Uses: Dessert Sauce give enough for 4 portions

This is a really quick (15 min.) and an uncomplicated recipe for raspberry sauce than can be made with or without alcohol.
Wonderful on a little vanilla ice cream,
fabulous on poached pears.

Assembling the recipe:

Simply put in a small sauce pan the frozen raspberries,sugar and water. Bring to a gentle boil and add the Eau de Vie de Framboise if you have it. If not add the vanilla essence.

Gently simmer this for 8 - 10 minutes. While it is simmering with a small spoon skim off as much of the white foam that will appear floating on top.

When the fruit is cooked and very soft pour through a sieve and with the back of a spoon push the cooked fruit through it removing all the seeds and pith. Rinse your spoon off occasionally and use it to scrape the underside of the sieve to get all you can from the raspberries.

Rinse out your pot and pour the unthickened sauce back into it and bring back to the most gentle simmer.

Dissolve the arrowroot or cornstarch in the cold water and while whisking pour this into the raspberry sauce. Cook for one more minute and skim off any white scum that might be left on top of the sauce and from around the edges.

This is one of those few times when frozen berries really come in handy. They are usually not the best quality, meaning not picked at the best time. So they can be a bit tart. Adjust your sugar accordingly. The sweetness of this recipe I think is somewhere in the middle as I don't like very sweet things so much.

You can if you have use "Eau de Vie de Framboise", it does make a great difference in the finished sauce. But if you don't and I rarely have it if I am not arranging something very special, use a very good quality vanilla essence.

It is important to skim the raspberry sauce to get a clear and beautiful color. It looks terrible after it is chilled to see any kind of white scum floating in or on top.

I can hear you from here going - what is Arrowroot? Arrowroot comes from a root, and as far as thickeners are concerned it has the greatest thickening properties of the traditional ones we usually use, such are cornstarch or flour.

When it comes to fruit sauces and many other fine sauces, arrowroot is the one thing that gives you a beautiful clear, true color. Unlike cornstarch or flour that will make the sauce cloudy.

There are 3 things that make arrowroot so superior, that it makes it worth finding. 1. Is color. 2. you don't really have to cook it into the sauces. Simmered for a moment or two it thickens things up almost instantly. 3. The third being it has no taste of it's own to interfere with the sauce.

Arrowroot is a bit difficult to find here but I see it around so keep your eye open every time you pass the spice section. If you only use it for fruit sauces it is really worth getting a small bottle.