Weekend Cookbook Challenge 18 - Red and White

This month is the 18th month of Weekend Cookbook Challenge, if you can believe it. I'm the host this time around and I thought it might be fun to have another color theme - Orange was the theme for #3 - so I picked Red and White. (The fact that Canada Day and Independence Day are in July may have factored in too.)

I thought I'd start by picking a cookbook that had one of the colors on the cover. I picked that old favorite, Betty Crocker.

Since I fulfilled my theme requirement, I flipped through the book to just choose what ever recipe tickled my fancy. And my fancy was tickled by a fool. A strawberry and rhubarb fool! Last month Shaun at Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow wrote about Blackberry Fool and it looked delicious. A fool is a British dessert and is fruit that is mashed up and mixed with whipped cream, but not mixed so thoroughly to completely combine the two - you want the dessert to be streaky with the fruit and cream. I've been wanting to make a fool for a long time, mostly because of the name. We aren't big dessert eaters, so this was the perfect opportunity.

I loved this dessert! It was delicious and quite beautiful. Looky!

The dessert was very light and refreshing, and the two main ingredients, rhubarb and strawberries are in abundance right now. Once the strawberries and rhubarb have been cooked and cooled, this is very quick to make too. If you like tasty desserts, (um, who doesn't??) give this a try. You won't be sorry.

Rhubarb Strawberry Fool
adapted from Betty Crocker's 40th Anniversary Edition Cookbook

make the rhubarb strawberry sauce:

mix together in a pot over medium high heat
1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup water and bring to a boil.

add
4 cups chopped rhubarb
and simmer for 10 minutes until tender. stir in
1 cup sliced strawberries
return to the boil, then remove from heat and refrigerate until cold, 2-3 hours.

then:
mix the sauce into

1 cup non fat sour cream

beat
1 cup whipping cream until stiff. stir into the sauce/sour cream mixture. do not incorporate completely; make sure the dessert is streaky with white cream and red fruit sauce.

pour into one large bowl or 6 individual bowls.

sprinkle with brown sugar before serving.

There's still tons of time to join in Weekend Cookbook Challenge 18. So cook up a dish having something to do with Red or White, and send it to me by July 15. My email is iliketocook at shaw dot ca.

Have a great weekend!