The taste of this simple sauce of slightly sweetened, fresh strawberries transports me back to my childhood summers. In my memories, the berries are just picked and still sandy, the air is warm and humid, and my friends and I are barefoot and laughing. Ah summer!
My roots with this sauce go deep. My mother would make it for us in the summertime before my sisters and I were old enough to make it for ourselves. It was one of my dad’s favorites, as my grandmother had made it for him when he was a boy.
Today you can buy strawberries all year round, but please don’t try this sauce with out-of-season berries. Make it when local berries are in, and choose the ripest berries you can find. They should smell strongly of strawberries, not faintly. Don’t try to pick the biggest berries, as those are probably not the tastiest. Rather, choose the smaller, more intensely colored ones, as those have the most flavor.
So, what to do with your delicious strawberry sauce? Well MM and friends will tell you that it’s good with almost anything! But their favorite combinations are strawberry sauce with angel food cake, shortcake, lady fingers, or pound cake; or, atop ice cream or gelato.
The recipe for this sauce is so easy, it’s hardly a recipe at all: just strawberries and confectioner’s sugar. The pictures provide most of the information you’ll need to make this sauce.
Strawberry Sauce
1 cup fresh berries makes 1/2 sauce
Ingredients:
- fresh, ripe strawberries
- confectioner’s sugar, 1-2 tablespoons per cup of sliced berries or to taste
Directions:
Wash and hull your berries (remove the green tops) and place them in a non-reactive bowl, such as stainless steel or ceramic.
Sprinkle the sugar on the berries.
Slice the berries into 1/4″ thick slices.
Using a fork, or a potato masher for larger amounts of berries, lightly mash the berries to get the juices flowing out of the berries.
Very quickly you’ll begin to see the juices begin to collect on the berries.
Cover the berries and let them sit for around an hour or overnight in the fridge. Gradually the juices will be drawn out of the berries and you’ll have your finished sauce. Taste and correct the sugar if needed.
Serve with whatever suits your fancy!
