Originally invented in England, vanilla sauce has now become beloved throughout the world. It can truly be called one of the most magnificent additions to desserts and baked goods, as it only emphasizes the exquisite taste of strudels, pancakes, pies and biscuits. It is rare to find a person who truly does not love this sweet splendor that leaves no sweet tooth impassive. This article will talk about various vanilla sauce recipes with photos that can be prepared quite simply at home.
Classic recipe
Now there are a huge variety of recipes that housewives can use to prepare vanilla sauce. In fact, it is quite easy to modify it, since there are a huge variety of additives that can significantly affect the taste. However, the classic recipe never goes out of style - creamy vanilla sauce, which is perfect for a variety of baked goods or ice cream.
Ingredients
To prepare classic vanilla sauce, you will need to first prepare:
- 200 ml milk;
- 200 ml heavy cream;
- 5 yolks;
- 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar;
- 50 grams of sugar.
As you can see, the food kit for preparing this sauce is very simple. In addition to the products, you should first prepare the necessary equipment - a good saucepan with a thick bottom, a blender (if you don’t have one, you can replace it with a simple whisk) and a spatula.
Step-by-step preparation
Once all the products are prepared, you can start cooking. To do this you need to follow the following steps:
- Mix the cream and milk together in a saucepan, then put it on the fire and wait until the mixture boils. After that, you need to remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool.
- While the milk mixture is cooling, you should begin preparing the remaining ingredients. Using a blender, beat the mixture of eggs and both types of sugar. Continue beating until the mixture becomes white and smooth.
- After this, the cooled milk and cream should be gradually mixed into the mixture of sugar and yolks, stirring constantly.
- The sauce mixture is placed in a water bath, after which you need to continue stirring and cooking until the sauce thickens to the desired consistency. Care must be taken to ensure that it does not boil, as this will spoil it.
- The prepared sauce must be cooled and only then served.
Sauce for strudel
As mentioned earlier, this sauce is quite versatile and can be served with any baked goods. However, there is a special vanilla sauce for strudel, which has a slightly different recipe. To prepare it you will need to take:
- 200 ml milk;
- half a bag of vanilla sugar;
- 75 grams of sugar;
- 2 chicken yolks;
- 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch.
Thick vanilla-lemon sauce
This sauce can be consumed as a separate dessert, complemented with aromatic coffee. If desired, add it to fruit salad, grease pancakes and casseroles with it. The combination of vanilla and lemon is very successful, you will definitely like it.
Components:
- low-fat cottage cheese – 50 g
- milk – 50 ml
- vanilla sugar – 0.5 tsp
- lemon zest – 5 g
- brown sugar – 1 teaspoon
Beat cottage cheese, milk, vanilla and brown sugar with a blender. Add the grated zest and mix well, decorate the sauce with it if desired.
Cooking features
Making this sauce is even easier than its classic counterpart. To do this, you will need to place all the ingredients except milk in a blender bowl, and then beat them thoroughly. The milk itself is preheated, after which it is added in a thin stream to the egg-sugar mixture. As the milk is poured in, the sauce must be stirred constantly, since at this stage the subsequent consistency depends on it.
Next, place the vanilla sauce mixture over medium heat and cook until it becomes thick. Once this is achieved, the sauce is poured into a suitable glass gravy boat and served with apple strudel.
Vanilla sauce for pancakes
If you decide to prepare one of the most famous Russian national desserts - pancakes, then it is also ideal to put vanilla sauce on the table. However, it would be most ideal to serve it in a mixture with another, namely berry, since together they will create a real masterpiece of culinary art from pancakes.
So, to prepare berry-vanilla sauce, the first thing you need to do is make a traditional sauce, the classic recipe for which has already been given above. At the same time, you should prepare the berry sauce. The chosen berry is not particularly important, so if you wish, you can replace the blueberries with another berry to your taste.
Useful tips
- If you are preparing the sauce, we advise you not to place the saucepan on an open fire. This risks the fact that you can easily burn the pan. This sauce burns very easily. Therefore, it is ideal to use a water bath. It's quite easy to organize. Take two saucepans: one larger, the other smaller. Fill the larger one halfway with water and let it boil. Then place a smaller saucepan on top of it and pour our sauce into it. If you cook the sauce this way, it is guaranteed not to burn.
- The yolks for the sauce should be taken warm. Unlike whites, yolks beat well this way.
- If you prepare vanilla sweetness along with berries for pancakes, control the amount of sugar yourself. If 3 tablespoons of sugar are enough for sweet strawberries, then for red currants you will need to take more - 4-5 spoons.
- If you add a tablespoon of rum to the vanilla cream, it will acquire some liqueur aroma. Many people really like it. In addition to rum, you can add cognac to the sauce.
- If you like a sweet and sour taste, then you can add a teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice or a third of a teaspoon of citric acid to the already prepared vanilla sauce.
