Name: 10-Minute Homemade Berry (Licious) Sauce
Prep time: 1 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 11 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 5 1/2 ounces (1 scant cup of frozen or fresh mixed berries) (150g); 2 tablespoons sugar, or more to taste (26g); 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more to taste (8g)

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Make this sweet homemade berry sauce to top your favorite cheesecake, pancakes, meringues, or even yogurt. Don’t waste your money on storebought syrups or sauces that are filled with unnecessary stuff. All you need is frozen or fresh berries, lemon juice, and sugar. The best part — this sauce is ready to eat from start to finish in just 10 Minutes! And you get to control the sweetness. Double the recipe for larger crowds or to refrigerate or freeze for easy weekday breakfasts (breakfast for dinner) or desserts.

bag of frozen Frutti di Bosco mixed berries from Asiago Food brands

four fresh lemons with leaves in tact in a straw fruit basket

a view into a pot with frozen mixed berries (raspberries, blueberries, currants, and blackberries) and lemon juice and sugar in the middle

kenny scharf mural on Houston Street in NYC with melting, amazing bright monsters of all colors intertwining with one another in a continuous flow of and endless scenes — Kenny Scharf mural – Houston & Bowery (NYC)

10-Minute Homemade Berry Sauce Ingredients

All you need to make homemade berry sauce is frozen or fresh fruit, freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice, and sugar. When you see how easy it is, you’ll never go back to the store-bought stuff. A few things to keep in mind is to first understand how naturally sweet or tart the fruit you’re using is. You may need to add just a bit more (or less sugar) to get the right balance. A typical “Fruitti di Bosco” fruit mix (various wild Italian berries) like I’ve used in this recipe, includes blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and red currants which are notoriously tart requiring this recipe to use a bit more sugar. Alternatively, if your berry mix consists of only sweet berries, you may need ta add less sugar and a little more lemon juice. Don’t be afraid to play around with the flavors and adjust them to your preferences. Scale up the recipe and refrigerate or freeze the sauce.

5 1/2 ounces (1 scant cup of frozen or fresh mixed berries) (150g)
2 tablespoons sugar, or more or less to taste (26g)
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more to taste (8g)

Kenny Scharf Mural -Spraypainted without any sketching first [Houston & Bowery Street, NYC, NY]

What’s the Difference Between a Purée, a Coulis, and a Sauce?

People often ask what’s the difference between a sauce, a purée, and a coulis. Although they can be very similar, it’s all in the details and mostly boils down to refinement as I’ve outlined below.

Purée. To process food by mashing, straining, or chopping it very finely in order to make it a smooth paste or consistency. Can also be a product produced using this technique like Boiron fruit purée as one example.
Coulis. The difference between a purée and coulis is that the fruit (or vegetable) purée is strained by using a rubber spatula to push the purée through a fine-mesh strainer (aka. sieve or chinoise) to remove the seeds and skin resulting in a perfectly smooth texture.
Sauce. A liquid accompaniment to food and can contain visible pieces of fruit (or vegetables) or not.

homemade berry fruit sauce in a spoon above the glass jar filled with bright red and blue sauce — Frutti di Bosco Jam Sauce (mixed wild berries with skins and seeds)

deep red berry sauce in a small weck jar in the sunlight — Fruitti di Bosco Coulis (seeds and skins removed)

How to Make Homemade Berry Fruit Sauce From Scratch — Measure, Cook, Pour, and Store.

Making homemade berry sauce or fruit sauce is really easy as long as you follow a couple of foolproof methods which I show you in this recipe.

Measure the fruit + sugar + lemon juice. In a small heavy-bottomed pot, add the fruit, sugar, and lemon juice.
Cook the sauce. Heat the mixture to a boil and cook stirring frequently for 10 minutes, or until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Serve the sauce hot, at room temperature, or even cold, and Enjoy!

frozen mixed berries that have just started to cook and are no longer frosted, but instead are glossy and brighter than ever and full of juices

back of a spoon covered completely with fruit sauce

a spoon with homemade fruit sauce and a finger has swiped horizontally across the back of the spoon leaving a clean spot that the sauce is not dripping into

What Should the Consistency of Homemade Berry Sauce Look Like?

We love a good homemade fruit sauce or coulis around here and getting a perfect consistency depends on your preferences and how thick or thin you’d like the finished sauce to be. We like a traditional pourable/squeezable sauce that’s not too thin (runny), nor too thick. It needs to be easily dispensed but not glide straight off of whatever you just drizzled it over. It also shouldn’t have the consistency of jam which is more spreadable. (*see example images below of the fruitti di bosco sauce purée and how to strain it and turn it into a seedless, skinless professional berry coulis).

The sauce should coat the back of a spoon and when you swipe a finger through it, the swiped area should remain clean without any sauce dripping down into the “clean” just-swiped area.

Photos below show the process of turning a fruit sauce into a silky smooth fruit coulis.

the bottom of the sieve with some fruit sauce that needs to be scraped off the bottom into the strained sauce

the remaining seeds in the sieve after the sauce has been strained

Ways to Customize Homemade Berry Jam Sauce

- make a berry coulis (pass the hot finished sauce through a fine-mesh sieve or strainer to remove all seeds and skins like in the photos above)
- citrus zest (incorporate the zest of a lemon, lime, or orange for a little extra citrus flavor without adding more acidity)
- citrus juice (use freshly squeezed lime, satsuma, mapo, or even orange juice instead of lemon juice to create a slightly different flavored sauce)
- substitute regular sugar for flavored sugars (use lemon sugar, vanilla sugar, strawberry sugar, or even blood orange sugar to replace regular sugar)
- mix up the berries and frozen fruit you use (make a single berry sauce, or add in diced mangoes, pineapples, or even pears or apples to give a slightly different flavor and texture to your sauce.
- spices (sprinkle a little cinnamon, cardamom, or even cayenne pepper into your berry sauce to give it an extra kick.

a whole and beautiful key lime pie baked in a spring from cake pan

white chocolate caramel cheesecake with one slice removed in the sunlight

Biting at the Bit's Colomba French Toast

stack of beautifully fluffy golden pancakes with a fat pat of butter melting in the middle of a homemade berry sauce dripping on 3 sides and maple syrup oozing off the pile of pancakes creating a pool around the pancakes

a bite of cheesecake in a small spoon and drizzled with strawberry sauce and a biscoff crust with the rest of the cheesecake in an individual terra cotta ramekin typically used for creme cramel

closeup of fully ganache-frosted deep chocolatey devil's food cake cupcakes with birthday sprinkles full of pink, orange, white, blue, yellow and green colors

golden brown crêpe cooking in a crepe pan

Pumpkin Cheesecake with a layer of Chestnut Graham Cracker crust in the middle and the bottom on a Tiffany Blue Cake stand with black birds on a wire design around the edges on a wooden table with the white marble fireplace in the background lined with cookbooks across the entire mantle and a vintage barstool in the background

Ways to Enjoy Homemade Berry Fruit Sauce

Depending on how you’re going to use this sauce, you can make it as sweet or as tart as you want. Here are a few tasty recipes for inspiration and pairing ideas.

Let’s get started!