we are cooking Italian in my cooking class this week. tomorrow and friday will be free cook days and we can choose to cook anything Italian! however, the each class period is only about an hour and 15 minutes long. we are on time budgets! me and my cooking group want to make dessert along with our entrees. we havent thought of any specific Italian desserts. i dont want us to make something very common. i want to make a creative, delicious dessert that isnt very complicated or time-consuming. does anyone know any recipes that would fit this criteria?????

Here's an idea : have fun: Anginetti (Italian Lemon Drop Cookies) 24 cookies 30 min 15 min prep COOKIE 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup vegetable shortening 3 large eggs 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon extract 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/8 teaspoon salt FROSTING 3 cups confectioners' sugar 1/4 cup water 1 teaspoon lemon extract For cookies, cream together sugar and shortening. Add eggs and lemon extract and beat well. Add flour, baking powder and salt; Mix well. The dough should be soft and sticky. With a small cookie scoop, drop dough onto a slightly greased cookie sheet or baking stone, spacing them about 2-inches apart. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until firm and lightly brown. Remove cookies from cookie sheet and allow to cool completely on wire racks. For frosting, combine confectioners' sugar, water and lemon extract and mix until smooth. Frost the tops of each cookie with a metal spatula. Allow cookies to dry before stacking. Store in an airtight container. ~NOTE~If you want to freeze the cookies, freeze unfrosted and frost once thawed.

Ice cream or sherbet goes best with Italian foods. There is an Italian ice cream, but I don't know if you can buy it in your local grocery store. May I suggest something such as a light fruit ice slushy. Lemon or lime. Do you have an ice blender? Click onto this link: http://www.andreasrecipes.com/2007/05/10/mango-lime-ice-nieve-de-mango-con-limon/

This is my favourite recipe site it has lots of lovely recipes to choose from,and on the side of the page people give their reviews and tips. http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes.php?q=italian+desserts

Gnocchi di Latte, or Milk Gnocchi One quart of milk; sugar, nine ounces; cornstarch in powder, four ounces; eight yolks of eggs, a taste of vanilla. Mix everything together as you would do for a cream and put on the fire in a saucepan, continually stirring with a ladle. When the mixture has become hard keep it a few moments more on the fire and then pour it in a plate to make it about half an inch thick and cut it into diamonds when it is cold. Put these diamonds one over the other with symmetry in a baking tin or in a fireproof glass plate, with some little pieces of butter in between, and brown them a little in the oven. Serve hot. Zabaione, or Sabayon Yolks of three eggs; granulated sugar, two ounces; Marsala or sherry wine, five tablespoonfuls; a dash of cinnamon. First stir with the ladle the yolks and the sugar until they become almost white, then add the wine. When ready to serve, place the saucepan in another one containing hot water and beat until the sugar is melted and the egg begins to thicken. Pesche Ripiene, or Stuffed Peaches Six big peaches not very ripe; four or five lady finger biscuits; granulated sugar, three ounces; two ounces sweet almonds with three peach kernels; candied fruit (angelica) half an ounce. Cut the peaches in two parts, remove the stones, and enlarge somewhat the cavity where they were with the point of a knife. Mix the peach pulp that you extract with the almonds, already skinned, and grind the pulp and the almonds very fine together with two ounces of the sugar. To this mixture add the lady fingers crumbed and the candied fruits. Cut in very small cubes. This will be the stuffing with which you will fill the cavities of the twelve halves of peach. These you will place in a row in a baking tin, with the stuffing above. Add the remaining ounce of sugar and bake in oven with a moderate fire. Pan-forte di Siena (Sienese Hardbake) Ingredients: Honey, almonds, filberts, candied lemon peel, pepper, cinnamon, chocolate, corn flour, large wafers. Boil half a pound of honey in a copper vessel, and then add to it a few blanched almonds and filberts cut in halves or quarters and slightly browned, a little candied lemon peel, a dust of pepper and powdered cinnamon, and a quarter pound of grated chocolate. Mix all well together, and gradually add a tablespoonful of corn flour end two of ground almonds to thicken it. Then take the vessel off the fire, spread the mixture on large wafers, and make each cake about an inch thick. Garnish them on the top with almonds cut in half, and dust over a little powdered sugar and cinnamon, then put them in a very slow oven for an hour. Riso all'Imperatrice (Rice Pudding) Ingredients: Rice, sugar, milk, ice, preserved fruits, blanc mange, Maraschino, cream. Boil two dessertspoonfuls of rice and one of sugar in milk. When sufficiently boiled, drain the rice and let it get cold. In the meantime place a mold on ice, and decorate it with slices of preserved fruit, and fix them to the mold with just enough nearly cold dissolved isinglass (gelatin) to keep them in place. Also put half a pint of blancmange on the ice, and stir it till it is the right consistency, gradually add the boiled rice, half a glass of Maraschino, some bits of pineapple cut in dice, and last of all half a pint of whipped cream. Fill the mold with this, and when it is sufficiently cold, turn it out and serve with a garnish of glace fruits or a few brandy cherries. Zabaglione Ingredients: Eggs, sugar, Marsala, Maraschino or other light-colored liqueur, sponge fingers. Zabaglione is a kind of syllabub. It is made with Marsala and Maraschino, or Marsala and yellow Chartreuse. This traditional Italian dessert recipe reckons the quantities as follows: for each person the yolks of three eggs, one teaspoonful of castor sugar to each egg, and a wineglass of wine and liqueur mixed. Whip up the yolks of the eggs with the sugar, then gradually add the wine. Put this in a bain-marie, and stir until it has thickened to the consistency of a custard. Take care, however, that it does not boil. Serve hot in custard glasses, and hand sponge fingers with it. Pan-forte di Siena (Sienese Hardbake) Ingredients: Honey, almonds, filberts, candied lemon peel, pepper, cinnamon, chocolate, corn flour, large wafers. Boil half a pound of honey in a copper vessel, and then add to it a few blanched almonds and filberts cut in halves or quarters and slightly browned, a little candied lemon peel, a dust of pepper and powdered cinnamon, and a quarter pound of grated chocolate. Mix all well together, and gradually add a tablespoonful of corn flour and two of ground almonds to thicken it. Then take the vessel off the fire, spread the mixture on large wafers, and make each cake about an inch thick. Garnish them on the top with almonds cut in half, and dust over a little powdered sugar and cinnamon, then put them in a very slow oven for an hour.

Strawberry granita With nothing added to the crushed strawberries except sugar and lemon, this is as intense as a strawberry ice can be. It's also simple, so is a good alternative to more complex frozen fruit puds, such as ice cream. This recipe will serve 6-8 people 1kg strawberries (slightly overripe) Up to 200g icing sugar The juice of 1-2 lemons Cream (optional) Gently wash the strawberries, then put them into a large nylon sieve, crush them down and rub through to extract the seeds. Whisk in the icing sugar and lemon juice to sweeten and sharpen the mixture to taste. It should seem a little too sweet and a little too sharp, to allow for the fact that both tastes will be muted slightly when it is frozen. Pour the purée into a bowl or large Tupperware tub - ideally you want the mix no deeper than about 4cm, so it will freeze quickly. Transfer to the freezer until solid. About half an hour before serving, remove from the freezer, then just before dishing up use a robust fork to scrape up the surface, then pile the frosty shards into glasses. Serve quickly, before it has time to melt. Cap with a trickle of cream, if you like; it will solidify, semi-frozen, like a snow cap on a pink mountain. And this is what it looks like: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=604796