I like fedora personally.
And there are plenty of "perfect fedora desktop" step by step tutorials.
Just miss out all the software your not interested in.
Fedora Project - Get Fedora: Desktops, Other Formats, Spins, Cloud Images, ARM or Secondary Arches.
Linux Today - The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 18 XFCE
Will give you step by step guides to all the main flavours.