Rote Grütze (Summer Fruit pudding)

The Recipe:

Rote Grütze (Summer Fruit pudding)

Traditional German berry pudding, a great summer dessert that can easily be spiced up for winter too.

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Course Dessert

Cuisine German

Ingredients

  

• 250 g berries any combo of fresh or defrosted raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, currants
• 25-50 g sugar
• 90-125 ml red fruit juice water in a pinch
• 25 g corn starch

Optional Extras – any combination

• 1 squeeze of lemon
• 1 Cinnamon stick or ½ tsp ground
• ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
• ½ dash rose water start light handed – it's strong stuff!
• a couple more ideas in the notes below

To Serve

• to serve: fresh cream ice cream, whipped cream, custard, yogurt – you get the idea
• 1 handful Mint leaves for garnish
• Dark chocolate Grated (think – Rote Grutze topped with cream and some shavings of chocolate on top?!)

Instructions

 

• Clean berries and put in saucepan over medium heat, add 25g sugar and stir, taste before adding more. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add a splash of juice or water if needed. Add optional cinnamon stick.
• In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and juice or water until smooth. Pour about half into the fruit and stir. Reduce heat and let simmer for 3 minutes. Adjust as needed with cornstarch slurry or straight juice/water to desired consistency – keep in mind it will thicken as it cools.
• Take off heat. Add lemon or vanilla if using.
• Serve warm with a small pitcher of cold cream (or your desired cream based goodie).

Notes

Fun fact: My husband took one look at Rote Grütze and said “OH! Hey! It’s monkey blood!” Here’s Tony Singh’s very classy take on raspberry sauce for ice cream aka Monkey Blood Sundaes. He uses green cardamom and star anise, he does a second topping- a peppercorn syrup that also has cinnamon. I imagine any of these spices would work well here.

Keyword berries, desserts, fruit, german, pudding, vegan, vegetarian

The Waffle:

On a family WhatsApp (cos, yeah, we’re intergenerational cool like that) it came up that my great grandmother would make this German dessert for my mom and my aunt when they were little, so that was me sold. Gotta find a good recipe. Looking around, this one matched what my mom and aunt described.

The major change I’ve made was the quantities, this may be all fruit, but thanks to the cornstarch it is a rich dessert, 500g of berries made far too much for my family of 3, even bringing it to my in-laws house over the summer when we were briefly allowed to visit didn’t shift enough of the stuff! Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely, would’ve frozen well, and I will definitely make it again, but half seems like a good starting point.

That said – the original post has great ideas for using up the leftovers – Greek yogurt and rote graütze popsicles?! I’m in.

In addition to the traditional serving style, I mixed it in plain yogurt, and porridge. The original blogger also said it would be good on scones, which I can totally see and there’s an international crossover there that I enjoy. Might have to try it.