Spring-Inspired Ice Cream Sauces: Raspberry Sauce
Photograph from gargoylesoftware on Flickr
Forget budding daffodils, lingering twilight, and afternoon rain showers. For me, the surest sign of spring is the return of street corner fruit stands. So I was thrilled last week to see them beginning to pop up around Brooklyn, some beneath umbrellas, others off the back of pick-up trucks, all overflowing with pineapples, papayas, and pints of strawberries.
It was cause for celebration. And celebrations are cause for ice cream.
I decided to make a simple, fresh raspberry sauce to spoon over scoops of vanilla. Winter is the time for hot fudge and heavy caramel; as soon as the weather grows warm I want something light to brighten the contents of my bowl.
My favorite recipe is much like Ina Garten's Triple Raspberry Sauce, except I force the end results through a sieve to remove the seeds, and double the liqueur. I think it is best over vanilla, but cinnamon or ricotta ice creams—if you can find them—would also be delicious.
What are your favorite springtime ice cream sauces, and what flavors do you serve them with?
About the author: Lucy Baker is a graduate student in the writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. Before returning to school to pursue an MFA, she was an assistant cookbook editor at HarperCollins. She lives in Brooklyn and is currently obsessed with all things fennel.
Triple Raspberry Sauce
- makes 2 cups -
Ingredients
1/2 pint fresh raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 cup seedless raspberry jam
2 tablespoons framboise
Procedure
Combine the raspberries, sugar, and 1/4 water in a saucepan and bring to a slow boil. Reduce heat and simmer for four minutes. Pour the raspberry mixture into the work bowl of a food processor and add the jam and the framboise. Puree until smooth. Pour the sauce through a sieve into a bowl, pressing with a spoon or spatula to extract all the liquid. Cover and chill until ready to serve.
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4 Comments:
I make raspberry sauce all year round from IQF berries: thaw just until they can be pushed through the fine disk of a food mill. Add sugar to taste and a dash of lemon juice and/or framboise. Chill to develop the flavor.
I often serve this with a scoop each of vanilla ice cream and raspberry or lemon sorbet. For a dressier dessert, I add individual disks of nut meringue.
Cathy at 4:07PM on 03/06/08
um the fruit stands have been at the corner outside of my office all through winter. of course they are here year round, because it looks like all of their fruit is shipped in from thousands of miles away, and that's why i never bother with fruit stands.
thewoundedchef at 9:54AM on 03/07/08
Try raspberry sauce used as a ribbon in The Perfect Scoop's cheesecake ice cream -- that stuff is seriously evil. Last year I added strawberry sauce and blueberry sauce for the 4th.
My favorite raspberry sauce technique is from Rose Levy Beranbaum's raspberry sauce from The Cake Bible -- gently squash frozen berries until you get a certain amount of juice, then reduce the *juice* in the microwave while leaving the berries uncooked. Run the berries through a food mill to get seedless pulp, which you then mix back into the reduced juice with sugar to taste and a little lemon juice. It doesn't have nearly as much cooked fruit flavor as most fruit sauces do.
mschlock at 4:25PM on 03/07/08
i think raspberries are a late summer fruit - really being ripe in july/august/september. although, i guess that puts them in season for the south american harvest season right now.
nycfd at 12:43PM on 03/10/08