You Should Always Buy This Dessert Topping, According To Ina Garten

Ina Garten is one of the most popular celebrity chefs to grace Food Network's cooking show line-up. The one time Washington, D.C. politico-turned-cook has been making headlines since she burst onto the culinary scene and purchased the specialty food market in the Hamptons named the Barefoot Contessa. Since her meteoric rise, Garten has gone on to have her own show, popularize the chicken dinner and its many variations, and has dazzled us by demonstrating how to make our own vanilla extract. Through it all, the cookbook author has even developed a following that ranges from Hollywood A-listers like Jennifer Gartner and Taylor Swift to other Food Network chefs like Ree Drummond to common home cooks like all of us.

And while Garten often makes her own ingredients like fresh ricotta and bread crumbs, and opts to grate her own Parmesan rather than purchase a container that has been conveniently grated, she also advocates for other ingredients being purchased, noting "store-bought is just fine." Yep, even when you are the incredible and fabulous Garten, there are definitely ingredients that are worth buying over making, including an essential dessert topping. Garten shared with Food Network that this deliciously indulgent ingredient is key to at least two of the desserts she has shared with her fan base.      

But before Garten shared with Food Network the sweet ingredient she likes to buy, she expounded upon her catchphrase "store-bought is just fine," which has become closely associated with the iconic chef. Garten explained her philosophy, saying,"When I say 'store-bought is just fine,' I'm not talking about going to the grocery store, buying really bad birthday cake, and claiming that you made it yourself. What I am saying is you can use ingredients from the store, like a pound cake or vanilla ice cream, that are just as good as homemade."

One of those ingredients Garten loves to purchase from the store is chocolate sauce, which makes sense to us. Store bought chocolate sauce is definitely a time saver we can endorse because who wants to mess with melting chocolate and whisking it together with heavy cream when you can't assemble and inhale your chocolate sundae fast enough? Garten further shared, "Store-bought chocolate sauce is a key ingredient in my Chocolate Ganache Cake and New York Egg Cream" — both of which are on our list of Garten's recipes to try our hand at ASAP. So, if Garten says store bought chocolate sauce is just fine, it really is just fine.