The I Hate to Cook Book (35 page)

Cut cantaloupes in half, scoop out the meat, and dice it. Now combine it with whatever other fresh fruits you have around: a few raspberries, strawberries, pineapple chunks, seedless grapes, peaches—any or all. Stir in two tablespoons of Kirsch, mix, chill, and serve it in the scooped-out melon shells.

     COUPE ROYALE     

(Just a fruit cup, but dignified with Kirsch, it’s a coupe.)

1 cup black Bing cherries, pitted (either fresh or canned)

½ cup Kirsch

whipped cream, unsweetened

½ teaspoon each nutmeg, powdered ginger, and mace; and 1 teaspoon cinnamon, all mixed together

Soak the cherries in the Kirsch for at least one hour. Then put them in sherbet glasses, cover with the whipped cream, and sprinkle the spices on top.

Here are some uncomplicated Things to Do with
ICE CREAM
:

You can mix two-thirds of a cup of mincemeat and two ounces of brandy or bourbon with a quart of vanilla ice cream, then spread it in ice-cube trays (with dividers removed, of course), and refreeze.

You can do the same thing with almond toffee, coarsely broken, but skip the whisky. You needn’t buy a whole box of toffee—just pick up some nickel bars at the candy stand.

Ditto with peanut brittle.

And next we come to the
PARFAITS
.

When you hate to cook, one of the best ways to get around the fancy dessert problem is to buy six or eight parfait glasses. Buy six or eight long, slender dessert spoons, too, if you don’t have any iced-tea spoons. Hours before your guests come, you can fill up the glasses, top them with whipped cream, and set them on the top shelf of your refrigerator. Then there they are and there you are, without a single dessert thing to do at the last minute.

For instance, you might layer

strawberry preserves with strawberry ice cream

any nut ice cream with any chopped nuts

mocha or chocolate ice cream with toasted almonds

and top them all with whipped cream.

Or you could fill the parfait glass with ice cream, poke a hole in it with a wooden spoon handle, and pour in a liqueur:

crème de cacao, crème de menthe, or anisette with vanilla ice cream

crème de menthe with pineapple sherbet

Cointreau with peach ice cream

and top with whipped cream.

(Another good way to serve liqueurs with ice cream is to serve the ice cream, or sherbet, naked in a sherbet glass, with the liqueur in a liqueur glass at each plate. Guests may then pour it over the ice cream or drink it straight or both, as they prefer.)

And don’t forget the old-fashioned
SUNDAE
. People
like
them.

     ORANGE SUNDAE     

You can pour slightly thawed frozen orange juice over vanilla ice cream and top it with grated orange rind or bitter chocolate shavings.

     HONEY ALMOND SUNDAE     

Heat the honey and pour it hot over vanilla ice cream. Top it with chopped toasted almonds.

     A-1 CHOCOLATE SUNDAE     

(A good, easy chocolate sauce that keeps well in the refrigerator.)

2 squares bitter chocolate

2 tablespoons butter

cup sugar

½ cup evaporated milk, undiluted

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ cup sherry

Melt the chocolate and butter over low heat, then stir in the sugar and milk. Cook it, over low heat, until the sugar has dissolved and the sauce has thickened. Then add the vanilla and sherry. (The sherry isn’t essential, but it gives it a lovely rich dark taste.)

Now when you’re serving an ice-cream affair for dessert, it is nice, of course, to serve a
COOKY
with it. But sometimes you are out
of cooky mixes or refrigerator tube-type cookies. Sometimes you must make some.

When you hate to cook, you ask a lot of a cooky recipe. It must call for
no exotic ingredients
. It must be
easy
. It must not, above all, call for any
rolling out and cutting
. It must produce
extremely good cookies
. And quite a lot of them.

The following cooky recipes meet these stern requirements.

     MELTAWAY SHORTBREAD