RASPBERRY SNOW

It’s raspberry season, at least in the Rocky Mountain West. A friend just brought us a jar of raspberry preserves from Garden City, Utah. That’s home to a number of raspberry farms and the Bear Lake Raspberry Days. Closer to our current home is the Salman Raspberry Farm. You can pick your own, buy their preserves, or buy them in our local farmers market.

Bear Lake is a spectacular blue lake that sits astride the border between Utah and Idaho. It was home to back-to-back Mountain Men Rendezvous in the 1820s. Since then it has been a site of retreat for people from all over the world but especially from Salt Lake City. We made at least one annual trip every year we lived in Salt Lake City. The blue color of the water is so intense that it looks other-worldly. It is said that the color is due in large part to tiny grains of limestone, so-called glacial flour. Lakes in the Canadian Rockies, like Jasper Lake, are also an intense blue said to be due to glacial flour. Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border is also an intense blue, but local authorities have different explanations for the cause.

Salman’s Ranch can’t boast an other-worldly blue-colored lake, but it has its own long history. And it has raspberries.

The gift of raspberry preserves was delicious, but the preserves gave me a hankering to do something with fresh berries. Raspberries and cream, though delicious, seemed a bit prosaic. Panna cotta with fresh berries was a little more complicated. Then I thought of a raspberry Bavarian. That would definitely not be a prosaic dessert. On the other hand, making a crème anglaise and finding a suitable mold seemed like a lot of trouble. I settled on something in between, raspberries in whipped cream stabilized with gelatin. The final result was ok – good but not great. There are some modifications that I would make to the recipe if I would do it again.  For one, you could use about half as much gelatin. Still, we cleaned the bowl in just a day, so I guess it wasn’t too bad.

Fresh raspberries

Raspberry snow

RECIPE

Raspberry Snow

Ingredients

• 1 pint fresh raspberries
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 packet (¼ ounce) unflavored gelatin
• ¼ cup cold water
• ¼ cup boiling water

Method

1. Wash and drain the raspberries
2. In a medium bowl, whip the cream to stiff peaks. Stir in the raspberries and vanilla extract. You may crush some of the raspberries as you stir them into the cream. That is fine because the juice will add to the color and flavor of the whipped cream.
3. In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin granules over the cold water and let sit for at least a full minute until the gelatin is fully bloomed. Add the boiling water and stir for at least 2-3 minutes until the gelatin is fully dissolved.
4. Stir the gelatin mixture into the whipped cream mixture. Be sure that it is evenly and completely incorporated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or until the mixture is set. If you prefer,, you can transfer the mixture to a decorative bowl or mold before chilling it.