On a  journey toward permanent weight loss?  Want to kick up your immune system? Looking for new ideas for healthy eating?  If so, put  fresh pineapple  on your weekly shopping list.

This decadent Hot Fudge recipe, from Gourmet Magazine, is everything you’d expect from this traditional favorite dessert topping. Chewy and gooey, smooth and shiny, it’ll dress up everything from your hot fudge sundae to your cakes and brownies. Perfect served hot over ice-cream or even just a chilled spoonful, straight from the jar, it’s sure to become a household favorite.

We should all have a few show-stopping sauces to take a recipe from tasty to transcendent. Trust me, this is one is one of those sauces you’ll treasure and share.

On the California Coast, blackberry season begins when summer is already in full swing. The berries are slow to ripen as even on warm days the evenings are cool, so there aren’t evening hours to help turn the berries from red to black. When they’re finally ripe, it’s easy to forget the long wait for the reward of their sweet burst of flavors. And, the additional reward is when other summer fruits wind down, there are still blackberries into early autumn.

Adding a little creme fraiche when you are whipping cream will help to stabilize it. No deflating, leaking or other problems, and no need to add cornstarch or gelatin to keep the whipped cream looking good on top of the pie or cake. Creme Fraiche is a lightly cultured cream so it has a pleasant tartness to it — not too pronounced but just enough to give the whipped cream a slight edge.

This is a very velvety sauce, perfect over ice cream or frozen yogurt, but also lovely as a sauce over pound cake or other freshly baked cakes. Mix it into milkshakes or even cold or warm milk for a sexy caramel, vanilla milk. Personally, I think caramel is pretty wonderful warmed slightly and eaten by the spoonful. My grandsons agree, but our current favorite is freshly baked brownies topped with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. Yummmm!

What I most like about this recipe is that it contains no corn syrup. Just make sure to cook the sugar/water mixture until it is at least a mid- amber color. The sauce in the photo is a little deeper amber in color, which gives it a more distinctive flavor. For a butterscotch or praline flavor, substitute light or dark brown sugar for the white.

Courtesy of Alice Medrich, Sinfully Easy, Delicious Desserts

Courtesy of Ed Engoron and Mary Peabody, from Chocolatique (Perseus; 2011)

Ed says that white chocolate ganache is perfect for putting in his recipe for white chocolate brownies and other white chocolate confections. This ganache does not get firm; it’s more like an unbelievably delicious shooter.

Courtesy of Susie Norris, author of Chocolate Bliss

Susie says about ganache:  Ganache is one of the great creations of the chocolate world.  it is a very versatile emulsion of melted chocolate and cream.  It can be poured as a glaze, whipped to make icing, piped to decorate cakes, shaped into truffles, thickened with butter, flavored with alcohol and herbal infusions, or blended with fruit.  While you can certainly make ganache by hand with warm chocolate, warm cream, and a whisk, the food-processor method, below, is favored by many pastry chefs and chocolatiers.  The rapid action of the machine’s blades creates a smooth texture and a very stable emulsion.  Immersion blenders work well too.  If you envision a cake with thick icing layers and decorations, double this recipe.  (The perfect chocolate cake for ganache?  Gift of the Gods Cake, also by Susie Norris.)

Courtesy of Didi Davis: www.dididavisfoods.com

Classic butterscotch candy is made with butter, brown sugar, and flavored with lemon juice. Butterscotch sauce is an American dessert topping with the flavors of butterscotch candy.