Desserts were rarely served or requested for me growing up. Not really a thing in Korean culture (my ethnicity), nor the Latin American country of my birth.
I originally posted this in r/AskEurope but I realized that I don’t really know if it’s part of American culture considering I moved to the U.S in my teens.
What does this sub think?
28 comments
Not a daily thing, but it’s pretty common to have something sweet after dinner.
Not every day, but it’s not an uncommon thing. I’d say once a week or so, usually on the weekend, I’ll eat some kind of dessert.
It was common in my family. My parents did it. My kids want to do it. It never interested me for whatever reason.
We only expected to have dessert on holidays. Like on a normal weekday you’d never ask “what are we having for dessert?”
But sometimes after dinner / later in the evening, we’d have something sweet (like ice cream). It wasn’t considered part of the meal.
It’s common but not considered a requirement.
Usually the behavior is a “while supplies last” approach. So it will depend on how often per month a family buys or makes sweets.
Restaurants often ask if you’d like to order deserts before they assume your are finished eating and would like the bill.
At home, I would say it’s 1-3 times a week, typically on a Friday or Saturday night. Most common would be ice cream followed by pie.
At a restaurant, I’d say it is much more common to cap off your dinner with some sort of dessert.
Growing up we would have dessert like once a week as a treat.
As a general rule, we only have dessert when we are having guests for dinner. This is true in my home, and was true for me as I was growing up. That is not to say that we don’t generally have something like ice cream in the fridge to have a bowl later in the evening. But not at the dinner table.
Having dessert is a special treat it’s definitely not an everyday thing
I remember having ice cream after some meals as a kid. It definitely wasn’t all the time though. It was just a treat every so often.
I would sometimes have dinner and friends houses in the neighborhood and remember getting an after dinner coffee. It was more a desert coffee. Like a tiny cappuccino or latte
My family sat down and ate together as a family very rarely. We usually had snacks in the kitchen, and my parents largely let us eat whatever, whenever, and it worked out well enough for us.
We almost never eat dessert unless its a special occasion like a birthday.
I prefer it that way. Its hard to enjoy a sugary plate after a whole meal.
I don’t think we (we bring my family) ever had dessert when I was a kid. Sometimes now, I want go bake something and I just call it “dessert”, but I usually don’t just eat it after dinner.
I do want to say that, in my family, dinner was kind of disorganized. Like, my mom would make us food and she would leave to her room. Us kids would sometimes eat together, but it wasn’t rare for hungrier to to kind of wait in the kitchen until the food was ready, eat and then before the other kids even know dinner was ready.
Every night. This was more from Dad’s family than Mom’s. If you visited Grandma or any of the Aunties, you had dessert,even if all you asked for was a glass of water. (Mow Aunt Ida’s lawn, you get a glass of water, a slab of cake and a kiss on the cheek, in that order). Don’t know if this is a Swedish thing or just our family.
At home It was usually one scoop of vanilla during the week and cake or pie on weekends.
If we ate out on Friday, we had dessert at home.
No we didn’t do it unless it was some sort party or leftovers from a party
Yes, almost every day. But it was very casual and I would not use the word “served” to describe it–we would just each grab like an Oreo or something with or after dinner.
Plated desserts, like cake, were only for holidays.
We only had dessert on special occasions like holidays and birthdays.
Dessert was a special occasions thing for me growing up, celebrations and holidays. Very rarely included on just a random day.
As a kid yes. As an adult no.
Now that I have kids I realize it is the best way to bribe them into eating something “they don’t like” (aka something delicious that they just haven’t tried before).
I try to keep this household stocked with chocolate chip cookies as much as possible. I want to thank everyone in here who only eats desserts for special occasions for not clearing out the cookie supply at the stores.
“Was”?? Am I dead? *Do I not get any more desserts??*
I remember having dessert after dinner as a reward if my mom cooked something I absolutely hated (meatloaf 90% of the time)
It was usually Monday nights because that was the night my dad was home from work.
No, dessert hasn’t been a regular part of dinner in my life. We would usually have cookies or ice cream in the house, and maybe we’d have a couple of small cookies or scoop of ice cream in the evening, but that wasn’t an every evening thing.
As an adult, I might have a fruit or a piece of good chocolate in the evening—very occasional I’ll have a little ice cream—but no official dessert unless we have dinner guests.
We had dessert, growing up, maybe 50% of the time, or less. Not big, elaborate dishes, maybe some pudding, Jell-O, a cookie, maybe a piece of pie.
Yea,
A slice of sweet potato pie and hot chocolate was a common bedtime snack for me as a young child.
Yes, my family doesn’t even really consider a meal complete without a small dessert, and if we’re out, will actually travel to a second location to get dessert if the first place we ate is lacking.
We were Japanese-American. So, no, not really a cultural thing for us either. If we did get dessert with dinner, it was fruit.
Also, you’re probably aware of how even our special occasion desserts are low sugar and low fat compared to Western ones. As an adult, I still don’t like a lot of sugar and I’m lactose intolerant so most Western desserts aren’t really for me.
I’m Gen X, dessert happened at every meal my mom cooked. If we had pizza or other takeout, we didn’t. But she has a real sweet tooth.
As an adult, I never served it to my kids.