How to Cook With Dessert Wine

Delectable recipes using dessert wines are a great ending to any festive meal. There are many types of dessert wines and their sweetness can complement the ingredients and add a distinctive flavor to many recipes.

Instructions

1. Complement chocolate desserts with Banyuls style red dessert wine, a specialty of France. Not many dessert wines complement chocolate. however Banyuls, black muscat or porter ale dessert wines can add zest when you're cooking with chocolate.

2. Simmer semi-sweet fruits, such as pears or honeydew, with amber-colored late harvest dessert wines, including icewine (also known as eiswein). These delectable wines have a concentrated sugar content, as the grapes have been allowed to fully ripen or even freeze on the vine before harvest. Due to the sweetness, late harvest dessert wines should not be served with choclate or overly sweet fruits.

3. Cook desserts that call for sweet fruits with white muscat dessert wine, not to be confused with the black muscat or muscadet, a dry white wine. White muscat dessert wine is sweet and delicious, but will not overpower sweet fruit desserts, such as strawberries or raspberries. This wine makes a delicious sauce when sauteed with berries and served over ice cream.

4. Use Sauternes dessert wines when your recipe calls for blue cheese or pâté de foie gras. This sweet white dessert wine is perfect for light desserts, such as blue cheese served with green apples. However, it does not complement chocolate well. Sauternes is an expensive dessert wine and should not be confused with Sauterne, a cheap imitation.

5. Add Tokaj white dessert wine to practically any recipe except for chocolate desserts. Tokaj is the least sweet of the dessert wines, and you can use it to simmer meats served in red sauces or add it to your dessert recipes. Another variety, Tokaj Aszú, is a much sweeter Tokaj and should be used for cooking in the same manner as white muscat.