cappuccino Cake Brownies
21.       Island Cookies
22.       Pinwheels
23.       Jaime’s butterscotch cookies
24.       Creamy Peppermint Patties
25.       Chocolate Truffle Cookies
26.       Chocolate Peanut Sweeties
27.       Cookie Dough Truffles
28.       Chocolate Covered Cherries
29.       Coconut Snowballs
30.       Peppermint Cocoa Tassies
31.       Marshmallow Truffles
32.       Orange Chocolate Meltaways
33.       Chocolate Truffles
34.       Coconut Layer Bars
35.       Macaroons
36.       Rice Krispy Treats
37.       Chocolate Chip Cheesecake – (plain, plain w/choc chips, chocolate, choc w/ choc chip, Chocolate Marbled Cheesecake
38.       Death By Chocolate Trifle
39.       Chocolate Chip Cookies
40.       Sugar Cookies
41.       Snickerdoodles
42.       Gingerbread Cookies
43.       Date Swirl Cookies
44.       Funfetti Cupcakes
45.       SHAMEful Brownies
46.       Brownies
47.       Jaime’s Mini Pumpkin Pies
48.       Chocolate Swirl Treats
49.       Andes Mint Chocolate Chunk Cookies
50.       Jamie Philips’ Coffee Punch
51.       Seven-Layer Jello
52.       Cranberry Oat Bars
53.       Triple Chocolate Caramel Cookies
54.       Mexican Wedding Cookies
55.       Coconut Cranberry Bars
56.       Raspberry Almond Bars
57.       Creamy Fudge
58.       Orange Bundt Cake
59.       German Chocolate Cake
60.       Chocolate Dipped Morsels (pretzels, pretzel sticks, fortune cookies, marshmallows)
61.       Blackberry Cobbler
62.       Peach Cobbler
63.       Lucy’s German Chocolate Bundt Cake

Happy holidays to everyone.
Cherish your sweet friends, relatives, neighbors and colleagues.

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