Name: Vanilla Sauce
Yield: Makes about 2 3/4 cups
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons cornstarch; 2 1/2 cups milk, divided; 1/2 cup sugar; 2 large egg yolks; 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

(Vanillesauce)

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Rick Rodgers's book Kaffeehaus: The Best Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. To read more about Austrian cooking, click here.

This recipe originally accompanied Farmer's Cheese and Raisin Filo Strudel.

A cousin to the French crème anglaise, this pale yellow dessert sauce is called Kanarienmilch, or "canary milk," in some old cookbooks. The Viennese version is boiled, as the egg yolks are protected from curdling by the cornstarch. This makes it a slightly thicker, less egg-rich sauce that beautifully offsets Austro-Hungarian desserts. Because it takes less watching, I now use Vanillesauce whenever I need a vanilla dessert sauce.

Recipe notes

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