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Brown Sugar Hard Sauce
1/2 CUP BUTTER I CUP SIFTED BROWN SUGAR 2 TEASPOONS WHISKEY, APPLEJACK OR STRONG COFFEE Cream butter, beat sugar in gradually and when fluffy drop in the medicine, whipping each drop into the sauce by itself to keep everything creamy. If none of these fine flavors suit you, you can fall back on lemon juice and vanilla extract, but it's quite a fall.
A classic hard sauce, uncooked, meant to be spooned onto something hot so it melts into a glaze. The whole technique is in the last instruction: add the liquid one drop at a time or the butter will break.
- QuantitiesHalf a cup of butter is 1 stick (4 oz / 115 g); 1 cup of sifted brown sugar is roughly 5-6 oz once aerated, noticeably less than a cup packed. Sift or press through a sieve to break lumps, since nothing here dissolves them.
- "The medicine"Two teaspoons of whiskey, applejack or strong coffee. This is flavouring, not preservation, and it is where the sauce gets its character; brandy or dark rum behave the same way.
- Add the liquid drop by dropButter and sugar hold only a little water before the emulsion splits into a grainy, weeping mess. Beat each few drops in fully before the next. If it does separate, more sugar beaten in will usually pull it back together.
- Butter temperatureThe recipe does not specify, but standard creaming practice is cool room temperature, around 65F. Softened to the point of greasiness it will not hold air; straight from the fridge it will not cream at all.
- Brown sugar will not dissolveUnlike a cooked sauce, this stays slightly granular. That is normal and part of the appeal, but it means the sauce should be made close to serving or given a good re-beating after chilling.
- Yield and servingRoughly a cup and a quarter of finished sauce. Chill until firm, then serve cold in a mound or in cut pats on hot steamed pudding, baked apples or gingerbread so it melts as it hits.
- If you skip the alcoholStrong brewed coffee, cooled, is the best of the three flavourings for a non-alcoholic sauce, as it adds a little bitterness against the sugar. The lemon juice and vanilla fall-back works but is flatter, as the author concedes.
- KeepingCovered in the refrigerator it holds a week; it is largely butter and sugar. Let it stand ten minutes before serving so it is firm but not brick-hard.
Hard sauce is the standing accompaniment to boiled and steamed puddings in the British and American tradition; the name is usually explained as distinguishing the firm chilled butter-and-sugar paste from the pourable "soft" or foamy dessert sauces, though the explanation is traditional rather than documented. The white version, made with granulated sugar and brandy, is the familiar Christmas-pudding brandy butter; brown sugar gives a molasses depth that suits apples and gingerbread. Applejack, the apple brandy long distilled in New Jersey and New England, appears here as a matter of course, which suggests an American rather than an English idiom.