AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Caramel Swirl

Bambino time!

So, our baby isn't the only one to celebrate. We have a couple of friends who are expecting their first early next year, so when we were going to get together I made ice cream.

Yes, that is a plastic baby figure in the ice cream. When we had the going away party/baby shower before we moved, my friends got plastic baby figures (some with mohawks a la carrot jockeys at Cake Wrecks) and put then on mini-cupcakes. We saved and washed some of the babies and moved them to Lexington.

So, when I was going to make a special ice cream for my friends, we decided to add the baby figurines like a king cake. I made the cheesecake ice cream from The Perfect Scoop, and added a salted caramel swirl for a caramel swirl bambino ice cream. My salted caramel sauce was based on the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I substituted unsalted butter for the salted butter and used sea salt to add the salt flavor to taste.

Now, I had a lot of caramel left after I made the caramel swirl bambino ice cream, so I used the remaining sauce to make a salted caramel ice cream with cream bourbon. I used the instructions for the ice cream base and added all of the remaining caramel sauce without even measuring it. We did buy peaches to use the same presentation as the blog post, but in the end we just ate the ice cream straight.

Yum!

party! in a heatwave

Oh, ice cream. This past week I was home, making ice cream and playing Word Realms (beta!). I was supposed to get so much done and I did. I made 18 ice creams, sorbets, frozen yoghurts and granitas. And then on one of the hottest days of the week, people gathered and ate. It was super hot, so cold ice cream was more appreciated than ever!

Now, I operate fairly well on deadline, but more than 2 deadlines and my brain goes explody. I had ice cream and two knitting projects, so really the only thing that happened was ice cream.

My flavors this year included:
Gin and tonic granita
Whoopie pie ice cream
Fleur de lait ice cream
Mimosa sorbet
Basil ice cream
Mango lassi kulfi frozen yoghurt
French toast ice cream
Apple crisp sorbet (bars)¹
Eggs Benedict ice cream
Taro sorbet
Rice gelato ice cream
Strawberry sorbet with balsamic pearls
Pop rocks ice cream
Salted caramel ice cream¹
Bittersweet chocolate sorbet
Milk chocolate ice cream¹
Raita frozen yoghurt
Roasted peach pie ice cream

While most people had favorites, I think the losers were pretty obvious. The taro sorbet needed to be more like an ice cream with a coconut base. The rice gelato was delicious, but needed more time to soften. The apple crisp sorbet was also pretty hard, but we cut it with a knife and ate it like a bar cookie (would have benefited from a crust).

The winners were a little harder to pin down, because there were a few more choices. The strawberry sorbet was a joy to scoop and the balsamic pearls were a beautiful visual touch. The two ice creams from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream for the Home Cook (my newest cookbook thanks to my husband) were also easy to scoop and very tasty despite the oddity to me in the method². The dark chocolate sorbet was really popular amongst the chocoholics, and my husband's favorite was whoopie pie.

Mine? My favorites were the raita frozen yoghurt and pop rocks. The pop rocks ice cream was the orange popsicle ice cream from the Perfect Scoop with chocolate covered pop rocks. My nephew was so upset that he didn't just have pop rocks to eat. I probably am a bad person for finding it funny, but it was such a silly thing to be upset over that I thought it was hilarious.

Because of the heat, people faded a lot faster. That meant some of the ice creams didn't come back for a second time. So, the granita and the peach pie are gone. There are so many ice creams left, that I might not need to make ice cream for months!

Other than leftover ice cream the best thing was getting to see so many people. There were people who made it who didn't get to come last year, so it was great to see people that I don't normally get to spend time with!

Ice cream photos (slideshow in Flickr, some are from last year because I'm too lazy to make another set)

¹These ice creams were from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream for the Home Cook.

²Jeni's method for most ice creams involves heating milk and cream or other dairy until boiling. After it has boiled for a while you add a slurry with cornstarch (or tapioca starch, which I used) and boil till it thickens. Then you add it to cream cheese. All of those ingredients, including corn syrup, are designed to bind up the water, so the ice cream won't get icy. It works, and it tastes mostly the same but not as rich as a custard based ice cream. However, it meant I didn't go through more than 2 dozen eggs, so it was awesome.

a week of ice cream

(my first post was eaten by a grue)

I am home this week doing one of my favorite things: making ice cream. It's a hard life, really. My ice cream party is on Sunday and I have about 8 more ice creams to make by then.

