My Mother's Southern Desserts

North Carolina native, food writer and cookbook author (My Mother's Southern Kitchen; Recipes from the Great American Stewpot; etc.) Villas invites his mother, Martha Pearl Villas, to join him in presenting this winsome repertoire of Southern desserts. Organized by the calendar year and its fetes (e.g., Christmas, Kentucky Day Derby, birthdays, picnics or brunch) and laced with his mother's words of culinary wisdom, this family recipe collection ranges from Secession Brown Betty to Horse Pear Tart. Diet- and cholesterol-conscious readers beware: recipes often call for generous quantities of butter, Crisco, sugar, eggs and cream. Accompanying anecdotes defer to Martha Pearl's authoritative voice (e.g., the Pineapple Dessert Souffle is ""perfect for fragile digestive systems"") and trace the quirky personal histories of Cuddin' Berta's Georgia Kiss Pudding or The Delta Queen's Pralines as well as the antecedents of Blueberry Flummery, Huguenot Torte with chopped apples, pecans, cream and sherry, and chilled Pussycat Syllabub, melding lemon juice, wine and half-and-half. Ingredients are supermarket accessible and instructions are straightforward, without references to food processors or standing mixers. Novices who require hand-holding will not get it from the authors, who do not elaborate on kitchen setup, equipment or techniques. Villas's chatty prose and the unrepentantly caloric delectables make this a hard-to-resist collection. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)