Berry fools

 

Good morning to all.  I didn't get my customary Sunday post in yesterday, but it's here today.

This coming weekend we have whipped balsamic vinaigrette dip and raspberry meringue kisses ready for ordering.  And the next weekend we have a delicious cheese spread with a little kick to it and also a very sweet cookie on the menu.  

This past weekend, I made a lot of berry fools.  I got tons of strawberries and raspberries as well as lots of cream.   I decided instead of making several small batches to instead make one large batch.  So I was making big bowls of berry puree and cutting lots of strawberries to sugar in a bowl with raspberries.  

It's sometimes a bit of an experiment when you make a large quantity of something by doubling, tripling or quadrupling a recipe.  This is especially true of baked goods, I think, where precise measuring by weight is so important.  I'm not trying to say that baked goods can't be made in large quantities.  They certainly can. But I have found that when making extra large batches of some products then it's not always as simple as multiplying the ingredient measurements.  It can take a bit of tinkering to adjust the amounts and the mixing process for those larger quantities.  

At any rate, this past weekend as I made lots of berry fools, I was cooking my berry puree and preparing to add my thickening agent to it.  It was a a large quantity, and once the agent was added, it sat for a while before going into the fridge to chill.  A couple hours later I went to check on it and it wasn't as thick as expected.   Typically within two hours when making a smaller batch it thickens up just right.  But with this larger batch, it took longer for the puree to cool down, and longer for the agent to do it's work.  After another couple hours, it was was exactly as it should be.  

It was the first time I had made a batch as large as this, so you can be sure that I made notes on this to detail out the expected thickening time for me or anyone else who was using my recipe.

I enjoy this process of varying the preparation process and documenting the results.  It certainly increases one's awareness of the vagaries of food preparation that are sometimes in play.

The berry fools were great.  Everyone enjoyed them.  I saved a couple for me and my wife and we certainly enjoyed them.  And now I have documented the important information needed to know in order to prepare a much larger batch than my original recipe called for. 

Next up is to try a few other new berries to make some new fools, perhaps blackberry?  Cherry?  Blueberry?