Strawberry Sauce

This was my first time making strawberry sauce. I was helping with the dessert for a youth etiquette-night dinner this week and we wanted to have strawberry sauce with the ice cream and brownies. Since it's January and decent fresh strawberries are no where, I used sliced frozen berries. It seemed to come together OK until the end of the cooking time when I noticed that the strawberry pieces were really mushy and starting to fall apart. Not very pretty and not very delicious. Bah! I wasn't happy but I took it with me anyway.

While we were getting everything set up for the dinner I mentioned to one of the other leaders that I wasn't super-happy with how the sauce turned out, and she suggested that maybe we could puree it with an immersion blender. Such a good idea! My friends, this is what working with an amazing team of ladies is like! We blended it for about 60 seconds, and it was like magic...a "sort of OK", "maybe the kids won't notice the mushy pieces under the whipped cream and chocolate syrup" strawberry sauce turned into a fantastic, "ooooo-ahhhhh" strawberry sauce.

Redemption by immersion blender. Love it.

Use this sauce on ice cream, pound cake, cheese cake, mix it into plain yogurt...if you can think of it, this sauce can probably pull it off.

Strawberry Sauce
printable recipe

1 14- to 16-oz bag sliced, unsweetened strawberries
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
pinch kosher salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine the strawberries and water in a medium pot. Mix together the sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a small bowl. Add the sugar mixture to the pot and mix well. Heat over medium to medium-high heat, stirring often, until it starts to boil. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring gently and constantly. Add the lemon juice and cook for 1 more minute. Remove from the heat and allow to cool to warm before pureeing with an immersion blender, or before transferring to a blender to puree. Use warm, room temperature, or cold. Store unused sauce in the fridge.

Makes about 2 cups sauce.