Wow this giant pile of blueberries has got my creative juices flowing! So many interesting and yummy things to be created! It's really hard to chose what to do with them. My main point of intrigue is the idea of making my own preserves! And since I have never in my life made any kind of jam, jelly or preserve, I've spent more hours than I should have searching through cookbooks and online for how to begin this process. And let me say that I've come to the realization that I'm going to have to do a bit more research and then purchase some equipment before I can actually delve into any of this. Sooo..... I'm using this batch of berries for another purpose!
And since I was sharing things I serve here at the Inn, I thought I would offer you a quick and simple fruit sauce that I serve with pancakes, waffles and french toast. It's super easy, super quick and adds a little something extra to some pretty typical breakfast fair. And because I still have a ton of blueberries left I thought we would go with a nice refreshing blueberry sauce. Blueberries are also seriously good for you so you get a little nutritional bonus for ditching the Log Cabin and Aunt Jamima!
So to start lets look at what you will need:
About 3/4 cup of blueberries (or strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries )
about 1 Tbs of lemon juice
about 2 Tbs sugar
about 1 Tbs of cornstartch
and about a 1/4 cup of water
Now you'll notice that I used the word "About" for each item on the ingredients list. This is because each fruit is different and each batch is different. You're just going to have to keep tasting and adjusting as you go. Sometimes you have some really sweet berries to start with and so need less sugar and little more lemon juice to had a nice healthy tartness to them. And sometimes they're a little sour to start and you'll need more sugar.
Step one is to simple pour all of your ingredients, except for the corn starch, in to a sauce pan with a nice heavy bottom.
Give everything a good stir and but it over a medium-high heat. Once everything begins to heat up you can use the back of your spoon to give the berries a little mush. In all actuality you don't have to mush them because they will eventually breakdown on their own, but for times sake - go ahead and mush.
And after just a couple of minutes everything should start to come to a boil. Give the sauce a minute or two to do its thing while you mix your cornstarch into a slurry.
All this means is to mix your corn starch with a little water to keep it from lumping up when you add it to the sauce. And once it's nice and smooth you can drizzle into the sauce while you are stirring the sauce.
Now keep stirring for another minute or so and you'll see you sauce begin to thicken up. Once it does you can turn the heat off and give it a minute to rest before your ready to serve it!
And that's all there is to it! Less than ten minutes start to finish and you're ready to impress people with your homemade sauce! But lets not stop at breakfast! You can use this simple and easy sauce to wow people all through out the day. A nice drizzle over a cup of yogurt for lunch. A fancy finish to a store bought cheesecake for dessert.
And my favorite way to serve it on these suddenly very hot afternoons is over an nice scoop of vanilla ice cream! So simple, so fast, and oh so delicious!
Hope You Enjoy!
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