Today was a great day to eat ice cream. It was hot, but not too muggy to be outside and there was a breeze. Our huge yard got a workout as Victor and another doggie friend (well, they might have been friends if there weren't so many interesting people around) got treats and pettings.
For this year's party, I made 11 different ice creams. There was one pie (an ice cream pie, naturally), and there were mochi.
Almost everything was very well received, and while there are leftovers, that is more a testament to the volume I made and the rapid rotation of desserts than quality of flavors.
The best idea I had this year was to use a cookie scoop and "gelatin shooter" cups with miniature spoons to serve the ice cream. This way no one was taking a full size scoop of each flavor. It was less about stopping people from eating ice cream and more helping people eat more flavors of ice cream.
The first ice cream I made was actually made while my in-laws were visiting. While my in-laws were visiting we went to the farmer's market in Braintree, and I got local bacon and made David Lebovitz's Candied Bacon Ice Cream. While I don't know how the ice cream tasted personally, I know that I want to take the base and mix it with sauteed apples, chunks of graham cracker, and tiny cubes of cheddar cheese (well, maybe no cheddar). The brown sugar base is very sweet, and very delicious.
It's bacon ice cream, folks!
The second (and third) ice creams were ice creams I prepped during the week, but only finished up right before the party. I made mochi. Mochi are balls of ice cream wrapped in a thin sweet rice dough sheet. It is not hard to make either the sheets or wrap the balls of ice cream, but everything needs to be super cold. I was working in the freezer with a cookie sheet of mochi sheets and another cookie sheet of ice cream balls that had been freezing overnight. The two flavors I made were green tea, very traditional, and lapsang souchong. Unfortunately, the lapsang really didn't retain its shape very well, so there were some fairly blobby looking ice cream balls.
The dark ones are green and the light ones are lapsang.
I love making ice cream, so I don't mind at all that there aren't leftover mochi but there is about a half batch each of the ice creams. Our tasty experiences will last through August!
There will be more ice cream tomorrow. I'm not going to write about all of them at once!
