I’ve held a variety of positions over the years that I’ve cooked, and it’s always great to work in pastry.  I love making desserts.  I don’t eat them that often (although it looks like I do on occasion), but I do love putting them together.  I know people will base what they order on dessert (“Well, I’m not going to eat too much, since I want to save room for dessert…”) — so it better be good.

Currently, we’re serving a dessert that uses a peanut butter sauce as a garnish — just a smear across the plate with a spoon of sauce.  This recipe works beautifully and you could put it on a sundae just as soon as you could garnish a plate with it.

Combine these ingredients:

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup light corn syrup

in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Boil for one minute — that’s all you need.  Then let the mixture cool until it’s comfortable to touch.  You then add one cup of creamy peanut butter and whip it all together.

You can keep it in the fridge, and when you want to use it, microwave it on a low setting and in very small increments (~10 seconds) until it’s at the consistency you want.  Do NOT throw it in the microwave for two minutes on high.  I’d hate to clean that up.

In case you don’t know what I’m referring to about the smear, it’s pretty simple.  Take a standard tablespoon (not a measuring spoon, but an actual SPOON spoon) and get yourself a good sized dollop of the sauce.  Tap it onto the plate you’re using, off to one side (maybe “nine o’ clock” on the plate?) and with the underside (curved) part of the spoon, smear it across the plate to the “three o’ clock” side.  You might have to practice it a couple of times, but you’ll get the general idea.  Plate your cake/pie/tart on top of that, and it’ll make what you’re doing look a tad more interesting.

It really works best with white plates.  We grew up with these very dark, off-green plates which would have made peanut butter sauce look…let’s just say it wouldn’t have had the same effect.