Rudy's Hot Fudge

This is a much beloved sauce for ice cream on hot steamy evenings on Lake Michigan. Ruth de Jong, the matriarch of the family, made this sauce for years and years and her daughters have now taken up the task. This recipe will become part of the New Era Cottage Cookbook.

2 tablespoons butter
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in sugar and cocoa.
2. Return to heat and slowly add evaporated milk, stirring constantly until mixture comes to a boil. Continue to boil and stir for 10 minutes.
3. Remove from heat and add the vanilla. Sauce will be quite thin but will set a little as it cools.

Katharine’s notes:

• You can also use 1½ cups heavy cream if you’d like instead of the evaporated milk.
• I added ¼ teaspoon salt because I think sweet things are always helped by a bit of it. There is a physiological reason for that, but we don’t need to go into it here.

Makes about 2 cups
Created by Ruth and made at the cottage numerous times

Oven-Roasted Grapes

I often have some leftover grapes lurking in the fridge after I've used part of a bunch for a salad or something else. Roasting them is a perfect way to give the lurkers a second life. They taste as though they are on their way to becoming raisins, but juicier.

2 pounds red grapes, without seeds
A slight sprinkling of sugar

1. Remove the grapes from their stems. Cut in half if large. Line a rimmed baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper and place the grapes on top in a single layer.
2. Turn the oven to 250ºF and place the pan in the oven. You can use the convection setting in your oven on either Bake or Roast and speed up the process a bit.
3. After about an hour, check to see how they are doing; move them around on the sheet and sprinkle with a small amount of sugar if they taste too tart to you. Roast for an additional hour or until the grapes have lost some of their juice and shrunk some.

You can use these as an accompaniment to cheese or dessert, in salads, and in Italian Sausage with Red Grapes  or Chicken Salad with Walnuts and Grapes.

Makes about 3 cups
Adapted from John Ash’s Cooking One on One

Oven-Roasted Strawberries

Roasting concentrates the luscious strawberry flavor. You won’t believe it.

Strawberries
Sugar

1. Remove the stems and place the strawberries on a rimmed baking sheet covered with parchment paper or silicone mat.
2. Sprinkle lightly with sugar (about 1 tablespoon per basket).
3. Roast in a 300°F oven for about 1 to 1½ hours. Turn them over about half way through roasting. You can use Convection Roast if your oven does that. The roasting time will be shorter.
4. The strawberries are done when they have shrunk to about half their original size and are soft without being burned.
5. Store with any collected juices in the refrigerator in a covered container.

Serve with Fudge Brownies, anything chocolate, panna cotta, or shortcakes.

Adapted from Michelle Polzine’s suggestions in San Francisco Magazine, June 2007

Sally Schmitt's Cranberry and Apple Kuchen with Hot Cream Sauce

I have had The French Laundry Cookbook on my shelf since November 2003—a long time. In these many years, I have made exactly one recipe from it. This one, in October 2004. I swear it is the only recipe in the whole book that I felt competent to tackle. But it quickly joined my list of “keepers” and has become a fall staple. Sally Schmitt was one of the original owners of The French Laundry Restaurant. She and her husband passed the restaurant and this recipe along to Thomas Keller when they decided to devote themselves to their apple orchards some distance to the north.

6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
¾ cup sugar
1 large egg
1½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
½ cup milk or half and half
3 apples
1 cup fresh cranberries, at room temperature, defrosted if previously frozen
Cinnamon sugar: 1 tablespoon sugar mixed with ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
Hot Cream Sauce, see recipe below

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Butter a 9-inch cake pan or spring-form pan. Put a round of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan.
2. Peel, quarter, and core the apples. Slice them into ¼-inch wedges.
3. Beat together the butter, sugar, and egg in a bowl large enough to hold all the ingredients until the mixture is fluffy and light in texture.
4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Add the dry ingredients and the milk alternately to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Do not over beat; mix just until the ingredients are combined.
5. Spoon the batter into the pan. Press the apple slices into the batter, about ¼ inch apart and core side down. Work in a circular pattern like the spokes of a wheel. Put most of the cranberries in the middle of the cake and the remaining around the edges. Poke some into the dough. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
6. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until the cake bounces back when softly pushed in the middle. Set on rack to cool briefly or let cool to room temperature.
7. Serve the kuchen in a good-sized puddle of the hot sauce. Pass the remainder in a pitcher.

Hot Cream Sauce

2 cups heavy cream
½ cup sugar
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1. Combine the cream, sugar, and butter in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Reduce the heat and let the sauce simmer for 5-8 minutes to reduce and thicken slightly.

8 servings
Adapted from Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook