This is the dessert section, although since my favorite dessert is simply berries and cream or berries and a simple syrup, there are more fruit syrup recipes than full-on desserts. I use syrups to make homemade sodas, sorbets, granitas or to flavor ice creams; they’re also great for glazing meats.
CREAMY THINGS
Wintergreen Ice Cream with Chocolate Chips
A cooling wintergreen ice cream made with fresh wintergreen berries, studded with bittersweet chocolate chips.
- Greek Oregano Ice Cream
- The best Black Walnut Ice Cream ever! Trust me.
- Pine Nut Ice Cream, with desert honey
- Elderberry Creme Fraiche Ice Cream, good with any seedy fruit
- Blackberry Panna Cotta, also works with raspberries
- Lemon Verbena Panna Cotta, also good with mint, lavender or basil
JAMMY FRUITY THINGS
- Wild Cranberry Sauce, made with maple syrup
- Mulberry or Blackberry Sorbet
- Gooseberry Sorbet, for wild or domestic gooseberries
- Mulberry-Key Lime Compote, great with panna cotta or ice cream
- Fig Jam with Ouzo
BAKED THINGS
- Black Walnut Snowball Cookies, with orange flower water
- Greek butter cookies with wild fennel
- Wild Pine Nut Cookies ,with rosemary and acorn flour
- Classic Christmas Spritz Cookies (hosted on Simply Recipes)
- Italian Olive Oil Cake, with fennel pollen or rosemary
- Wild Plum Pie
- Mini Berry Pies, made in ramekins. Good for salal berries, huckleberries, blueberries, or really any non-seedy wild berry
- Guinness and Molasses Bread (Hosted on Simply Recipes)
- Huckleberry Muffins, also good with blueberries
- Buttermilk Huckleberry Cake, adapted from my friend Heidi Swanson
RANDOM OTHER THINGS
How to Make Elderberry Wine
I’ve been making fruit wines for close to 20 years, and while my method is not simple, it produces a superior wine you can even give to snooty wine people!
- How to Make Sykomaitha, or Greek Fig Cakes
- Elderflower Liqueur
- Elderberry Liqueur
SYRUPS
Hollyleaf Redberry Syrup
Yes, I know. Pretty esoteric. But if you live on the West Coast, this is a common July berry. Mix this syrup with buttermilk for a cool sherbert.
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- Blackberry Syrup, also works for raspberries
- Making Fig Syrup
- How to Make Prickly Pear Syrup
- Spruce or Fir Tree Syrup, made with the fresh growing tips
- Sassafras Syrup, made with the green twig bark
- Homemade Root Beer Syrup, with real sassafras root bark
- Elderberry Syrup, made without added water
- Elderflower Syrup or Cordial
- How to Eat Wild Gooseberries, which have nasty spines on them
Hi Hank…Like your site quite a lot…there are loads of food-related ones out there,
and you do an above and beyond excellent job!
Made the root beer syrup to rave reviews.
I was wondering if you’ve ever experimented w/ ginger syrup?
I have a few times…but mystified as to why:
-the syrup doesn’t thicken like the root beer syrup, tho I use same amount of liquid to sugar ratio as well as boiling time.
-ginger infusion seems to dissipate flavor-wise, in a short period of time, even tho it’s sealed and refrigerated. (my recipe is sugar, H2O, white pepper…I add lime juice when i’m adding club soda to it for a drink)
Today i’ll try making it w/ keeping the cover on pot….maybe the oils escaping in steam will ultimately make the flavor dissipate w/time…tho it won’t thicken at all because the water won’t be able to evaporate.)
Loads of science involved even in the simplest of recipes!
Any 2 cents from you would be appreciated.
Anne