Ina Garten uses this baking hack and you should too

When Ina Garten suggests a simple baking hack, everyone listens. If you haven’t used this easy idea to upgrade your desserts, you need to discover it.

Over the years, Ina Garten has been our kitchen guru. From delicious recipes to her love of a good cocktail to this latest baking hack, the Barefoot Contessa always delivers the food advice that just makes life better. With this recent revelation, desserts just got an easy upgrade.

Many desserts benefit from a sauce. From a bread pudding to chocolate cake to even fresh fruit, crème anglaise is beautiful sauce to finish a dessert. Basically, it is a combination of egg yolks, sugar and hot milk. Often vanilla flavored, it is a classic sauce, but it can be tricky to make.

Since the crème anglaise requires the eggs to be slowly tempered, it takes a keen hand. Curdled eggs in this sauce is not acceptable. Would you want scrambled eggs in a dessert?

Luckily Ina has the perfect baking hack for a crème anglaise. While the idea isn’t necessarily a new one, Ina’s approval means that everyone can use this idea without that side of guilt.

Basically, a vanilla ice cream is frozen crème anglaise. Often used as an ice base, why not use that ice cream as a sauce.

For example, Ina says that she has used melted vanilla ice cream as a simple sauce for her bread pudding. If Ina does, everyone can do it, too.

This idea isn’t the only time that melted vanilla ice cream is used as a baking hack. It can be used to create a simple crème brulee. Basically, that container of vanilla ice cream can be used in a variety of ways. Why wouldn’t you have a container in the freezer?

Recently, ice cream has been part of the baking bread craze. As seen on various social media platforms, melted ice cream and self-rising flour has created ice cream bread. While the ice cream bread is denser than a traditional bread, it can be quite tasty.

Basically, it seems that vanilla ice cream is the baking hack that everyone needs. From being a simple sauce to the being the base for a variety of other desserts, vanilla ice cream is more than a scoop in a bowl.

What is your best baking hack? If you have discovered some amazing baking tricks, come share them with FoodSided.