Baked Strawberries

Ingredients:

750g strawberries (about 3 ¼ cups)
¼ to ½ cup vanilla sugar, other flavoured sugar, or plain white sugar (add less or more as your taste dictates)

Preparation:

1. Heat the oven to 180 C.
2. Place strawberries in a single layer in a very shallow baking dish (not a metal dish). You can hull them (remove the green top) or leave the green top on.
3. Sprinkle with the sugar. There will appear to be a lot of sugar for the amount of strawberries. Don’t worry - this is pure indulgence!
4. For variety, add one or two of the optional ingredients.
5. Bake for 30 minutes. The strawberries will lose a lot of their juice, creating a strawberry syrup as the juice combines with the sugar.
6. Serve hot, warm or cold with ice cream, cream or mascarpone.

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Optional: Choose zero or more of the following:
1 - 2 TBS strawberry or similar liqueur
A slice or two of fresh ginger, chopped finely
1 piece crystallized ginger, chopped finely
½ vanilla bean (if not using flavoured sugar), halved with the seeds scraped into the baking dish
A grind or two of fresh black pepper
Dried cranberries
Cinnamon stick
Sprig of rosemary
Lavender flowers
Honey instead of sugar
Let your imagination run wild (once you are used to cooking this dish), but don’t underestimate the intensity of strawberry flavours. So make sure any ingredient that you use is compatible with strawberries.

The recipe sounds delightful!