Hands-on Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes
Serves 4
- ½ c raspberry jam
- 1¼ c heavy cream
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1 c fresh raspberries, optional
- 4 cookies
Beat the cream with the sugar until soft peaks form. In a small bowl, whisk the jam until smooth; fold it into the whipped cream. Divide among 4 bowls and garnish with the raspberries and cookies.
If you’re looking for a lite, sweet summer treat, this is it! From Real Simple’s ideas for raspberry jam, this is a great find. It takes no time at all to make.
Now you do need to have a light hand when it comes to working with whipping cream. So fair warning for those who don’t work with it much, or ever (like myself before this recipe). But do not be intimidated.
Part of the secret to a good cream is having a chilled bowl. I just usually toss the one I’ll use into the freezer while I collect my ingredients. So just a few minutes is all it needs, then get to whipping! But don’t over whip. Like the recipe says, for this raspberry fool you just need soft peaks. In the picture below is an example. But to describe it, when you pull the beater out, peaks should form and then soften or curl. If they just stick straight up, those are stiff peaks. And rather you may have a decent whipped cream topping on your hands at that point (more on that later though). But if you severely over beat, and honestly you’d really have to just not be paying attention, which you won’t do since I’m warning you now, you’d have a not-so-tasty butter like substance which is not recoverable (not in any way I know of that is).
If you’re not sure how to ‘fold’ the jam in, it’s no sweat. During my recent marathon of Julia Child’s French Chef borrowed from the library, she taught me how to fold! Just add the jam, then take a spatula and slice or cut (however you’d like to think of it) down the middle and then scoop or scrape along the bottom, underneath the cream and up the side of the bowl. Repeat until desired mix is reached or it kinda looks like the picture (that’s what I use to gauge!). Folding is not the same as beating. That’s what I thought until Julia taught me the difference. Of course, when she picks up her experienced speed it looks like beating but it’s not.
So, the slightly tricky part with working the cream aside, give this dish a try! I opted to not garnish with fresh raspberries as they weren’t quite in season when I first made this dish. And as for the cookies, I just grabbed some animal crackers I had on hand. Any shortbread type cookie or even Nilla wafers would work great!
And actually I intend to take it a step further. I was at a Tastefully Simple party recently and there were samples of their chocolate pound cake and their lemon cream cheese fruit dip. Everyone seemed in awe when dipped the pound cake in the lemon cream (rather than the suggested sugar pretzel twists or whatever). Yum! Now I’m day dreaming of the chocolate pound cake with a nice dollop of raspberry fool on top. I did get a box of the chocolate pound cake but haven’t brought myself to make it yet and try this dream combo since it is my only box right now. You know how that goes . . .
If I ever do get around to it, I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out!