potlucks – Travel. Garden. Eat.

Kudos to those who enjoy and/or have time to spend hours crafting an elegant dessert that creates a memorable end to a meal. I tend to be the one who thinks as I am working, “Crud, what are we going to make for the neighborhood gathering tonight?” and then runs a quick lunch-hour errand to pick up ingredients to throw together shortly before departing for the event (or frankly, runs an errand to pick up the end-product dessert itself!) .

As we enter the season of family get-togethers, potluck celebrations, and graduation parties, I just had to share the newest of my “when you have no time to cook” recipes: Pillsbury’s Mini Fruit Pizzas. While you are certainly welcome to make sugar cookies from scratch, I dutifully followed the recipe and gratefully placed the refrigerated sugar cookie dough squares on my cookie sheet (and thought to myself, “This could go even more quickly if I purchased plain sugar cookies from the bakery!”).

With time to spare before the oven timer went off, I whipped together the three-ingredient frosting (8 ounce package cream cheese, 2 Tablespoons frozen limeade concentrate and 1/2 cup powdered sugar), and set it aside as the cookies cooled.

One of our cats, recognizing the time crunch I was in before we needed to head to the neighbors’ house, pitched in and took care of the pre-wash rinse cycle for the beaters.

The recipe called for three cups of fresh berries and kiwi fruit, and I lazily went with items I could just rinse off, no cutting required! Blackberries, blueberries and raspberries topped my fruit pizzas this time, but the kiwi suggested by the recipe would add a nice touch of contrasting color, don’t you think?!