Dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of something sweet, but sometimes  of something more strongly-flavored, such as cheese. The word dessert comes from the Old French desservir, which means "to clear the table."
Speaking of Old French, it is widely believed that prior to the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette said “Let them eat cake”, when told by a courtier that the starving French peasants had no bread to eat. Whether she was sitting in the extravagant parlour scoffing sweet delicacies while she said this, or riding on a royal steed with one breast exposed when she said this, believers have not reached consensus.

Although the custom of eating fruits and nuts after a meal may be very old, dessert as a standard part of a Western meal is a relatively recent development. Before the rise of the middle-class in the 19th century, and the mechanization of the sugar industry, sweets were a privilege of the aristocracy, or a rare holiday treat. As sugar became cheaper and more readily available, the development and popularity of desserts spread accordingly.

Some interesting facts about desserts...

Cakes were originally just flat lumps of dough, baked on a spit – although even as far back as in ancient Rome, people added honey, butter and eggs to them. It wasn’t until someone discovered that adding beaten egg whites to batter, and adding baking powder to it, that cakes started to resemble what we know them to look like today.

Tips to prevent a cake from collapsing: after you place the batter in the baking tin, raise the tin and drop it suddenly onto the kitchen counter. This will release some of the air bubbles, which are what causes a cake to collapse into itself. Then bake on the middle shelf of a preheated oven – this allows even circulation of heat.

Don’t try to cut a cake when it is piping hot out of the oven – it will crumble and more than likely fall apart. If you must, use unwaxed dental floss instead of a knife! It is always best to cut a cake into desired shape when it is cold, or better yet, frozen.

Want to add flavour and moisture to your baking? Add a teaspoon of honey or more to your cake or cookie batter – this will increase moisture. Add a few drops of vanilla essence for flavour and a subtle fragrance – alternatively, buy the more expensive (but well worth it!) vanilla pod, and store the beans in your sugar jar. The gases from the beans will flavour the sugar.

Cookie dough is best rolled when cold – this will prevent the dough from sticking to the rolling pin. It is also best eaten when cold! (Although, experts warn that the raw eggs in the dough may carry the potentially deadly salmonella bacteria – eat at your own risk!)

The word “cookie” originates from the Dutch word “koekje”, which means “small cake”. According to culinary historians, cookies were essentially test cakes – small balls of dough popped into the oven to determine if the temperature was right. In Australia, cookies are more popularly known as “biscuits”, but whatever the name, they’re bloody tasty!

The good old Aussie ANZAC biscuit was developed from “hardtack”, which was essentially a type of hard biscuit carried by travelers. Hardtack had a long storage life, and could last for months, and sometimes years, if the conditions were suitable. ANZAC biscuits were initially baked by Aussie wives, girlfriends and mothers for their soldiers abroad, anxious that their men weren’t receiving adequate nutrition. They had to come up with a type of food that could travel for up to two months without refrigeration and little, dry oaten cakes were the answer. The biscuits were very hard when they arrived, so soldiers ground them up to add to their porridge. Sent to Gallipoli, where the Aussie soldiers ultimately suffered the worst defeat in Australian military history, these soldier biscuits were renamed ANZAC biscuits in honour of the men who fought.

Biscuits may have developed into plain bricks of nutrition, but on the upper end of the culinary scale, they have also developed into dainty treats. Biscuits and small cakes that are approximately 1-inch square and about 1.5 to 2 inches high, often consisting of layers of cake and butter cream frosting are now known as “petit fours”. “Petit fours” are literally translated to mean “little ovens” in French as they were traditionally made when a very hot coal-fired oven was cooling down, and are served at teatime, or at the end of a meal.