Speed Baking: We Did It!

At 3:34:11 this afternoon I logged into the computer.

I quickly checked the mail and then read Meredith's post "Quick, Cheap Cookie Tray." Short version: she needed something nice--ASAP. "With basic ingredients, I can pull together these cocoa powder brownies and sugar cookies with 15 minutes of measuring and mixing," Meredith says.

Could those recipes for brownies and sugar cookies really be that speedy?

Could I pull something together that fast if I had to?

Start your engines.

I think I did the baking in the opposite order to Meredith's--I did the brownies first and then the sugar cookies (they bake at two different temperatures), but it still worked out fine. I didn't have any lemons or lemon peel for the cookies, so I used a quarter teaspoon of lemon extract.

For the fruit I used two sliced pears and a cantaloupe.

I don't know exactly what time I started baking after printing out the recipes, but let's say 3:40 p.m.

By 4:40 p.m., I had the whole thing put together and the bowls and spoons washed, plus dinner well on the way. It would have been 4:30, but I had to find the melon baller in the basement pantry, answer the phone, and grate the burned bottoms off one pan of cookies--I got distracted for a minute right after the buzzer went. (Sounds horrible, and Amy Dacyczyn got hissed when she did it on national television, but it really truly works and you really truly wouldn't know the difference if you do it gently and use the very small holes on the grater.)

An hour's work, a nice dessert. Thanks, Meredith! I'll remember this next time it's my turn to stare blankly and say, "Oh--I did promise, didn't I?!"