Week Fifteen - Red Velvet Cake

This flavor serves as a very late birthday present to one of my sister-in-laws. She loves red velvet cake so I figured I'd try to create a flavor of ice cream she could enjoy for her birthday. Her birthday was almost two weeks ago but it's the thought that counts, right? So Happy Belated Birthday, C!! Hope you enjoy!

In trying to decide how to make a flavor of ice cream based on a flavor of cake, I went back and forth between flavoring and coloring the ice cream itself to mimic the flavor and deep red color of traditional red velvet cake...or just adding cake to the mix. Although it might seem like the easy way out, I opted for the latter for two reasons: one, I thought the flavor would be more authentic (and more interesting) than if I were to try to make a (probably gross-looking) red ice cream that had that slightly-chocolatey-yet-not-chocolate flavor; and two, I wanted to mash ice cream and cake together. Because it's fun. And because who doesn't like ice cream and cake mashed together? Haters, that's who.

My love of mashing ice cream and cake together started early on in my childhood, when I was seven or eight, and witnessed the fine folks of PeeWee's Playhouse mix a cake with ice cream to create a "pudding" treat. My siblings and I were charmed by this idea and would make our own "pudding" at every birthday celebration from then on. It was and continues to be a totally awesome way to eat cake and ice cream. So check it out, haters:

Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream

Ingredients:

2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
3 cups red velvet cake (cut into 1/2 inch pieces)

 1. Pour the milk and heavy cream into a saucepan and heat over medium high until bubbles start to form around the edge.

2. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and sugar and whisk to combine.

3. Add a small amount of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Once combined, slowly pour egg mixture into the milk mixture, whisking constantly to avoid curdling. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.

4. Pour through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

5. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Add the cake halfway through, allowing it to mix throughout the ice cream. When completely incorporated, transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

 I need to figure out how to take non-blurry photos.

Week Fourteen - Pistachio

As I sit here by the computer painting my nails a pastel green, I just realized that I never posted this past week's flavor. In a week where I made three ice creams in five days...and then ended the week by going to see my fabulous sister-in-law and her husband kick out the jams Friday night, worked Saturday morning then went to see the Queen tribute band (whoa!), and spent the day Sunday at the hospital MEETING MY NEW NIECE (!!!!!) this post just slipped my mind. Stay tuned for more on my niece...for now, my nails are done and I have a few minutes to spare so let's go!

I believe I was 23 or 24 years old before I tried anything pistachio-flavored, the nut or otherwise. I'm not entirely sure why I avoided it for so long. Green is my favorite color and I love most other nuts. Those seem like good enough reasons to try one, right? Wrong. Something about pistachios always seemed weird to me. Maybe because I associate them with the lame five pound burlap sack of nuts my dad always gets at Christmas from a client. That stupid bag would sit in our house for months before finally we'd just throw it away. It was a nuisance and I wanted nothing to do with it! Little did I know how truly delicious that dumb bag's contents were. If only I could motivate myself to pick it up and open it those many years ago, I might be leading a very different life these days. Alas, my tastebuds missed out until one fateful day when I decided to taste (read: steal) my husband's Pistachio & Honey ice cream from Jeni's. "What's this?" I thought to myself. "Pistachios aren't the gross old-person-only flavor I had imagined in my mind; pistachios are TOTALLY AWESOME!"

A new day had dawned, friends. And I'm delighted to be able to share that with you here today. Feast your eyes on this:

Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients:

2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup pistachio paste (I bought mine at Whole Foods)

1. Pour the milk and heavy cream into a saucepan and heat over medium high until bubbles start to form around the edge.

2. In a food processor (or the super convenient mini food processor attachment to your immersion blender!) combine the pistachio paste with a couple tablespoons of water. Pulse, adding additional water, until smooth.

3. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and sugar and whisk to combine.

4. Add a small amount of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Once combined, slowly pour egg mixture into the milk mixture, whisking constantly to avoid curdling. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.

