Dessert for Lazy/Busy People (Recipe Included)

There are two things that I should tell you about my life as a stay at home mother/home educator/manager of family life that will help a lot of other things make sense. First, that I am often very busy, and second, that when I am not busy, I have given myself full permission to be lazy. When I don't take the opportunity to embrace the down time, I end up with the flu. And do you know what happens when you have the flu and you are the at home parent/home educator/manager of family life? Nothing. Okay, in our house maybe takeout happens, or my surprisingly capable eight-year-old makes dinner. But other than that, I still have to do my job. My job is way easier to do when I am not ill.

I've finally embraced this reality this past year, and so I've spent a lot of time figuring out the easiest way to do a lot of things, which leads to the third revelation about myself in these two paragraphs, which is that I love homemade dessert (okay, all dessert, but homemade most of all). And because I love dessert so much, it's obviously been a priority to figure out how to make it is easily and well.

I already had one dessert in my proverbial back pocket that everyone loves and which is easy to make. It's a baked oat bar topped with chocolate and nut butter that I sometimes pretend is very healthy breakfast food. (Don't worry, I will share that recipe at a later date. I promise.) But it's been summertime, and I don't like to use the oven if I don't have to, because I am a delicate little flower and wilt at the slightest hint of heat.

I was adrift on a sea of storebought desserts until we had company last Sunday, which occasion clearly required a homemade dessert, and Z told me that my idea of chocolate drizzled over strawberries and cream was not anything an Ethiopian outside of the city would eat, and thus it would not suit our Ethiopian dinner theme. I gave her a little scowl and then thought of what they do have in Ethiopia, and what they do have is honey. Really delicious honey. I double checked with Z the Ethiopian Authenticity Expert, and she agreed that honey would be appropriate.

And thus, the laziest dessert that is now my summertime favorite was prepared. It works for when I am busy and when I am lazy, so clearly it's a winner. I'm sure it's nothing new to a lot of people, but just in case this dessert has not graced your taste buds with its presence, here it is. I'm going to type it out like a real recipe, even though we all can agree that it's...not.

Strawberries with Fresh Whipped Cream and Honey

Ingredients:
1 package of fresh strawberries
Heavy cream (here in the UK it's called whipping cream, appropriately)
Squeeze bottle of honey

First, rinse the strawberries and slice them roughly into a bowl. There is no need for pieces to be uniform or look pretty. Just cut them up and set them aside.

Pour the cream into the bowl of a stand mixer and use the whisk attachment to beat it until stiff peaks form.

For the fancy version, put a small heap of strawberries to one side of a dainty little bowl and spoon an equal amount of whipped cream next to it. Drizzle the honey back and forth across the berries. Serve with tiny spoons, because that makes it fancier.

For the less fancy version (pictured above), by which I mean the version you eat the next day when you do not have guests over, grab the leftover strawberries and cream out of the fridge, dump a little of each into a cereal bowl, and squeeze the honey hurriedly over the top. Eat with a normal sized spoon, possibly stuffing your mouth a bit too full with each bite, because the goal is to eat it before the children notice what you're having and ask you to share.

Fancy style or secret-parent-treat style, it's delicious.