Berry Compote

I had always figured that compotes were tough to make. I mean, anything saucy usually terrifies me. There's almost always lots of scalding and warnings to get it just hot enough but no hotter, lest you burn it and ruin the flavor. Suffice it to say, I'd clearly never made one. So when I saw a recipe in The Cake Mix Doctor that sounded not only doable but easy, I knew just how to incorporate those berries into our chocolate cupcakes. We made some modifications, so here is what we did.

Ingredients
7 1/2 cups berries
1/2 cup sugar

Note: We used one box strawberries, one large box blackberries and scaled the sugar accordingly.

Directions
PREHEAT oven to 350F.
PLACE berries and sugar in a shallow baking dish.
STIR to combine berries and sugar.

BAKE until the fruit is soft.
ADD more sugar to taste if required.

BLEND until an even consistency is reached.

DEVOUR.

My Thoughts
1. The picture at the top of the post shows pre and post baking of the compote. You could quite happily eat the compote in it's chunkier form (perhaps over pancakes or waffles?) but we chose to blend it.

2. We used the compote as filling in chocolate cupcakes by cutting cones out of each cupcake, filling the well with compote, cutting off the pointy part of the cone, and replacing. Chocolate buttercream frosting hid the scars and amped up the taste.



3. This is simple enough to become a Secret Weapon Recipe. You know, the ones you pull out for last minute parties or baking for groups of 100 and everyone thinks you are a domestic rockstar because OMG you made COMPOTE. Yes, yes you did. You don't have to tell them it was easy. : )

4. We later used the leftover compote over Belgian waffles with whipped cream. Delicious!