4. Pour through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

5. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

Week Thirteen - Mango Lime

Alright, alright...I'm almost all caught up! This is last week's flavor...

Spring has sprung. Totally. And I'm very happy about it. I think every season is my favorite season, at one point or another. And the beginning of Spring is certainly some kind of wonderful. The days when you can go outside without a coat, looking cute in a flannel and flip flops. Cute? Maybe that actually looks dumpy...but whatever. So you're hanging out in your flannel and flip flops, windows open, music up (this week was all Queen, all the time in preparation for the super cool Queen cover band I'm going to see with my in-laws tomorrow night!) and nothing can stop you! ("Don't stop my nooow!")

Now let's think about how you feel in that particular moment (or create your own moment, if my dumpy Freddy Mercury mood doesn't suit you) and try to put a flavor to it. It's warm, but it's not Summer-y peach or melon warm. And you're on top of the world, but not in that chocolate-smothered-in-caramel kind of way. You're just havin' a good time (havin' a good time!) and you don't wanna stop at all. You're mango, baby. You're mango with a touch of lime, and you look goooood. Good enough to eat. So let's get down to it...

Mango Lime Ice Cream

Ingredients:

2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup mango puree (I purchased puree at Trader Joe's but you could just cut up a mango and puree it)
1 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
1 tsp lime juice (I was scared to put too much, in fear of curdling the milk. But you can't really taste it so I'd recommend either putting more in, carefully, or adding some zest)

1. Pour the milk and heavy cream into a saucepan and heat over medium high until bubbles start to form around the edge. Add the mango puree and stir to combine. Bring mixture to a boil.

2. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, sugar, and lime juice in a bowl and whisk to combine.

3. Add a small amount of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Once combined, slowly pour egg mixture into the milk mixture, whisking constantly to avoid curdling. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.

4. Pour through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

5. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

Week Twelve - Green Tea

Time to play catch-up...

Boy, has life been crazy these past few weeks! Last weekend was my lovely sister-in-law's baby shower (First niece or nephew! Yay!!) so the week prior to that was filled with lots of fun planning and preparations. Then this past week, I worked like a crazy person. Yes, a crazy person. The kind of crazy person who doesn't make ice cream. But I've risen from the madness with last last week's flavor and will post this past week's flavor within a day or two. Now let's get down to it!

As I mentioned, last weekend was all about little Baby H and his or her beautiful Mommy-to-be. Myself and the rest of the killer party planning brigade had spent a couple months trying to create a shower that my sister-in-law would love; one that would suit her perfectly. We ended up going with a tea party theme, complete with doilies, tea sandwiches, and fabulous mismatched china. Ladies were asked to wear a "tea hat" to the luncheon and prizes were awarded for the prettiest hat, the most creative, etc. All in all, everyone seemed to have a great time - success!

A cup of tea to keep me company

And so, when choosing my flavor for last last week, I wanted to go with something tea-like. I thought about a black tea ice cream (mostly because I had a delicious one at Per Se a few weeks ago) but I figured that was too similar to the Chai flavor from Week Three. Green tea was the next logical option and I know a certain coworker of mine has been hinting at me making this flavor for weeks. (There's a container with your name on it in my freezer!) So put on your fancy hats and join me...

Green Tea Ice Cream

Ingredients:

2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup loose green tea leaves
1 cup sugar
6 egg yolks

1. Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat over medium high until bubbles start to form around the edge. Add the tea leaves and steep for thirty minutes.

2. Once tea is fully steeped, pour through a fine mesh sieve, pushing the tea down to release as much liquid as possible. Return the milk to the saucepan.

3. Add the heavy cream to the saucepan and heat over medium high until bubbles start to form around the edge.

4. Combine the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and whisk to combine.

5. Add a small amount of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Once combined, slowly pour egg mixture into the milk mixture, whisking constantly to avoid curdling. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.