I love making ice creams (and other frozen concoctions) no matter the recipe. Sorbets cooking on the stove, velvety custards, icy soothing granitas. They are all fair game. This year's assortment has a few more sorbets than last year but fewer dairy free options outside of them. It's something I should consider fixing before Sunday.

Most of my ice creams are either from the Perfect Scoop or are based on custard or non-custard ice creams that I just know in my bones. However, my husband just returned home with Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams for the Home Cook, and I am trying out her technique. Jeni's method is definitely a chemistry meets art approach with the water being bound up by glucose (corn syrup), milk proteins (milk, cream, evaporated milk, cream cheese) and starch (corn, though I am using tapioca as her standard alternative). The result is an ice cream with a longer cooking time on the stove than many of my non-custard ice creams that has a gluey texture before churning. Hopefully I will know more once I have churned the first batch, but the mixture is currently cooling.

There is nothing too odd about this year's ice creams save one. Molecular gastronomy makes a little bit of an entrance in a couple of my recipes. I added balsamic pearls to my strawberry sorbet, and I am making a breakfast line up of ice creams and sorbets including mimosa sorbet, french toast and eggs benedict.

Yeah, eggs benedict with a bit of molecular gastronomy for the hollandaise. Hey, it cannot be any odder than pad thai, right?

a weekend in the kitchen

Oatmeal cookies with chocolate covered pomegranate arils, what is oldest from the CSA soup, and grapenut ice cream. I raked the front yard, and played on the internet.

It has been a good weekend, especially with squeaking out a win in this week's game. Of course, Mr. Victor has taken to having dreams about mail squirrel men in his sleep, and keeps waking us up at 1:30 barking and growling in his sleep. Last night we brought him (the husband) downstairs to his other crate and bed, so we could sleep through the rest of the night.

Grapenut Ice Cream (based on Epicurious recipe)

7 egg yolks (mine were tiny yolks from CSA eggs, so you can probably get away with 4-5 yolks)
1 cup whole milk
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup Grape Nuts

In a pot add the milk the milk and sugar. Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla bean and add those and the vanilla bean to the milk and sugar. Heat over medium until the milk starts to steam.

In a separate bowl separate the eggs. Whisk the egg yolks until thick and pale (well, paler). It should only take a minute or two.

When the milk is steaming, slowly ladle some of the milk into the eggs, whisking constantly. Pour the tempered eggs into the milk mixture, continuing to stir constantly with a wooden spoon. Cook until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Add vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, place the heavy cream. Pour the egg mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Discard the vanilla bean pod and stir to mix. I usually press the egg mixture through, but not enough to force any of the "scrambled" egg through. Chill for at least two hours or until the mixture no longer feels warm to the touch.

Process in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer's instructions. Add the Grape Nuts in about halfway through the processing time. In my machine last night, I added the Grape Nuts at the beginning and it took about 30-40 minutes to finish processing.

Happy birthday, Saru-chan!

Tuesday was Saru-chan's birthday. She turned a whopping 7 years old. She has grown more affectionate and less scared of Victor over the past year (I think it has something to do with the idea that she doesn't have us to herself, but anywho). She is gorgeous, sleek, large and very soft. Like many cats she likes to be pet, especially if she can scootch her butt really close to your face in the process. Hey! It's a gift.

Saru-chan catches the bugs I don't want to catch and release outside. She will play with them until they are dead and if we are very lucky then eat them. It's a protein source she needs to work for (and is smaller than the mole that Victor caught last week), so I don't mind. Heck, I even encourage it. We shoo Victor out into the back yard and will place her near her new treat. Yup, so mean we are.

I made ice cream for Victor earlier this year, so it was time to make ice cream for Saru-chan. However, she cannot have actual milk. Usually we get her a container of CatSip or some other kitty milk and she will drink it over a week, so that is what I used.

Ingredients:

2 cups of CatSip cat milk
4 TBSP catnip, divided
4 egg yolks

I heat the milk till steaming, turned off the heat and added half of the catnip, which I steeped for an hour.

In a separate bowl, I whisked the 4 egg yolks. After the hour was up, I reheated the milk mixture and then tempered the eggs. I then added the tempered eggs to the milk mixture.

Unlike normal ice creams this never thickened to what I call a normal custard consistency. There just isn't enough fat in it among other things. Also, the mixture looked curdled. But hey, it was for Saru-chan who doesn't care about such things.

I let it cool in the fridge overnight and then churned it the following morning, adding a single can of cat food (we used a fishy cat food from a pouch) and 2 more tablespoons of cat nip.