- Spices can also add variety to the taste. Cinnamon perfectly complements the flavor of vanilla sauce. But don't overdo it. If you add too much cinnamon, it will overwhelm the vanilla flavor.
- But it’s better not to add cocoa to such a sauce - it will completely overshadow the vanilla, and you will no longer have vanilla sauce, but chocolate cream.
- The sauce can be prepared without boiling. To do this, you just need to mix 100 g of non-acidic sour cream of any fat content, 50 g of cheese curd mass, 50 g of powdered sugar, 5 g of vanilla sugar and a little nutmeg and beat everything well. After that, simply put the mixture in the refrigerator, it will thicken there. If you feel that the finished sauce does not have enough sugar, you can increase the content of vanilla sugar or powder. This version of vanilla sauce is good to use not only for baking and pancakes, but also for fruit salads, berries, and meringues. This sauce can also be served as an independent curd dessert.
Enjoy your meal!
Preparation and serving
To prepare the berry sauce you will need:
- about 200 grams of blueberries or other berries that turn well into a homogeneous mass;
- 2 tablespoons regular sugar;
- one glass of water;
- one tablespoon of cornstarch.
To prepare the sauce, blend the blueberries and sugar in a blender until combined and smooth. In order to make the mixture more liquid, 150 ml of water is poured into it. You need to dissolve the starch in the remaining water, then add it to the berry-sugar mixture. Mix everything well, then put it in a saucepan on the fire and bring the sauce to a boil. As soon as it starts to boil, you need to immediately remove it from the heat and let it cool before serving.
You can serve this sauce with pancakes in different ways. The simplest option would be to simply mix the vanilla and berry sauces together, making them one. You can also just take each pancake and pour them separately, first with berries, and then with vanilla. Depending on the chosen serving method, pancakes will have different flavors.
Magic pod
In nature, vanilla is a vine-type plant belonging to the Orchidaceae family. In Spanish—and it was the Spaniards who first brought the spice to Europe—the word vainilla translates as “pod.” This is exactly the shape of part of the vanilla flower, which in fact is not a pod at all, but a seed pod. These pods are collected and then dried - this is how they get their dark color. The most popular spice has a number of beneficial properties: it helps fight stress, relieves tension, and improves mood. Vanilla has an antioxidant effect on the human body, as well as the ability to relieve inflammation and alleviate infectious diseases.
- The first stage of preparing the sauce is preparing the ingredients. First of all, this applies to eggs: they need to be broken, separating the whites from the yolks. The recipe involves using only the yolk. By the way, whites can be used to prepare airy meringue or other dessert, to which vanilla sauce will also go well. If vanilla beans are used for gravy, they need to be processed. The core of the pod is used in cooking, so you need to carefully cut it and scrape out the vanilla with a thin knife.
- Now you need to prepare the base of the sauce - vanilla milk. To do this, milk is poured into a saucepan, where vanilla is then added. For more flavor, the pods themselves can also be thrown into milk, but later they are naturally removed from there. The mixture is heated over low heat with constant stirring until it boils. Then the saucepan is removed from the stove to allow the milk to cool.
- Meanwhile, the egg yolks are poured into a deep container, granulated sugar is poured into them, and the mixture is whisked until smooth. The recipe suggests a very variable amount of sugar, it all depends on your wishes for the degree of sweetness of the finished product. For example, a pie with a tart berry filling can make the vanilla sauce sweeter, while an ice cream dessert doesn't need a heavily sweetened sauce.
Sauce with chocolate and vanilla
Chocolate and vanilla are two strong flavors that take desserts to the next level. However, if you wish, you can make a chocolate vanilla sauce that will combine both flavors. It’s quite simple to prepare, because for this you will need:
- 70 grams of dark dark chocolate;
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch;
- 200 ml water;
- 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar;
- 30 grams of quality butter;
- about 50 grams of sugar.
How to cook:
- You need to first set up a water bath, and then break the chocolate into small pieces into a bowl. About half a glass of water is added to them, after which you need to wait until the chocolate has completely melted.
- While the chocolate is being prepared, it is worth preparing a mixture of water and starch. They mix with each other. Then everything is put on fire and heated to a boil.
- Starch water is first added to chocolate, and then both types of sugar. Cook everything in a water bath for about one more minute. In this case, the mixture must be constantly stirred so that the chocolate does not burn. The prepared sauce is poured into a gravy boat and served. It's best served while still warm.
Live Berlin
Preparing one of the most beloved and widespread German desserts, an apple roll, is not at all as simple as it might seem at first glance. We have prepared detailed instructions for you on how not to lose your way to real apple strudel.
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In ancient times, bread was baked from a mixture of ground grain and water. And in the absence of stoves they did it on stones. This bread worked especially well in the Mediterranean countries, where the sun is brighter and the stones are hotter. These flatbreads were very nutritious, were stored for a long time and helped out in campaigns against enemies.
