Winemonger.com

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Is putting together appetizers and dinner all you can handle? Are you having your boss (or in-laws, or colleagues, or good friends) over and want to impress?

Forget picking something up from the bakery or whipping something up that came out of a box: this is the fastest, easiest dessert you have ever put together and it is just shockingly good.

You will look, quite frankly, like a culinary genius. Best yet, there’s no cooking involved: if you can cut with a knife, you can make this dessert. It’ll also take you about 5 minutes to do (10 if you start to get fancy.)

So here’s what you do:

Take a melon, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, and fill it with dessert wine. Serve with a spoon.

That’s it. You’re done.

You can even cut some additional melon cubes and add them to the center.

If you can manage it, find a wonderfully ripe cantaloupe to do this with and put it into the refrigerator for a while first so that it’s nice and chilled.

What sweet wine should you use? We would recommend a Beerenauslese or an Icewine. Something great that doesn’t break the bank. After all, this wine is being served in the melon, so it’s own finer nuances can’t truly be appreciated.

Here are a few perfect wines to use for this dessert:

• Gsellmann & Gsellmann Beerenauslese. It comes in a 500ml bottle, which is a bit more than the usual half-bottle size, so it will go further.
• Gsellmann & Gsellmann Eiswein The Scheurebe grape used to make this Icewine might just be the perfect partner for the melon flavors.
• Heiss Blaufränkisch Eiswein An Icewine made from the red Blaufränkisch grape. A bold move.
• Weiss Grüner Veltliner Eiswein One of the best-priced, good quality Icewines available, period.

Want to get just a little bit fancier for 5 minutes more?

• Scoop out the melon half with a melon baller, put the melon balls back into the cantaloupe shell, and then pour the dessert wine in.
• If you feel that half a melon is too large a portion, consider this method: Cut the melon halves down into smaller bowls. Put the cut-up melon pieces from that remaining middle section into the bowls. Pour on the dessert wine. (This also makes your bottle of dessert wine stretch further.)
• Melon-ball the whole thing. Put the balls in a fancy dessert glass or bowl, pour in the dessert wine and serve it that way.
• Freeze some melon balls. Put them in either the rustic melon bowl or other serving dish, and pour on the wine.
• Serve some vanilla ice cream on the side.

KISS, by the way, stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” We think this is an excellent philosophy when it comes to dessert.