I’m no good at brevity.

I don’t like concise recipe names at the expense of information. I always feel like restaurant menus are hiding something from me when the name itself isn’t descriptive and there isn’t additional information. Even when it’s not something like “Tuna Surprise” or “House Chicken”conjuring up images of congealed grease sitting under a hot lamp, I’d still prefer it if the name tells me enough about the ingredients and/or cooking techniques used, so that I can try to recreate the meal myself. Of course, this isn’t a problem with certain phrases from different schools of cooking, where you can say something like parmigiana and whether it’s the original eggplant, veal, chicken, or even tofu, you know that the protein is breaded and fried, then baked with marinara and mozzarella. Or  à la mode and everyone knows you mean “with ice cream.”

NOTE:  À la mode actually means “in the style” and I guess the style in the U.S. diner cooking school is “with ice cream.”
ANOTHER NOTE: I love appropriating languages, especially when ice cream is involved.

And, more importantly, I tried to think of a clever name for this dish and the best I came up with was Spicy Raspberry Surprise which sounds… wrong.

As I’ve said before, desserts aren’t my forté. I usually just make a sauce and put it on ice cream. However, Elliotte wanted something to put the ice cream on, so she got a box of brownie mix. I can safely say that she made a good choice. Take a brownie and add chocolate chip cookie dough. How can you go wrong with that?

I bought a pack of frozen raspberries and heated them up, because that’s the easiest way I know of to make a delicious sweet sauce. As opposed to caramel or chocolate sauce which can burn easily and usually create a big mess, this only involves putting as much frozen fruit as you want into a pan and cooking it until it becomes a sauce. Even if you don’t add anything to it, it will work. It will be rather tart without added sugar, but I’d still eat it and it would still make a wonderful sauce for ice cream.

Shiraz, Raspberries, Cayenne, Black Pepper and Brown Sugar

However, I wanted to add a bit of zing after our surf and turf, so I decided to add cayenne and a bit of black pepper. The sauce itself wasn’t terribly spicy, but was definitely a bit more complex than the usual sauce. The cayenne complemented the chocolate flavors and the black pepper complemented the vanilla. Chilis have been added to chocolate since they were first cultivated in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago, but I’ve only recently heard about black pepper complementing the taste of vanilla. Regardless, I like both, so I threw both in and it made for a frabjous topping to a rich dessert.

This dessert was DEMOLISHED. Notice the empty brownie pan in the background and the partially pictured empty Haagen-Dazs container.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownie A La Mode with Raspberry Cayenne Sauce

Rich, sweet, tart, and zingy.

• Cookie/brownie base – This can be made from scratch (preferable of course), from a mix (less preferable), or simply store-bought (gasp!).
• Ice cream – I keep it simple and usually just go with a good quality vanilla, but as you can see in the picture above, we had chocolate as well.
• Frozen raspberries – If you’re not in the mood for raspberries, can’t find them, or want variety, you can use damn near any frozen fruit.
• Sugar – Brown makes for a richer sauce, but white is fine. Maple syrup, molasses, or even corn syrup would also work here.
• Wine – While conceivably any wine would work, I went with a fruity Shiraz. I also paired this with a Zinfandel that was kind of jammy and worked quite well with it.
• Cayenne
• Black Pepper

Throw your frozen fruit into a pot that’s on the stove on about medium heat. I used about a half of a pound of fruit. Add enough wine to cover the bottom of the pot. You can crank up the heat if you are really worried about alcohol being in the final product (and a little bit will, no matter what you do), but since I usually start this cooking as soon as I have a free burner and let it simmer until I’m ready to serve. Add some sugar, and a few dashes of cayenne, and a few turns of the grinder of black pepper (the ratio you’re looking for is probably 20:1:2).

Let this cook until the fruit starts falling apart, then start tasting. Adjust sugar, cayenne, and black pepper accordingly.

Set your cookie or brownie base on a plate, then top with ice cream, and drizzle with the sauce.

For the amount of work that this takes, the depth of flavor is pretty complex. I’d suggest giving it a try.