6. Pour through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

7. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

Week Eleven - Chocolate Stout

Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day! What did everyone do to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland? I had some coworkers over to play some cards (not really an Irish activity), eat some Cheddar and Guinness Fondue (not really an Irish food), and drink some Smithwick's (Win!). It was quite a tasty little get-together. And at the end of the day we all tasted, what I believe to be, a quite delicious Chocolate Stout ice cream! I'm excited about this one, though it's pretty much the exact recipe used for Chocolate and Wine...but it's damn good!

This is how gross I look while I'm making ice cream. Blame it on the beer.

When I was trying to decide which beer to use for the ice cream, Guinness was the obvious choice. A bit too obvious, if you ask me. Plus I have one too many bad memories of Guinness. Well, really just one bad memory...but one is enough. Here is my tale of woe:

When my younger sister was in her senior year of college, she studied abroad for a semester in Dublin. I was super jealous, since I missed the boat on the study-abroad experience (changing your major four times makes it difficult to do cool stuff in college - let that be a lesson to you young ones!) but luckily I had a sweetheart of a boyfriend (now-husband!) who could sense my longing for The Emerald Isle; as an early Christmas present that year, he bought me a ticket to Ireland for a 10-day visit. Naturally, I was super excited about the trip, as was my sister. She began planning things for us to see and do during her final days there (he coincided my trip with the end of hers so we could fly home together for the holidays...sweet AND smart!), including a trip to Belfast. To make a long and heartwrenching story short, I was deviously infected (I knew that hacking old man was not to be trusted!) on the flight over with the flu and was terribly sick for the first five or six days of the trip. I ruined most of her plans, including Belfast, but eventually decided I needed to suck it up and get out there. I mean, how many times in my life will I get a free trip to Ireland?

Our first attempt at tourism was a hop on/hop off bus tour of the city, visiting sites like Trinity College, St. Stephen's Green, Temple Bar, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. I was a bit woozy the day of the tour but packed a bottle of water and some crackers and merrily boarded the double-decker bus. Our final stop on the tour was - you guessed it - the Guinness Storehouse. It was super cool; we took a guided tour, learning all about Arthur Guinness and his tasty brew. The tour concluded at the top of the Storehouse in the Gravity Bar: a glass-enclosed bar providing panoramic views of Dublin. Along with the price of admission, guests receive a pint of Guinness to enjoy while taking in the grey (but lovely) scenery. My sad not-so-short story ends here when I took two sips of my sister's pint and vomited. Not in front of anyone. But come on!

All that was to say that I opted for Murphy's Stout instead of its pretty big sister (here's looking at you, Coll) Guinness. And as far as I could tell Saturday night, nobody got sick from my ice cream. Sláinte to that!

Chocolate Stout Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup Murphy's Stout (or Guinness, if you must)
1 1/2 ounce bittersweet chocolate
1 1/4 ounce cream cheese, softened
1 tbs plus 1 tsp corn starch
2 cups whole milk
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2 tbs light corn syrup
1/8 tsp sea salt

1. In a saucepan, combine the cocoa powder, 1/3 cup sugar and the beer. Cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, about three minutes.

2. Chop the chocolate and put in a heat-proof bowl. Pour the wine mixture over the chocolate and stir until smooth.

3. Add the cream cheese to the chocolate mixture and whisk until smooth.

4. In a small bowl, combine the cornstarch and a little milk. Set aside.

5. In a large saucepan, combine the remaining milk, the cream, and the corn syrup and cook over medium heat until mixture reaches a boil, allowing it to boil for a minute or so, stirring all the while. Remove from heat.

6. Add cornstarch mixture to the milk mixture, whisking constantly. Return to heat, stirring with a spoon or spatula, and cook until mixture thickens, about three or four minutes. Remove from heat.

7. Whisk the chocolate mixture into the milk mixture until completely smooth. Pour through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

8. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Upon completion, transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

9. Eat it!

Week Ten - Hibiscus and Meyer Lemon Sorbet

Okay, I know. I'm the worst! I didn't get around to making last week's flavor until today but I promise I have a slightly decent excuse! Along with work on the weekdays and a pseudo-job interview, I spent Friday and Saturday eating at super amazing restaurants: Friday, with my husband at Dirty Candy, and Saturday, with my best friend at Per Se. Needless to say, I spent most of my weekend in a very tasty food coma, completely neglecting this little blog of mine.

