Wordless Wednesday: Everyone gets what they like best

Individual berry tart, with Dorie's pastry cream and NM's sweet tart dough, glaze made from strawberry-thyme jam; individual jelly jar parfaits with pastry cream, whipped cream, Dorie's cocoa crumbs, and varied berries depending on preference (inspired by Di)

Waffle cones, take 2

Tonight I tried the waffle cone recipe from David Leibovitz's Perfect Scoop. Again I was surprised by how quick and easy the process was. DL's cones were much thicker than Jeni's and much less fragile. They also needed to cook longer, almost twice as long (1:30 as opposed to :45; Jeni's burned at a minute). I'm glad to know I can achieve a thicker cone, even with the pizzelle iron. Hubby said he thought he preferred the taste of these; I actually preferred the taste of Jeni's, but liked the sturdiness of these.

We enjoyed them with Jeni's darkest chocolate ice cream, with mini chips and cookie dough mixed in (inspiration thanks to Di). Summer dessert perfection.

Mint chocolate chip ice cream

Our final category for ice cream week is original recipe. I have to admit that I was not nearly as creative as Phyl (Guiness stout ice cream), or Margaret (tea and biscuit ice cream), or Rebecca (baklava ice cream), but this is one of our favorite ice cream recipes for my very favorite ice cream flavor: mint chocolate chip.

I start with Jeni's vanilla bean ice cream (can you sense a theme here?):
500 g 2% milk
13 g cornstarch
42 g softened cream cheese
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
312 g heavy cream
130 g sugar
22 g corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp peppermint extract
1/2 c mini chocolate chips

I follow Jeni's basic technique (see here), but leave out the vanilla bean and stir the extracts into the base at the end. After an overnight rest in the fridge, I churn it in my ice cream maker, adding the chocolate chips during the final two minutes of churning.

Next to rich lemon curd frozen yogurt (my favorite) and Jeni's vanilla bean with chocolate chip cookie dough (hubby's favorite), this is probably the most popular flavor at our house. Thanks to Phyl for an incredibly delicious and fun ice cream week! :-)

Summer bounty

I meant to do my final post for ice cream week today, but instead spent my day dealing with the over-abundance of produce from our CSA.



The past three week's worth of beets became these chocolate beet muffins (thanks to Sara for tweeting about them yesterday, as I'd had no inspiration for dealing with the shelf full of red globes). They were a huge hit with the whole family, and I'm sure the extra cup of beet puree that I stashed in the freezer will be put to similar use soon.

The drawer full of cukes became seven jars of bread and butter pickles, a hot packed version of these fridge pickles. I love the ease of refrigerator pickles, but just don't have the fridge space.

And finally, I revisited small batch canning when I received a bag full of tomatoes, a ton of green and hot peppers, and onions in this week's box: three jars of hubby's favorite salsa.

For the first time, canning seemed more natural, less overwhelming. I didn't need to review the instructions every two seconds, and I made all of the salsa and almost all of the pickles without needing another pair of hands. Makes me feel more confident about the next over-flowing box of goodies coming my way!

Ice cream week cones

Today's theme for Phyl's ice cream week is sorbet or other non-dairy frozen treats. I didn't make sorbet. But I didn't want to be left out. So I'm posting a non-dairy treat FOR frozen treats. :-)
A year ago, my friend Di posted about getting her own waffle cone maker and I became obsessed. Which is funny, because I have never liked cones; I always order my ice cream in a cup. But suddenly, waffle cones sounded soooo good and I began ordering them whenever we went out.
Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and use some of my remaining birthday money to buy a waffle cone maker. Well, after a lot of soul-searching ;-) and researching, I actually bought a pizzelle maker to use for waffle cones. The waffle cone makers come in 7-inch, which seemed huge for the kids, or 3-inch, which sounded too tiny to be worth it. Pizzelles are 5-inches, which seemed just about perfect. Plus my mother-in-law makes pizzelles each Christmas and I love her recipe (hint hint), so this way, I can make my own and I'm not spending money on a single-use appliance. Ta da!
I tried Jeni's recipe (Di posted it here). It was so much fun. I made cones and little bowls, and not only did we love them with ice cream, but they were amazing by themselves as cookies. I ate an embarrassing number by myself.
Check out Phyl, Rebecca, Margaret, and Di's actual sorbet/non-dairy frozen treat posts!

Triple citrus rich frozen yogurt

Today's ice cream week theme is frozen yogurt, and it's no surprise (to me anyway) that I did a new riff on an old familiar recipe.
The one recipe that I look up on my own blog over and over again is this one for rich lemon curd frozen yogurt. It uses the instant lemon curd from KAF in the lemon froyo recipe from Jeni's book, and there is just something about the bright lemon flavor and the incredible creamy texture that just captures me.... I am a chocoholic and normally won't even consider a non-chocolate dessert, but this is the one flavor of ice cream that I can't stay away from, continually sneaking into the freezer to have just one more small scoopful.
Before we went out West, I made a version in which I subbed in orange for the lemon. It was delicious and we ate it before I got any pictures, but it was definitely missing a little something.
Today, I was thinking about both the lemon and the orange froyo, and when I opened my fruit drawer, I ended up pulling out the lime, too. How about a three-citrus frozen yogurt?
Thinking about my discussions with Di yesterday about the unsatisfying non-fruitiness of many fruit ice creams, I decided to up the citrus flavor even more. I made 1 1/2 times my usual amount of curd, and used juice and zest from the three fruits. With the exception of a few spoonfuls "just to see how it tastes," I used it all in the yogurt. My ingredients were:
40 g egg
90 g sugar
45 g melted unsalted butter
60 g fresh orange juice (from one orange)
30 g fresh lemon juice (from one small lemon)
zest from a lime, a lemon, and an orange (a healthy pinch of each)

Then I followed my normal process for making the curd and the froyo, again using a pinch of all three citrus zests in the ice cream base.
I think I love this version as much as the original lemon. Our good friends are visiting from out East. Their comments were, "That's frozen yogurt?!?" and, "It tastes like really good lemon cheesecake." My hubby's addition: "And it will prevent scurvy!" ;-)

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!