Vanilla sauce

What first comes to mind when it comes to scented apple pies? Vanilla sauce, of course. These two treats are literally made for each other. The classic version is characterized by a pair of vanilla sauce with apple strudel, but this sauce is remarkably suitable not only for apple-based pastries, but also for almost any fruit or berry flour products, mousse and souffle, curd casserole, pancakes and fritters.

In addition, it is excellent to pour a variety of soft fruits with vanilla sauce: bananas, pears, strawberries or raspberries. By the way, strawberries using this sauce are even tastier than with whipped cream. You just need to pour vanilla sauce over the fruit, and then you can decorate the dessert with meringue cookies or a large crumb of shortbread cookies.

In winter, apples are perfect instead of fresh berries - a miracle is how good baked fruits with vanilla sauce, sprinkled with chocolate chips and grated nuts. Delicious with this sauce cheesecakes and ice cream - in general, everything with which condensed milk is perfectly combined. Only the taste and calorie content of vanilla sauce is much lighter than condensed milk.

Cold, this sauce is a great base for buttery creams, a cake filling and watering for fresh fruit and berry salads. By the way, this is almost an equivalent replacement for English cream.

In order to independently prepare vanilla sauce, minimal culinary skills and a little patience are needed - it is enough to constantly stir the sauce during cooking so that it thickens evenly. But the density of vanilla sauce directly depends on the number of chicken eggs used. So, the more eggs - the thicker the ready-made cream.

During the preparation of vanilla sauce, you cannot heat the mass above 90 degrees, otherwise the yolks can curl up and as a result the sauce will not work. At the request of the cook, after cooling the sauce, alcohol or an additive with an acidic taste (lemon zest or lemon juice) can be introduced into it.

The classic vanilla sauce is made with five egg yolks, half a litre of milk, vanilla sticks and 50 grams of sugar. A vanilla stick, which can be replaced with vanillin or vanilla essence, is cut along and the inside scraped off with the tip of a knife. Milk is poured into the saute pan, to which vanilla and the stick itself are laid. After boiling, the milk is removed from the heat and cooled a little.

Yolks are beaten with sugar using a mixer or whisk until the mass increases significantly in size and turns white. Warm milk is poured into the egg mixture and the vanilla sauce is cooked until thickened.