Roasted Strawberries
Back in the 70s and earlier, people and their grandmas would dump a bunch of white sugar on berries or peaches when the fruit wasn't ripe enough. Here's a modern method that brings out the natural sweetness and juices using just a hint of sugar or honey.
Spring Strawberry Haiku
Yummy strawberries
Baked, chopped, covered in sugar
Always delicious
We did a taste test with different sugars, vinegars and honey as well as plain.
Taste Test Kitchen
We gave ourselves a fun challenge. We wanted to try roasting strawberries but didn't know what would bring out the best flavor. We wanted to test different sugars and honey, a couple of vinegars, a little lemon, and plain strawberries.
Without roasting batch after batch of strawberries - because who could eat all of that? - we devised a method to roast just a taste of each variety. We used a baking tin lined with muffin cups to test white balsamic vinegar, honey-balsamic vinegar, regular balsamic vinegar, honey plus white balsamic, honey plus vanilla flavoring, honey, brown sugar, coconut sugar, white sugar, sugar plus vanilla flavoring, honey plus vanilla and lemon, and plain.
To our tastebuds, regular balsamic was better than white or flavored balsamic. Honey was great as a sweetener, and coconut sugar was far better than the other sugars. White sugar just left the strawberries tasting sugary. Vanilla flavoring didn't work for us at all - it imparted an 'off' taste. Rebel didn't care for the addition of lemon but Lee did.
That done, we tried 3 half recipes as noted in the final recipe below: coconut sugar (Rebel's favorite), coconut sugar and lemon (Lee's favorite), and honey with balsamic vinegar.
- 16 ounces strawberries Variation 1:
- 2 tablespoons coconut sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh (optional) Variation 2:
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