From there, this simple bread came to Austria through the Balkan Peninsula. Here, many centuries later, in 1696, the first recipe for apple strudel, that is, a pastry with fruit filling, the basis of which were those same flatbreads, was recorded in a Viennese cookbook. Then, however, it was not quite a roll yet, the dish was more like lasagna and consisted of a dozen sheets of baked dough.
In the 18th century, the recipe underwent significant changes: the now familiar “elongated” apple strudel (German: ausgezogener Apfelstrudel, der Strudel - whirlwind, whirlpool) appeared. It is believed that the method of preparing it, when the dough is stretched by weight, in the manner of pizza, but to a translucent thickness and rolled into a roll with filling, came to Vienna from Hungary. Hungarian flour has such high adhesive properties, making the dough especially pliable and elastic, that confectioners of large German restaurants still buy it to order.
There are a great many varieties of sweet and meat rolls, which are also made from cottage cheese and potato dough. But it was apple strudel that was especially loved in Germany, where it was supplemented with delicate vanilla sauce and, as a serving option, ice cream.
Ingredients
Dough:
- 250 g flour
- 1 egg
- 150 ml warm milk
- 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
- a pinch of salt
Filling:
- 1 kg sweet and sour apples
- 100 g dark raisins (washed and dried)
- 50 g almonds or crushed hazelnuts
- 50–70 g sugar
- 40 ml (1 “schuss”) dark rum
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 packet vanilla sugar
- 100g white bread for breadcrumbs
- 80 g butter for greasing the strudel
Sauce:
- 200 ml milk
- 200 ml cream
- 4 egg yolks
- 80 g powdered sugar
- 1 vanilla pod
- ice cream or vanilla ice cream
Preparation
First you need to work on the dough, because it needs to stand for two hours (or longer) to become elastic and acquire its famous viscous properties.
Pour flour, salt into a cup, break an egg, pour in vegetable oil and warm milk.
Knead the dough with your hands. It turns out very sticky. Dust your hands with flour, roll into a ball and place in a clean bowl. Grease the dough generously with vegetable oil, cover tightly with cling film and place to “rest” in a warm place.
In the meantime, let's get to the filling. Toast almonds or other crushed nuts in a dry frying pan.
Finely crumble the white bread with your hands and fry in a small amount of vegetable oil until golden brown. Such homemade crackers will not give any foreign taste to the finished dessert.
Peel the apples from the skin and core, cut into small slices 2–3 mm thick. Pour lemon juice, rum over them, mix with raisins, fried almonds, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla.
Lay a towel on the table and sprinkle with flour. Place the dough on a towel and roll out a little with a rolling pin.
Then carefully lift and stretch with your hands on the backs of your hands. You shouldn’t get too carried away with this absolutely exciting activity, especially for the first time, as the dough stretches quickly and can easily tear. It’s better to quickly lower it back and stretch it with your hands on the towel, lifting all the edges in turn.
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The record was set by Austrian Roman Huemer in 1991. In front of the public and numerous cameras, in a minute and a half, he stretched a piece of dough to a size of three square meters and rolled a strudel two and a half meters long.
Ideally, the towel should be visible through the dough. Trim the thick edges where they remain to create an even rectangle. Using a pastry brush, carefully brush the entire surface of the dough with melted butter.
Attention! If the dough still breaks, then under no circumstances should you gather it back into a ball and try to stretch it again! Due to excess flour, it will no longer stretch or even roll out to the required thinness and after baking it will be hard and tasteless. It is better to try to carefully, with your hands, seal the breaks with thin patches from the trimmed remains. “Patches” are easier to mold onto oiled dough.
Sprinkle the surface of the dough with breadcrumbs, leaving 5–7 cm from the edges. You can leave 10–15 cm on one side to make it easier to seal the roll at the end. The crackers will absorb excess moisture from the apples and prevent it from leaking out. Spread the filling on top and fold the edges inward on three sides.
Using a towel, roll the roll to the end of the filling, and place the remaining “tail” of dough on top with your hands.
Transfer the strudel onto a towel onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper and place seam side down. Brush with melted butter.
Bake for 25–30 minutes at 180–200 degrees.
And finally, the sauce. Grind 4 yolks well with powdered sugar.
Pour milk and cream into a saucepan. Cut the vanilla pod lengthwise, remove the seeds with a knife and add them to the milk. Throw the pod in there (remove after boiling). Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent foam from forming. Remove from heat.
Continuously whisking the yolks, pour in hot milk in small portions.
Place the resulting mixture in a water bath and, stirring constantly with a whisk, bring until thickened (the consistency of liquid sour cream), but under no circumstances boil.
Brush the finished hot strudel again with melted butter and, after it has been absorbed, sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Living Berlin recommends serving apple strudel with hot sauce and vanilla ice cream.
