We'll Bring Dessert!

Friends asked us over for dinner on Friday night. Accepting their generous offer to cook, I asked, "Can we bring anything?" The answer: dessert.

Simple enough, but what were we going to bring? I didn't have a lot of time, I didn't want to go buy a bunch of ingredients. Should we just stop by at a bakery and pick something up on the way there? It was tempting, but I thought I could spend less and know where my ingredients were coming from. So I opened my refrigerator, looked on my shelves, and realized I had what I needed for a crisp.

Crisps have all the goodness of pie without all the difficulty of making a pie crust.

Take about 6 cups of local blueberries (or whatever fruit you have on hand). Mix in a little brown sugar and a little flour and lemon juice until the fruit begins to look like it's coated in something. I used a tablespoon of each.

Take 1/2 cup of oats, 1/2 a cup of flour, and 1/2 cup of local butter (cut up into tiny chunks.) mix together, add enough cinnamon to darken the mix a little, and sprinkle on top.

Bake at 375 for 30 or so minutes or until it looks brown on top and a little bubbly on the inside.

Now, this was a "healthy" recipe, but if I was making it again, I'd use a little more butter.

You might raise the fair question..."I thought you said it wasn't supposed to take long! 30 minutes is WAY to long to bake something."

Actually, put it in one of these lovely pyrex dishes with a lid. Dessert baked while we ate dinner. The dessert took less than 5 minutes to prep.

Way less than a blueberry tart I was eyeing at the bakery. That thing was $12. My dessert? Less than 5, even with all those yummy blueberries.