Trying to recreate the Strawberry Frappuccino after two years and more, I tried what I remembered and while the first iteration was good, I thought it could be better. So I looked for other variations on strawberry sauce recipes and found these four:
Though its been a while, I remember (plus I found the article online with a picture) from the original that there were definitely strawberry chunks. So I knew the strained versions were not going to be exact but I didn’t want to rule them out in case they would taste good and I thought it would be fun to try new methods. As always, I didn’t do everything perfect - I had more strawberries for the last batch so I estimated the increase for the other ingredients. I got two 2lb packs of strawberries to work with.
The results:
- Used 12oz diced strawberries rather than the starting weight so it was more berries than the recipe called for. Good - off to a good start
- Halved this recipe - Super sweet - too much sugar
- Halved this recipe - Good - the chunks are nice for the dollop of sauce on top but was less sweet than the others.
- 1lb diced strawberries ( a few more than you’d get from the 1 pint pack) 1/2 C sugar. Added the vanilla at the end. Delicious - the vanilla definitely adds that little something and has the right amount of sugar
Everyone agrees that the chunks are nice. And the vanilla version was so tasty. One friend really liked the second one - I guess he has a sweet tooth! Obviously I thought the vanilla was superior since I used that for my official frappuccino recipe.
As for the recipes themselves, the first three add water which is so unnecessary with the water content of the strawberries. It just takes forever to cook off to the point you can call it syrup. The first one says 10 minutes on the stove and I had it going for at least 30 minutes more to get it to a syrup consistency. This too makes the 4th recipe superior - straight forward and accurate and much quicker than the others.