Strawberry Fool. Or trifle?

This is one easy to make dessert, probably one of the easiest on this planet. It is also contemporary with Shakespeare as the Oxfords Dictionary places the first mention of it somewhere in 1598 with probably much earlier origins, but I digress… It is indeed one of those minimalist recipes which can be made in a myriad of fruit and aroma combinations. “Only a fool would pass this one up” says NYT’s Sam Sifton. I agree 100%.

As you can see, minimalistic is the word here. We have whipping cream and strawberries providing the body of this desert with maple syrup for sweetness plus cardamom and mint for contrasting aroma.

Here we dice about three quarters of the strawberries, then we add two tablespoons of maple syrup and the cardamom. The most time consuming part of this recipe and the hardest to resist “sampling” is allowing the fruit to macerate. Around 20 minutes would do but the longer the better. I decided to forgo using sugar and do maple syrup instead. Its aroma will play well with the one of the strawberries and cardamom. The process will still be the same and take about as long as it would with sugar, with the advantage of the aromas being able to mix and develop a little better.

The rest of the strawberries will be used for decoration so they are sliced nicely and will follow the same maceration process. Only about a teaspoon of syrup is used here, it is enough to get a sheen on the slices and have them glossing nicely.

I used my small food processor to puree the diced strawberries as well as possible.

I love my stand mixer. It took a grand total of 5 minutes to whip the cream to hard peaks, then fold the strawberry purée in. Yep, that’s the whole philosophy of this desert. We’re essentially done. It is worth noting here that the whipping cream should be as cold as possible, I would say straight from the fridge as it “holds” air better, making whipping it to hard peaks more reliable not to mention much faster.

All that is left to do is dividing the whipped cream between glasses or serving bowls and decorating them with the strawberry slices and some mint. The result is a rather refreshing dessert which is not all that sweet and works perfectly at the end of any meal. As I was mentioning before, there’s a myriad of combinations possible with this dessert. I made it with blueberries, peaches, apricots… you name it.