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Use this easy raspberry compote recipe in many ways! Drizzle the sauce on cake or ice cream, or use for topping for yogurt, oatmeal, pancakes or waffles.

Raspberry compote
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Looking for an easy raspberry sauce? This raspberry compote has your name on it! This sweet tart sauce is ultra versatile. It’s perfect for drizzling on chocolate cake or cheesecake. Or, use it for swirling into yogurt or oatmeal for breakfast, or as a topping for pancakes or waffles. Anything goes here! Alex and I originally made this to go with our flourless chocolate cake. It was the perfect tart antidote to the fudgy sweet cake. There are so many ways to use this sauce, you’ll be eating it for days.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Why to make this raspberry compote recipe

The basic method for a fruit compote is simple: cook down fruit with a sugary syrup. Here are a few things about this raspberry compote that we think makes it exceptional:

  • It’s sweetened with just enough maple syrup. We love using natural sweeteners, and you don’t need loads of sugar to make a compote! Pure maple syrup adds a great nuance of flavor, and sweetens gently without overpowering the fruit.
  • It has a beautiful sweet tart flavor. This one’s pure berry! The recipe has a range of maple syrup so you can make a sweeter version or a more tart version.
  • Add a splash of Cointreau if you like. Here’s our secret weapon: Cointreau! You can use any orange liqueur, or leave it out if you don’t have it. But it adds a lovely citrus essence! Alex and I have a big bottle from making margaritas and Cosmos, so we’re always brainstorming new ways to use Cointreau.
Raspberry compote

What’s a compote? Is it different from a sauce?

First off: what’s a fruit compote? Compote is fresh or dried fruit that’s cooked down in a sugary syrup. Usually it’s left fairly chunky, so you have the texture of chunks of fruit. It’s often served spooned over desserts, like cakes. It’s perfect over ice cream.

This compote recipe is an easy raspberry sauce, too! The only difference is that sometimes sauce recipes are strained to remove the seeds. Because a compote is usually chunky, we kept all the fruit inside this compote. We loved the nice texture contrast of the slightly chunky berries. The seeds didn’t bother us!

Can I strain it to make a smoother sauce?

Not into raspberry seeds? You could strain the compote after cooking if you’d like a smoother sauce. If you do so, keep in mind it will make less than the listed yield since you’re straining out a lot of volume. The ¾ cup listed volume would likely reduce to about ½ cup or less. The great thing about compotes is that you can avoid straining…but if you prefer smoother sauces, it would be delicious as well!

Raspberry compote

Frozen raspberries vs fresh: which should I use?

The nice thing about raspberry compote is that you can use frozen berries, and the flavor is just as good as with fresh! Sauces and jams are a great place to use frozen berries, which still retain all the nutrients of fresh berries. Because we originally made this in the middle of winter, we used frozen berries. If you prefer using fresh, they’re incredibly tasty as well!

Most of our jam recipes also use frozen berries, like this tasty Easy Strawberry Jam! This Quick Blueberry Sauce can also be made using frozen berries.

Ways to serve raspberry compote

There are lots of delicious ways to serve this raspberry compote sauce! Here are some of our best serving suggestions:

Compote on pancakes
Compote is a perfect sauce for pancakes.

This raspberry compote recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free, and gluten-free.

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Easy Raspberry Compote

Raspberry sauce
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5 from 1 review

Use this easy raspberry compote recipe in so many ways! Drizzle the sweet tart sauce on cake or ice cream, or swirl into yogurt or oatmeal.

  • Author: Sonja Overhiser
  • Prep Time: 0 minutes
  • Cook Time: 15 minutes
  • Total Time: 15 minutes
  • Yield: ¾ cup 1x
  • Category: Sauce
  • Method: Stovetop
  • Cuisine: American

Ingredients

Scale
  • 2 cups raspberries, fresh or frozen
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons pure maple syrup*
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 tablespoon Cointreau or other orange liqueur (optional)
  • ¼ cup water

Instructions

  1. Place the raspberries, maple syrup, vanilla, Cointreau, and water in a saucepan. Heat over medium heat. When it starts to bubble rapidly, stir constantly for 1 to 2 minutes until thickened and the fruit breaks down.
  2. Reduce the heat until raspberries bubble at a low simmer. Cook 10 to 12 minutes until thickened and broken down. Serve warm or refrigerate until serving (store refrigerated up to 1 week).

Notes

*Use 3 tablespoons for a sweet tart sauce, and 4 tablespoons for a sweeter sauce. When we paired this sauce with our flourless chocolate cake, 3 tablespoons was perfect.

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About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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6 Comments

  1. Jamie says:

    Can you freeze this for a few weeks before using?

  2. Kenny says:

    My mum used to make something like this that we had warm over ice cream – so tasty! Definitely brings out the flavor in the berries.

  3. Dayne Conn says:

    So perfect recipe. I did it so well. My wife love it. So good and healthy, she said. Thank you much!






  4. Diya says:

    My mum used to make something like this that we had warm over ice cream – so tasty! Definitely brings out the flavor in the berries.

  5. ROBYN says:

    Wow, this is so gorgeous!! I definitely want to try making this. I’m the biggest slacker when it comes to making compotes, it’s so easy so I don’t know why I don’t do it more!

  6. Erika says:

    Healthy but they don’t taste like it. Slightly sweet nutty and very satisfying. Pros: Easy to make