Thanksgiving: What to Bring For Dessert

If there’s one fail-proof way to be the most popular at Thanksgiving dinner, it’s to bring dessert.

There are a number of different desserts to bring along for your holiday get-together, and a bunch of different places around Rockland to pick them up. Patch is here to help direct you.

Cookie Girl Bake Shop - 191 South Main Street, New City - 845-708-5888

This fairly new store opened late last year and has a bunch of options for the post-turkey portion of your meal. While Cookie Girl has a large variety of cookies, they also have several seasonal items.

They have turkey, leaf, pumpkin and corn-shaped cookies all appropriately and impressively colored with icing. You can combine all of them into a bouquet of cookies that the shop will assemble for you as well. They also have cookie platters that includes chocolate chip macadamia nut, triple chocolate and oatmeal raisin cookies, and they are capped off with two large leaf-shaped cookies and another one with a message written on it.

“Trays like this are really popular for parties and holidays because they can serve a lot of people,” said Stacey Damesek, owner of the bake shop. “You also get a few different flavors, so people try different things.”

Another popular item has been Cookie Girl’s party pops, which are chocolate chip cookies cooked to look and feel like brownies that are attached to sticks. The sticks are then placed into a centerpiece and made to look like a tree of cookies. Damesek also serves cookies on sticks.

“Everything tastes better on a stick,” she said. “It’s great, you can enjoy it, you can walk around with it. It’s just fun.”

But the most popular item this season doesn’t come on a stick. Instead, it’s placed on a plate. And that item is Cookie Girl’s personalized place cards. These are cookies shaped like turkeys that Damesek writes a name on in icing. They are sold individually, and Damesek personalizes each one for however many people are coming to your party. She said she does these for pretty much every major holiday, with shapes for each specific holiday.

Joseph’s Bakery & Coffee Bar - 36 N. Middletown Road, Nanuet - 845-623-6438

This bakery moved to a new location just last week, but don’t worry. It moved only slightly up N. Middletown Road from 32 N. Middletown, where it was located for 17 years, to 36 N. Middletown, where it has more than double the space which allows for a much larger baking area.

But fans of the previous location will still find the new one stocked with their much loved Italian goodies. Pat Ryan, who works at Joseph’s, said one of the bakery’s biggest hits is a larger take on an old favorite.

“A lot of people like our big cannoli,” Ryan said. “It’s a big cannoli crust and inside we stuff it with 36 mini cannolis, and put the cannoli cream on the two sides of the big cannoli. Then you can dip the mini ones into the cream.”

Ryan said Joseph’s also sells a lot of Italian cookies and pastries, as well as Italian bread.

“We also have a lot of pies and layer cakes,” she said. “Right now, our apple and pumpkin pies are very popular, and the cheesecake.”

Runcible Spoon - 37 North Broadway, Nyack - 845-358-9398

It’s safe to say that a lot of people will be eating turkey this Thanksgiving. It’s probably also safe to say considerably less people will be eating turkey cupcakes this Thanksgiving.

Don’t worry, or sorry if this sounds appetizing, but they’re not turkey-flavored cupcakes. Instead, the three-dimensional frosting on top of the cupcake amazingly looks like turkeys.

And if that interests you, Nyack’s Runcible Spoon is a must-stop. Along with the colorful turkey cupcakes, there are also bright orange pumpkin-looking ones as well. Runcible Spoon also has cookies shaped like turkeys, cows and dinosaurs, depending on how far back you want to take your Thanksgiving celebration.

Allison Donzella, who works at Runcible Spoon, said right now their pumpkin, pecan and apple crumb pies are very popular and would make a good gift to bring to a Thanksgiving dinner. They also have wrapped cookie platters with seasonal cookies.

Donzella said they have a Thanksgiving menu that includes the pies mentioned above, as well as apple pie, blueberry and blueberry crumb pie, cherry pie, very berry pie, apple cranberry nut pie, sweet potato pecan pie, peach tart, pear tart, apple tart, linzer tart, triple berry tart, bourbon pecan tart, pumpkin cheesecake, carrot cake and a bunch of different deals on cupcakes, holiday butter sugar cookies and maple leaf ginger snaps.

Edible Arrangements - 45 E. Central Avenue, Pearl River - 845-735-3333

If you’ve had enough chocolate and sugar, perhaps something from Edible Arrangements is in order for your Thanksgiving dinner. Not only will these fruit platters taste good, but they will brighten up your table because they also look good as well.

April Olander, who works at Edible Arrangements, said right now their cinnamon-dipped apple wedges are quite popular, along with their dipped pineapple.

“We typically like to get at least a day advance for orders,” she said. “But if you come early enough, before the early afternoon usually, we an do a same-day order. We also have stuff in the store you can pick from.”