Blueberry Sauce

I made 2 cheesecakes this weekend and will blog about that tomorrow. Today's quick tip is this easy blueberry sauce I made to top one of the cheesecakes but as I was writing this up to post today I found that I've shared this a couple years ago and forgot about it. So now I'm just re-posting my first one since I made the sauce the same exact way hahaha!! I did make a "slurry" of cornstarch and water for the blueberry sauce this time to help thicken it up. I also made a fresh strawberry sauce instead of raspberry - just diced strawberries mixed with store-bought strawberry glaze. Yum.

add a little cornstarch mixed
with water to the berries on the
stove to help thicken it. 

From 5/16:

Conversation last night with my niece about what dessert her boyfriend wants for his birthday:
Her - how hard is it to make cheesecake?
Me - (showed her a Food Network recipe) look at this recipe, it isn't too hard.
Her - what? 5 hours to make it? Uh, no...
Me - I can make it for you?
Her - No, he actually wants me to just buy a plain cheesecake and make the topping. He would like me to purchase the raspberries and reduce them in sugar. LMAO. He must think I'm fricken Betty Crocker.
Me - (after laughing at her...) well making topping is way easier than making cheesecake. How about you buy the cheesecake and I make the topping?
Her - deal.

So here is what I did for the topping...well, toppings because I also thought blueberry would be nice so I decided to make both :). These are beyond simple - for the raspberry I put 1.5 pints (that's 3 of those little clamshell containers) in a saucepan with 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, cook over medium heat on the stovetop for approx 10 minutes. It was looking very thin so I mixed together 2 teaspoons of cornstarch with enough water to make it pourable, and drizzled a little in with the raspberries (note: I had a little left over and put some in the blueberries too...) to help thicken it up a bit. I then added another half pint of berries for a minute or so hoping they would stay chunkier but they all broke down and became sauce - delicious delicious sauce. I haven't strained it yet, waiting to hear from her if she thinks he wants it seedless or as is - I prefer it with seeds. If he wants the seeds removed I will pour it thru a fine mesh strainer to remove them.

For the blueberry topping I put 1 pint in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons sugar and the zest and juice of one lemon, cook over medium for about 5 minutes.

I zested the lemon right into the pot...

...then cut in half and squeeze cut side up so the
seeds don't fall into the pan. You can put your
other hand under the lemon to catch any falling
seeds if you aren't holding a camera in the other
hand trying to take a picture of how to do this!

Both of these are so good and so easy - mmmm I'm glad I made them, licking the spoons was such a treat!

finished product. I'm not a huge cheesecake lover, but I am a
berry sauce fiend so I'm really looking forward to dessert now!

PS: I just realize I blogged about the same niece 3 days in a row! Rolo cupcakes, pallet garden, and now berry sauce :). We obviously share a lot of the same interests!

Strawberry Refrigerator Jam and Lazy Ice Cream Cake

I needed a quick dessert for Sunday Supper and decided I'd try this recipe after reading that it works for spreading on toast or as ice cream topping. I doubled it because it says it yields 1.5 cups and I didn't think that would be enough for 8 people - of course it ended up making way more than I needed...oh well, extra strawberry sauce is not going to go to waste!

This turned out very runny which made it perfect to serve over ice cream - I'm not sure where they came up with naming this "jam" but it worked for me. If you actually want to make refrigerator jam to spread on toast this is not the recipe I would recommend you follow. However, if you want delicious ice cream topping this is a winner.

I made a lazy version of ice cream cake to serve the topping over. I have made much "fancier" ice cream cakes and I'm feeling a little guilty that this one is so easy - my original dessert idea was just vanilla ice cream in a bowl with strawberry sauce but I thought I'd put in just a little more effort and make it more interesting. This isn't much of a "recipe" but it turned out really good so I'll share with you what I did:

Line a loaf pan with non stick foil. Preheat oven to 350'.
Put 1 cup of chocolate teddy grahams in the food processor with a pinch of salt. Grind to fine crumbs. Mix in a couple tablespoons of melted unsalted butter.

Press into the bottom of the loaf pan, bake for 10 minutes.

After the crust cools, spread 1/2 of a half gallon (I guess I could have said 1/4 gallon haha) of chocolate ice cream thats been softened (I just leave it on the counter for about 1/2 hour) on top of the crust and smooth the top. Put the loaf pan in the freezer until the ice cream hardens. Then do the same with vanilla ice cream (spread 1/4 gallon of softened vanilla ice cream over the chocolate ice cream and freeze until hard).
When you are ready to serve, remove the "cake" from the pan by pulling up the foil. Remove the foil and then slice the ice cream into whatever size portions you want - I started with small slices and got lots of complaints so had to make them bigger! This served 8 of us with no leftovers.
Spoon strawberry sauce over the ice cream.



Obviously you can use whatever flavors of ice cream you want, I kept it simple this time.