When you need a quick topping for cake, pie or bread pudding, melt a pint of premium French vanilla ice cream (made with egg yolks).
Melt a pint (2 cups) of ice cream at room temperature or in the refrigerator.
Stir in 2 ounces (jiggers) of bourbon.
Serve cold, at room temperature or slightly warmed.
Coffee and chocolate ice cream also work as sauces, and you can match coffee liqueur, chocolate liqueur, rum or other spirit that picks up accents in your dessert.
You also can serve these sumptuous sauces in liqueur glasses as part of the dessert courses:
Add a glass to the dessert plate, serve as “chasers” to the dessert or right before coffee.
French-style ice cream does double duty
as a sauce. Photo courtesy Haagen-Dazs.
August 25, 2010 at 7:30 am
· Filed under Condiments
Dixie Heat is one of our new favorite hot
sauce brands. Photo by Katharine Pollak |
THE NIBBLE.
If you enjoy enjoy Tabasco as a food condiment, you should try some of the small-batch, artisan hot sauces on the market.
We try dozens of hot sauces each year. Some are just hot (or scorching!), others have so much flavor that they are astonishing.
We never thought we’d be happy with a product called Louisiana Swamp Scum, but its combination of heat, smoke and vinegar is something special.
The other hot sauces have very different flavor profiles, but similarly colorful names: Dixie Delight, Dixie Heat and Happy Dogs Hot Sauce (the label features a homey photo montage of the creator’s dogs).
Put these inexpensive hot-and-tasty sauces on your gift list. The small bottles have big impact.
Read the full review to learn more about these flavorful hot sauces.
Licorice is a “healthier candy”: no cholesterol, no salt.
Most Americans have had the pleasure of a bag of red licorice. Yet we’ve learned that red, chocolate and any color licorice but black isn’t licorice. To be real licorice—and enjoy its health benefits—there must be licorice root extract, which creates black candy.
That’s only one of the discoveries in our review of Kookaburra licorice from Australia (it’s spelled liquorice in the U.K. and its former territories). Aussies simply outdo American manufacturers in making superior licorice. It has more robust flavor, a better chew and a lower, more adult level of sweetness.
In addition to the product review, you’ll follow the story of licorice, whose roots were chewed as well as made into teas as a health remedy, by the Pharoahs, the Caesars and Napoleon Bonaparte—who chewed so much licorice root for his digestive disorders that his teeth turned black!
This seriously good licorice will win many
fans. Photo by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.
There’s no worry about black teeth with modern licorice candies: only a delightful, chewy time. Kookaburra’s Allsorts, Taffy Licorice and Licorice Caramels rock our boat.
Our Orka kitchen tongs go from counter
to table. (Color availability will vary.)
Many people use salad servers—a long fork-and-spoon set—to serve salad. They’re not the simplest utensils to use neatly.
Over time, the fork and spoon have been joined together by some manufacturers to create salad tongs. (Food tongs comprise two arms that are hinged or otherwise joined together, for seizing, holding or lifting foods.)
But do you need separate salad tongs? Given the attractiveness of some kitchen tongs (made for cooking, not serving), we don’t think so. Handsome kitchen tongs like these from Orka can be used for cooking or serving.
We ditched the salad servers and use a pair of kitchen tongs at THE NIBBLE table. Specifically, we use these Orka 12-inch stainless steel tongs with silicone tips. They’re the same tongs used to flip or lift food. They take up less space and add a high-tech look to the table.
Orka also makes “salad tongs”—two separate pieces of the fork/spoon variety (which should not be called tongs, per the definition above). But for a good grip and neater serving, we prefer the kitchen tongs. Try it with your kitchen tongs.
If you enjoy fruit-flavored water, you can make it at home, saving money and the environment (those plastic bottles pile up in landfill forever).
Several companies make products that make it easy to create infused water.
Bodum’s Ceylon Tea Pitcher is an acrylic pitcher with a filter that was originally designed to brew tea. We prefer to use it to infuse water with the flavor from sliced cucumbers, grapefruit, lemons, limes, melon, oranges, whole strawberries and other fruits, plus mint leaves or other herbs. Price: $19.35 for the 50-ounce size, $25.51 for the jumbo 102-ounce size. We use it in THE NIBBLE kitchen; the slim shape and smaller size option lets us fit it into our packed refrigerator.
The central column in Prodyne’s Fruit Infusion Pitcher turns the fruit into a lovely attraction. The 92-ounce capacity provides plenty of infused water. Price: $23.94.
Jokari makes the Healthly Steps Water Infuser, a large plastic infusing ball that fits inside almost any pitcher to keep the fruit contained. Price: $6.00.
Infuse your own water with fresh fruit. This Prodyne infusing pitcher makes fruit the
focal point.
An acrylic pitcher won’t hold up like a glass pitcher, but it’s far lighter. When filled with water, that’s a benefit for kids and others who don’t enjoy heavy lifting.
By the way, if you like sweetened infused water, just add your sweetener of choice.
