Blueberry Sauce (Blueberry Topping)

This easy homemade Blueberry Sauce recipe is made using fresh or frozen blueberries and has a hint of lemon. Use it as a topping on your favorite dessert for a delicious burst of berry flavor!

Blueberry Topping for Cheesecake and Ice Cream

In the course of working on this blueberry topping recipe and post, I came up with a…saying? Poem? Witty bon mot? You be the judge:

It’s hard to top fresh blueberries
but fresh blueberry sauce is not a hard topping to make.

Okay, maybe it’s not a poem, so much as awkward wordplay. BUT it is also true! Fresh blueberries, when you get a perfectly ripe and sweet batch, are one of the purest joys of summer. I can eat pints and pints of them when they are at their seasonal best. It is, in fact, hard to top fresh blueberries! I mean you just can’t go wrong with a warm slice of Blueberry Crumble Pie or a delightful bite of a Blueberry Coconut Tart. And don’t forget to take a look at this incredible Blueberry Layer Cake, you won’t regret it!

But equally true is the fact that this gorgeous, flavorful, syrupy, deep purple blueberry topping is not hard to make. You throw a few things together in a pot, let it heat up on the stove, give it the occasional stir, and in less time than it takes to submit a hypothetical blueberry sauce poem to a hypothetical poetry anthology (that is, under 10 minutes) it is ready!

Just like my strawberry sauce, it can be served over breakfast foods like waffles or pancakes, mixed into your favorite ice cream, or used as a frosting, filling, or topping for cake or cheesecake. Versatile and delicious? Yeah, I’m into that! Here’s everything you need to know make this homemade blueberry sauce!

Table of Contents

• Blueberry Topping for Cheesecake and Ice Cream
• 🧾 What You’ll Need
• 📋 Instructions
• 💭 Variations
• 💡 FAQs  
• 🫐What to serve with homemade Blueberry Sauce
• Blueberry Sauce Recipe

🧾 What You’ll Need

Ingredients

This recipe is made up of just a handful of simple ingredients, most of which you probably have in your kitchen already: (Links are affiliate links and I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.)

• Blueberries: you can use frozen or fresh blueberries for this recipe. While I think super sweet and ripe fresh berries will always give you the best flavor, sometimes out-of-season fresh berries can be too hard, sour, or expensive. If you can’t find great fresh berries, then frozen berries are a better alternative. You might notice that the pictures in this post show several different types/sizes of blueberries–I’ve made this with a range of blueberries, from standard supermarket berries to tiny frozen Maine berries, and they all work wonderfully well.
• Vanilla Extract: I use Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract to give the sauce sweetness and flavor depth.
• Lemon: I use both lemon juice and zest in this recipe. The lemon juice is necessary to keep the sauce from being too sweet. (And it also tastes delicious with the blueberry.) If you want less lemon flavor, you can omit the zest or try orange juice/zest instead. I do recommend leaving in some type of acidic citrus juice, to keep the sauce from being too one-note and cloying.
• Cinnamon: Cinnamon adds a subtle but lovely background flavor. I definitely recommend trying it! If you really don’t want to use cinnamon, it can be omitted and the sauce will still be delicious.
• Corn starch: Corn starch, also called corn flour, is used to thicken the sauce as it cooks. It can be omitted, but your sauce might have a thinner consistency and not be as thick/syrupy as you’d like. Corn starch can be a little temperamental, so be sure to follow the recipe instructions as to when/how to add it to avoid any lumps in your sauce.

Equipment

You don’t need much to achieve this delicious blueberry sauce. Just a saucepan and a couple simple tools! (Links are affiliate links and I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.)

• Mason Jars: Mason jars are the perfect way to store the blueberry sauce.
• Microplane: A microplane makes it super easy to zest the lemon.
• Juicer: I like to use a juicer to squeeze fresh lemon juice. It’s so much easier than trying to juice by hand.

📋 Instructions

Here’s a quick photo tutorial showing how fast and easy it is to make this blueberry topping. Want a printable version? Click print in the recipe card down below!

• Zest and juice your lemon, and set aside for a moment. Assemble the rest of your ingredients.

• In a saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Whisk in water and stir until the sugar dissolves, and there are no lumps of corn starch.

• Add in the lemon zest and juice, 2 cups of blueberries, vanilla, and cinnamon. Stir everything together.

• Place the pan on the stove over medium heat and bring it to a low boil. Cook until thickened, stirring occasionally, for about 2-3 minutes.
• Remove the pan from the heat and stir in another cup of blueberries.
• Cool until warm but not hot, then serve or store in the fridge.

💭 Variations

I love this blueberry sauce recipe just the way it is, but feel free to play around with it to suit your tastes or to use up ingredients you already have!

• Use another berry. The magic of this recipe is that you can sub in any berry you have on hand. Try blackberries, raspberries, cherries, or even a mixture for a mixed berry sauce.
• Play with texture. Feel free to play around with the texture of your sauce. Prefer a thicker sauce? Simmer it longer. Like it more runny? Simmer it less or add less cornstarch. You can even blend it up if you prefer a completely smooth sauce.
• Swap the citrus. Orange zest and juice taste delicious as well!

💡 FAQs  

🫐What to serve with homemade Blueberry Sauce

If you’re not shoveling this incredible sauce into your mouth with a spoon, there are a number of different ways you can serve it!

• Over cheesecake. This sauce is absolutely incredible over a slice of my New York Style Cheesecake. The sweet and tangy fruit flavor goes so well with the rich cheesecake filling and the buttery graham cracker crust.
• With breakfast. Spoon it over waffles, pancakes, French Toast Cake, or even stir it into oatmeal.
• On cake. Serve it over a slice of your favorite cake or pound cake for some extra fruity sweetness. I love it on Chocolate Pound Cake or Orange Bundt Cake.
• In ice cream. Mix it into your favorite ice cream for a fruity twist and some added texture.