Hard sauce is a sweet and very rich flavored sauce that is widely used for making dense cakes and traditional pudding dishes. More like a spread with consistency similar to butter, this sauce is prepared by beating sugar and butter along with some other flavoring ingredients such as rum, brandy, whiskey, sherry and vanilla. It is primarily associated with holiday celebrations like Christmas and New Year in UK. It can also be served as an alternative to festive ice creams, creams, or custards. The same sauce is also known as Senior Wrangler sauce in Cambridge.
Ingredients Suggested by Hard Sauce Recipe
Hard sauce is made by utilizing some basic ingredients that includes vanilla, brandy, unsalted butters and confectioners' sugar. Ingredients like rum, brandy, whiskey, sherry and vanilla are mainly used while making this sauce to give a rich flavor to the sauce.
Hard Sauce Recipe Overview
Hard sauce is essentially made by mixing all the ingredients using a blender. The method basically starts with beating butter to make it more fluffy and light. After beating the butter is likely to turn pale in color. Ideally, the butter should be beaten for about 5 minutes. Some sugar is also added while beating the butter. After that, brandy, vanilla and other flavoring ingredients are added in the beaten butter.
Serving Hard Sauce
Although hard sauce is mainly used to make other dishes, it can also be served as a side dish. It is generally served at room temperature. However, chilled sauce can also be used after letting it come up at room temperature. Moreover, this sauce can be refrigerated when needs to be served with hot desserts like brownies. Some of the other dishes like plum pudding, bread pudding, Indian pudding and hasty pudding are also served with this sauce. Apart from this, this sauce is easily coupled with fruitcakes and gingerbread.
Variations of Hard Sauce Recipe
The main flavor of hard sauce can be easily modified by adding some simple ingredients. Some of the common variations of this sauce are made by adding various different ingredients like citrus oil, dark rum, grated citrus peel or flavored brandy. Another variation of this sauce is known as sterling sauce. Using brown sugar instead of confectioners' sugar can change the flavor of the sauce completely and make it a sterling sauce.