Food Journalism : Food Friday: Vanilla Sauce with Berries

Introduction:
I am 7-years old and living the high life for the weekend with a quick getaway to the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, which according to their website is a, “AAA Five-Diamond resort.” Everything was fabulous, from the lavish linens that dressed the cloud-like beds, to the exquisite service with an ‘anything you want, we will make it happen’ attitude. It was a world of possibilities.

As I sat between my Grandma and Grandpa who had accompanied us for the jaunt out-of-town, the waiter approached with a colorful tray. Assorted raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries filled the delicate crystal vessels.

Headline: My Aunt Ginny always says that, “you could scoop up every last drop of the vanilla sauce, with or without berries” on your way to discovering tastes you had never experiences before.

Opening: The Broadmoor’s vanilla sauce is a dessert made of whipping cream, vanilla extract, sugar, and corn starch that is served as a topping for bread pudding, cakes, crepes, waffles, and strudels. But for as long as I can remember, my family has used the vanilla sauce as a dessert topping on fresh berries.

The origin of the sauce is unknown, but my during my research of the vanilla pod I discovered that it has been used to flavor food for quite some time. According to ifood.tv, vanilla’s increasing popularity began in the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico. But what really interested me was the mythology of the vanilla bean.

“Princess Xanat escaped from her father to the forest, along with her lover. The lovers were found out and beheaded, and when their blood reached the ground, the vanilla vine grew on that land” (www.ifood.tv/network/vanilla_sauce).

This story reaches the hopeless romantic in all of us, but the bonus is the creation of the vanilla bean and as a result, my favorite vanilla sauce. The vanilla pod’s popularity grew from the 15^th century until the 19^th century making the transition from only being produced in Mexico to places in France and proceeded then traveled around the world.

Sub-Head: In our own family mythology: it is told that the vanilla sauce recipe was challenging to obtain from The Broadmoor. My grandma recites that, year after year and visit after visit the request for the recipe was always made. Then…we finally received it. To now ever be enjoyed.

Content: My entire life, through birthdays and holidays, there is a place in my mind that wants to skip the three main courses prior and jump to the end of the meal to get to the best part. My entire family’s taste buds salivate knowing what is being prepared in the kitchen. Then the dessert time is spent with vanilla sauce stories being shared; all unique, all different, all featuring family.

There have been moments in my life when experiencing rejection, when I ask to make the vanilla sauce. There is always a mix of emotions from my mom and grandma concluding that the vanilla sauce is a little devil to complete, and it is best to wait until the next holiday to undertake this effort.

Then comes Food Friday, and I can choose anything I can dream of to prepare for my peers. Of course this is my opportunity to experiment with the delicious dessert. Getting the recipe, I began my mental preparation of not only making the vanilla sauce for the first time, but with the challenge of quadrupling my classic family recipe to feed a 25 person class. I was ready for the challenge. And what I found was not difficult at all. A simple dessert that consists of four ingredients and a melody of berries… leaves me with thought of my family celebrations.

Enjoy!

#foodporn http://instagram.com/p/leEiKKyPzG/

Recipe:

Ingredients - 1 pint of whipping cream- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1/4 teaspoon of cornstarch
- 1 container of raspberries
- 1 container of blueberries
*or any berries you favor

Directions

1. Use a medium size sauce pan to mix all the ingredients together