mulberryshoots

So tonight, we had pizza for dinner. Yep, courtesy of Papa Gino’s! I had a late appointment so stopped by and picked up three large slices of pizza. It was tasty. Afterwards, I asked G. what we might have for dessert? Hah!

I decided to make something that took a minimum of effort and would be tasty. Plus, the ingredients all had to be on hand. I thought about making a lemon meringue pie, believe it or not, because I have a bunch of Meyer lemons in the fridge. I know that was a crazy idea, especially since it takes a lot of effort to make the lemon filling – plus you had to beat up all those egg whites to make the meringue after the lemon filling had baked. Plus, I didn’t think I could lay my hands on cream of tartar required to make the meringue stay up which was probably somewhere in the spice cupboard but I didn’t know where, offhand.

So, I decided to make shortbread cookies, cutting a recipe in half so that all the ingredients would fit into my mini-Cuisinart processor:

1 cup flour, 1/4 cup sugar (confectioners or fine granulated), 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. water and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Cut up into small pieces, 1 stick of chilled unsalted butter. Whir the little processor engine, back and forth until the mixture comes together. I dumped it out on a piece of aluminum foil, patted it down into the thickness I would use to cut out the cookies, using my little square cutter with crimped edges. I put the foil wrapped dough into the fridge to chill for half an hour. I’ll use my antique meat fork to make pretty pin pricks into the cookies before baking.

When G. goes across the street to help his 98-year old mother get ready to retire for the evening, I figured I’ll take the dough out, bake the cookies at 375 degrees for about 12-15 minutes, sprinkle with a dusting of sugar, and they’ll be ready to have for dessert when he returns.

So, there’s my idea for a quickie home-made-from-scratch-dessert with the least amount of effort, ever!  Bon appetit!