Two Fruitz: peaches, passionfruit, vinegar, sugar, habanero chillies, ginger, salt

Strawbz: strawberries, sugar, birdseye chillies, raspberry wine vinegar, ginger

It was time to step outside the box a little for this review of some sauces from Antjan Sauces. One type of hot sauce that we have seldom used have been the dessert sauces. Typically, these are fruit or chocolate sauces that are spices up with a little bit of chile peppers or other spices to give them a little heat. A couple of items that make these sauces noteworthy are:

- They’re from Australia. While we aren’t going to say they are good simply because they’re from “down under,” how cool is it to say to people who ask what you’re eating that you are using hot sauce from Australia?

- The ingredients are all-natural. While these are likely to take up some space in your fridge, they avoid the seemingly vast amount of chemicals that are littered throughout much of the food we eat. Note: eat these sauces quickly since they would be ones more likely to go bad due to their high sugar content.

- Find suitable food to use them upon! These are not the sauces that are typically used on foods outside the dessert realm, but one recommendation we had which sounded good was to use them as a glaze for chicken or pork, either baked or grilled.

As for me, I stuck with an old reliable…ice cream. Actually, I am trying to keep my calories down so I went with some low-fat frozen yogurt. I wanted to try these with some foods that were not dessert, but our limited home menu did not present such an opportunity.

So here’s the skinny…

Strawbz: An absolutely fabulous strawberry sauce that is high on great strawberry flavor and with a tingle of heat from birdseye chiles. It is the thinner of the two sauces, and comes with a restrictor-cap that I opted not to use. The birdseye chiles taste quite like Thai chiles to me with their pinpoint heat, but still only about 2/10 for heat. Definitely my favorite of the two sauces, and the added spicy tingle was great with the frozen yogurt. I could totally see this sauce poured over cheesecake or any other baked confection.

Two fruits: This sauce is a little thicker than the Strawbz, and with a more mellow taste. The aroma is mostly vinegar and fruit and has some black specks with I am guessing might be seeds of passionfruit. Despite being a “habanero” sauce, this one is pretty sweet and friendly. You can really taste a little of the habanero flavor, but with like very little heat. While I ate it on my frozen yogurt (and it was tasty and tingly), this is the one sauce I could see finding its way to be part of a glaze for baked chicken or ham.

Overall recommendation: When I tell people that I eat hot sauce on everything, even my dessert, this is one of the types of sauces I have in mind for my desserts. Still dessert-like enough to add to the sweetness of your dessert, it adds just enough tingle to get your attention. I could even see these sauces being a little hotter and still being as good. While these sauces are probably not ones that would get a high volume of use in my kitchen, it does make me want to try some of the other stuff from Antjan Sauces to see how they do with the hotter stuff. Enjoy!