But enough with the excuses! Let's get on with the deliciousness. Waiting until today to make this flavor actually worked out quite well, what with this lovely weather we're enjoying. When the warmer weather sets in (even if only for a week...) I find few things as refreshing as a cold glass of iced tea. The idea of sitting outside with a good book (today, it was The Hunger Games) and a glass of iced tea (today, it was hibiscus tea...because I happened to have an abundance) and enjoying life just makes me smile. So I took that idea, added some refreshing zing with the Meyer lemon, and created, what I believe to be, quite the delightful dessert. Upon finishing the batch, I actually immediately made a second batch so I could take some to a friend's house this weekend. Hopefully, they share in my delight!

And hopefully, you do, too! Here you have it:

Hibiscus and Meyer Lemon Sorbet

Ingredients:

2 cups water
1 cup dried hibiscus flowers
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup Meyer lemon juice

1. Add the water and hibiscus flowers to a pot and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and let the tea steep for fifteen minutes.

2. Strain the flowers out of the tea and return it to the stove. Add the sugar and heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

3. Pour the mixture into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until cool

4. Once completely cooled, add the lemon juice and stir to combine.

5. Pour cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

6. Enjoy on a warm evening on a porch swing with someone you love! (Or on a cold afternoon, huddled on the couch while watching Judge Mathis. Which is how I plan to eat the leftovers when this weather leaves us next week.)

Week Nine - Dairy Free Salted Caramel

Greetings, friends! Sorry for being a day late, yet again. I spent the day yesterday with my in-laws, checking out the van Gogh exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I highly recommend it for anyone able to check it out! But I'm home now and ready to regale you with this week's ice cream adventures. Here we go!

When I decided to create this blog earlier this year, the very first request I received was for a dairy free flavor. I have since had a couple other people ask for one so I figured I'd give it a shot. Originally, I was going to attempt some sort of chocolate and coconut concoction but at the last minute I decided to try to make it vegan, instead of just dairy free. I have some vegan sugar in the house so I thought a salted caramel would be perfect. (I should warn you at this point that I was taking photos at night with a crappy camera so my pictures are not very good this week. Sorry!)

The first step was to make the caramel, so I started with the white sugar:

This sugar immediately turned a strange color, almost as if I had added cream to the sugar. Except I hadn't. I drizzled a little onto a paper towel to taste it and it immediately hardened. Boo. So I poured it into a paper bowl (where it completely hardened, forming a pretty cool weapon, within minutes) and started from scratch with the dark brown sugar:

This time around, the sugar sat on the heat for about five minutes refusing to melt so I added a little water to help things along. The caramel quickly began to form, bringing with it a terribly gross odor. Garbage. And on to sugar number 3! Unfortunately, those are the only two vegan sugars I have in my house so the recipe at this point became dairy free instead of vegan. Boo. But for those who still wish to read on, I present to you this week's flavor...

Dairy Free Salted Caramel

Ingredients:

1 cup soy milk
2 cups soy creamer
1.5 cups sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tbs corn starch (Is corn starch vegan? I wasn't sure about that so I may have failed with the vegan one after all.)

 

1. Pour the sugar into a large sauté or sauce pan, spreading evenly, and cook over medium heat. Do not stir until the sugar at the edge of the pan starts to melt.

2. At this point, begin to push the sugar toward the center with a heat-proof spatula. It's okay if lumps form, they'll melt later.

3. Once the sugar is completely melted, allow to cook for another minute or two until it turns a deep (but not too dark) copper color. Remove from heat and stir in sea salt.

4. Slowly add the soy milk, whisking vigorously as you pour to keep caramel from seizing. Once the milk is added, return to medium heat and add the soy milk. Continue to cook, stirring all the while, for a few more minutes.

5. Pour through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

6. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

7. Enjoy!