Never make a dessert sauce simply to dress up a plate. Choose one that will deepen and intensify the experience of the dessert. One way to do this is to create a provocative but pleasing contrast between dessert and sauce. For example, try pairing mousse, custard, ice cream, or any other sweet, creamy dessert with a tart fruit sauce or a subtly bitter chocolate or dark caramel sauce. With a light fruit dessert or gelatin, consider a rich and creamy but light-tasting sauce, such as whipped cream or sabayon. Cakes, bread puddings, baked puddings, and other desserts that are firm and dry take well to sauces that will soak in, such as custard sauces and hot butter-and-egg sauces. You need not, however, always strive for contrast. A rich chocolate bread pudding or chocolate cake is divine with an equally rich caramel, white chocolate, or southern whiskey sauce. And plum pudding, perhaps the richest dessert of all, is always accompanied with the butteriest of sauces, such as hard sauce, hot wine sauce, or hot foamy sauce.
Dessert sauces are indulgences, not health foods. Rather than skimping on butter, cream, and eggs, forgo rich sauces when you are watching calories.
