crème anglaise

This past weekend I saw two different culinary phenoms, Ina Garten and Chef Hubert Keller (on two different cooking programs), demonstrate the most ridiculously easy recipe for Crème Anglaise: They used melted vanilla ice cream! Genius, huh? No custard making, no water bath ... just melted vanilla Häagen-Dazs.

Keller added some rum as well; but Ina simply poured the cream onto a plate as the base for store-bought chocolate pound cake. Then she topped the yumminess with stewed fresh berries. You could easily turn up the volume by adding fresh vanilla bean.

It actually makes total sense. Crème Anglaise consists of sugar, egg yolks and milk, and is typically flavored with vanilla. So all you're essentially doing is working backwards from ice cream. What an outstanding idea!

From this day forward I'll attempt to impress my guests by serving a fancy Crème Anglaise sauce with dessert. Pretend like you don't know my secret.