Happy ice cream week! Strawberry buttermilk ice cream

When my friend Phyl invited me to participate in ice cream week, of course I happily agreed. Ice cream is my favorite food group, after all! ;-)
Many of my Twitter buds started churning weeks ago, but with three weeks out West and a week at the cabin, I haven't spent much time in my own kitchen. Luckily, ice cream week was just the push I needed. Well, that and the pizzelle iron I just bought myself so I could make my very own waffle cones.
When I took requests for ice cream flavors to initiate our cones, the little girl picked something with chocolate (no surprise...she's my kid!) and the little guy picked strawberry ice cream. My little guy is a huge fruit fan (he calls himself a "fruitavore"), but he usually gets overruled by the rest of us. This time, I decided to make two flavors to make everyone happy.
To make it easier on myself, I made a double batch of base, adapted from Jeni's book:
1000 g 2% milk
624 g cream
260 g sugar
44 g light corn syrup
26 g corn starch
66 g milk
84 g softened cream cheese
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
(The method is here.) This made 8 cups of base. I took out 5 cups to use for the chocolatey treat (post Friday) and 3 cups to use for the strawberry ice cream. To the 3 cups of base, I added 1/4 cup of buttermilk and 3/4 cup of strawberry puree that was in my freezer, leftover from some other recipe.
The strawberry flavor really shone through, which is likely because I used much more puree than in previous recipes I've tried. This ice cream was a hit with both of my guys. Yum!

Wordless Wednesday: Adventures in small batch canning

Strawberry-honey-thyme jam with Alton Brown's English muffins

French strawberry cake (TWD: BwJ)

Genoise and I haven't always gotten along (read this story if you're interested in a cocoa genoise complete comedy of errors), so I was a little nervous about this week's TWD: BwJ recipe: French strawberry cake.

But then we went strawberry picking on the spur of the moment (I love summer!), and it seemed that I'd have to make it for sure. I macerated the strawberries ahead of time, and assuming I'd make a half-recipe because I always do, I used half the amounts.

The next day, I read the instructions for the cake: oops! The recipe makes an 8" round....which I don't own. I have a 9" or a 6". The 6" was too big for a half-batch, so, being too lazy to try to scale the recipe correctly, I made a full recipe, filled the 6", a ramekin, and had a little batter left over.

I knew many people had struggled with the cake, so I was uber-careful. I let the eggs sit in warm water for a long time, carefully measured out all ingredients ahead of time (including sifting the flour prior to measuring because I noticed that it said "1 cup sifted flour" and not "1 cup flour, sifted"), and read each step about 17 times. When my eggs and sugar hadn't doubled in volume after 5 minutes of whipping, I remembered something I'd read on the P&Q about the egg temperature...sure enough, when I stuck my finger in the bowl, the eggs were cool. I set the mixing bowl in a bowl of hot water, and after about five minutes, the eggs felt warm; they whipped up beautifully after that.

When it came time to fold in the flour, I decided not to use my usual method, which usually yields sketchy results: I usually dump in the flour and use a rubber spatula to fold. Instead, I carefully sifted bits of flour over the top and then used a big balloon whisk. This seemed to work. The batter didn't deflate nearly as much as it usually does. The ramekin baked in 24 minutes, and the 6" cake baked in 27 minutes.

While they baked, I made the whipped cream (a full batch because it sounded too good not to): cream, sugar, sour cream, and vanilla...yes, please!

The cake was tall enough to cut in three layers, but I was just making it for our family dessert and it was late and I was tired, so I went the lazy route: two layers and no fancy decorating. It didn't matter; we all loved this cake. I usually make the kids eat dinner before dessert (on the rare occasions when we have dessert), but once in a while, when I make something extra special, I serve it with the meal. The little guy gobbled his cake up before touching anything else, and then said, "There seems to be a problem; my cake is all gone. I think I need another serving."

For the recipe, check out our hosts' blogs: Sophia of Sophia’s Sweets and Allison of Sleep Love Think Dine, and to see what everyone else thought, check the links.

Wordless Wednesday: Strawberry picking

little girl: plain strawberry smoothie

little guy: strawberry/blueberry smoothie

grown-ups: green smoothie (spinach, strawberries, banana, yogurt)

strawberry-buttermilk baked donuts with strawberry glaze