Manni's Strawberry Sauce
Recommended Tools
- a blender
Ingredients
- 1 10 ounce bag of frozen organic strawberries, thawed but still cool. Notes:
- In a hurry? Microwave frozen strawberries on a dinner plate, spread out, 1 minute, at half power if your microwave is weak like mine, or 1/3 power, if your microwave is strong. How do you know if your microwave is strong? A tendancy to burn popcorn is one reasonably good sign.
- Apparently, pesticides permeate the thin skins of strawberries quite easily, so go organic if you can.
- 1 can of frozen apple juice concentrate (you will only use 2 tablespoons or so), thawed enough to be able to spoon out a tablespoon at a time
- confectioner's sugar (about 2 tablespoons, but have more on hand; regular sugar is OK, but confectioner's sugar will dissolve more readily in the cold mixture due to its larger surface area)
Preparation
Place cooled but thawed strawberries in a blender with 2 tablespoons of apple juice concentrate.
Blend like hell!
Add more apple juice concentrate until you get the consistency you like. (I prefer pea soup consistency, so i usually just need the 2 tablespoons.)
Blend some more!
Taste the sauce. Depending on how you plan to use it, and how tart or sweet the strawberries are, it may need no sugar, or it may need a spoonfull. Alternate blending and adding sugar until you get the sweet/tart balance to your liking.
Use as soon as possible.
Keep refridgerated.
Use within a day.
This recipe easily doubles/triples.
Manni's Boozy Raspberry Sauce
This sauce has alcohol in it, and is therefore not for the kiddies!
Recommended Tools
- a blender
- a strainer, like this
- a spoon
Ingredients
- 1 10 ounce bag of frozen organic raspberries, thawed (as above, organic's probably a really good idea).
- 5 tablespoons of Chambord
Preparation
Throw thawed raspberries into a blender with the Chambord.
Blend like hell!
Strain through a seive to remove all the seeds. I admit that this part is a pain in the ass, but it makes the sauce palatable. I think I need to investigate doing this with a food mill, if I can find one with an insert fine enough to trap raspberry seeds...
Note that the resulting sauce will be runny. This sauce is about taste, not looks.
Use as soon as possible.
Keep refridgerated.
Use within a day.
This recipe easily doubles/triples.
Manni's Squeezable Raspberry Sauce, which Premiered at TREAT
This sauce may still have trace amounts of alcohol in it, and is therefore not for the kiddies!
Recommended Tools
- a blender
- a strainer, like this
- a spoon, to taste
- a whisk, to stir
- a saucepan (a.k.a. a pot), or, best, a saucier. This is the gold standard, but obviously you should try to find one for less, like at Cookware & More, or a cheap knockoff. The idea is a pot with sloped sides and a wide diameter to allow for quick evaporation and easy stirring of sauces. The pot will ideally contain at least two metals: aluminum, for good, even heat conductivity, and stainless steel, at least on the inside food surface, for non-reactivity to acidic foods.
- a squeeze bottle, to hold the sauce
- a funnel, to help get the sauce into the bottle
Ingredients
- 1 completed recipe of Manni's Boozy Raspberry Sauce, above.
- confectioner's sugar, to taste (regular sugar is OK, but confectioner's sugar will dissolve more readily due to larger surface area)
Preparation
Throw boozy raspberry sauce into a saucier over medium low heat, a little more medium than low (that would be 4 out of 10 for us unfortunate electric stovetop users).
Heat, stirring, for as long as it takes to evaporate down to 1/2 to 1/3rd its original volume. (This could take a while. For the large batch I made for TREAT, it was 45 minutes of just watching the sauce, stirring. One thing I did not try was boiling the sauce, which would have quickened the process. I've read that high heat takes away the punch of fruit juices. That's why many recipes call for lemon zest instead of lemon juice: the oils in the lemon zest hold their lemony flavours during baking and other high heat applications, whereas the juices lose all of their punch. So, I stuck with low heat with what is essentially raspberry juice and booze, but I have not tried high. Maybe it's an effective shortcut!)
Once the sauce is cooked down, taste it. It should be quite tart! Stir in and dissolve confectioner's sugar a bit at a time, tasting as you go, until you have a perfect balance between sweet and tart. Don't go too sweet, or it will take away the nice bite of the raspberries. You want this sauce to stand up to chocolate, and even fight back a little bit, or to add serious zing to vanilla ice cream.
Pour into a squeeze bottle, and refridgerate. I can't guarantee results, but the reduced sauce, the sugar, and the cold should act to make the sauce reasonably thick. If the sauce hasn't ended up thick, at least it'll pack a taste punch.
Use as soon as possible.
Keep refridgerated.
Use within a day.
This recipe easily doubles/triples.