Friday, May 13, 2005

An easy dessert!

This week a friend called and invited me to an impromptu dinner. Of course I accepted and asked the polite question: "Is there something I could bring?" Do you know what he said? Dessert! He asked ME to bring a dessert. I mean how often do you hear me raving about some great dessert I had? Or made? Nope, I didn't think so. So I went looking around...the kitchen of a non-dessert eater doesn't yield much. I did find a carton of strawberries that had seen better times about two days earlier. In my cabinet was a bag of pfeffernuse (German spice cookies) left over from Christmas. I tossed the washed berries in the food processor with lemon juice, sugar and a touch of Grand Marnier, pured them and poured them into a take-along bowl. I gave the bag of cookies a good whack or two with the flat side of a cutting board, and found a carton of crème fraîche.

At his house, I scrounged up champagne flutes, although wine glasses would have worked as well, and layered the cookie crumbs with the strawberry stuff and stuck it in the fridge. When dessert time rolled around, I added a dollop of the crème fraîche. You know, it was REALLY good.

You probably don't have leftover pfeffernuse but I'm thinking gingersnaps would be as good. Leave them in kinda largish chunks, it was the cookies absorbing the strawberry juice without becoming a paste that made it all okay.

Next year I'm saving some pfeffernuse on purpose.

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