Thursday, August 2, 2012

Easy Does It Summer Dessert

Julia Child has a note on her pound cake recipe - which makes a lot - that if there is some that's stale, you can toast it and use it as the base for an ice cream sundae.  Well, I have found, if  you have some left over summer fruit, say strawberries or blueberries, you can make a sauce for your sundae as well.

You wash and cut up the fruit , mash it a little, add some sugar and some water, over medium heat, cook until it looks right - about 5 minutes or so, add a pat of butter, stir and there you have it.  Don't add too much water, just enough to come halfway up the fruit.  If it is too runny, cook it a while longer.  You can add a liqueur or a spice if you want or mix your fruits.  I made some blueberry sauce and stirred it into some vanilla ice cream - best blueberry ice cream I ever had.  It keeps about a week in the fridge and warms in the micro quite easily.

This cake and sauce or cake, ice cream, and sauce is a nice thing for a tea dessert, especially if someone stops in.  The sauce you can have on hand or just make up while you're getting the tea ready, which is what I did the other day.  A dessert that looks special but you can just whip up in 10 minutes or less - my kind of summer cooking.  If you have no cake, but you have a scone that needs to be eaten, that also works or a sugar cookie.

I had this with some of that lovely Yunnan tea from Tea Vivre I reviewed a few days ago.  I didn't drink the whole pot, so I had it in the fridge - it's really good iced.

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