Like the dog ice cream, because there is no added fat, sugar or thickeners (like xanthan gum), the ice cream froze really hard. There was more loss than normal along the side of the ice cream container where it was too hard to add to the tupperware.

It does make for a hard to scoop ice cream. In the future, I would scoop (with a small cookie scoop) from the ice cream maker when it is still relatively soft onto a parchment covered plate or cookie sheet. Then they would at least freeze into mostly into single serving amounts.

Saru-chan got to try her ice cream Tuesday night for her birthday. For the occasion she got to eat it from one of the blue dessert glasses we have. It was kind of hilarious, because the entire house had ice cream Tuesday night. Hibiscus sorbet for the humans, cat ice cream and dog ice cream.

She likes it!

Things to note. Saru-chan did not seem to like her cat ice cream quite as much as Victor liked his. There are a lot of possible reasons for that including that Saru-chan mostly seems to like her catnip au natural, that the cold item is harder for Saru-chan to eat than it is for Victor and that the flavor was just off. There is, of course, tons left, so she will get to have some more and if she decides to permanently turn up her nose at it that is OK. She is a relatively picky eater, so I'm ready for that eventuality.

Happy birthday, Saru-chan!

This treat's for the dogs

Ice cream for people can be made in a ton of different ways: eggy custards, milk and cream thickened with cornstarch or things like xanthan gum, sweetened condensed milk, or no dairy at all and a bit of carageenan or similar substance to keep the mixture smooth and scoopable. Eggy custards feel the most traditional and are a very forgiving dessert. Ice cream for dogs? Well, dogs shouldn't have sugar and while they can eat certain human foods it is always best to keep their treats in moderation. Homemade ice cream for dogs is going to freeze pretty hard, because without sugar and fat it is hard to keep it soft.

1. Doggie Ice Cream, 2. Doggie Ice Cream, 3. Freshly churned doggie ice cream, 4. Tiny scoops only

Making doggie ice cream is about mixing things dogs can eat. I used this site for the list of things Victor could eat. I also remember from when Victor had some stomach problems last year that he can eat eggs and a number of other things that weren't on the list. I made Victor a custard-style ice cream, without all of the sugar. Here's the recipe!

Cinnamon Apple ice cream (for dogs!)

1/2 cup water
75 grams baby carrots (or a well packed half cup)
160 grams apple, pealed, cored and chopped (or one medium granny smith)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 whole milk
4 egg yolks
1 cup 2% greek yogurt

Boil the first 4 ingredients over medium heat until the apple is very soft and most of the water is gone. The carrots will still be a bit crunchy. Puree the mixture with a stick blender or food processor. Add the milk and warm it gently. Add the egg yolks and stir constantly until thickened. Normally I would temper the eggs, but Victor (and likely any dog you meet) is not going to care if there is a small amount of scrambled egg in the treat. Once the custard base is thick (you should be able to make a line on the back of a spoon without any bits dribbling in), remove the custard from the heat and add the yogurt.

The mixture needs to be chilled thoroughly before churning it in the ice cream maker. The ice cream maker adds air to the mix, making the resulting mix (even after it freezes like a rock) much lighter and fluffier looking. Once it is cold, churn in the ice cream maker for 30-40 minutes. Because this mixture has more water and less fat in it than normal, you will have freezing along the sides of the container. The majority is scoopable however, and can be stored in a tupperware in the freezer for doggie fun time!

I used Daily Burn and estimated that there were approximately 36 tablespoon-sized servings (or the smallest cookie scoop which is what I used for his first serving). According to Daily Burn, eat little serving should be about 15 calories. Just right for a doggie treat!

Guess what? He likes it!

ice cream success

One of the ice creams I made for the party was a coconut lemongrass. It went over well amongst the people who like coconut, and I had a couple of requests for the recipe.

Hrm.

Of course, it was one of the last ice creams I made when my note taking skills were less than stellar and measurements were much more... fluid. So, despite the vast quantity of ice cream left in the downstairs freezer, I will be making this again this week. It will be good to make sure that it works as well the second time as it did the first.

Of course, to make another ice cream first we have to finish one, so I will have tupperware for ice cream storage. The party went through pretty much everything from a 1 quart container on up. Chris and I are still working our way through the leftover ice cream sandwiches first.

compost ice cream

I finished churning the compost ice cream tonight. Sounds foul doesn't it?

The ice cream is conceptually based on the Momofuku compost cookies. I didn't make those cookies for this however. I made these awesome gluten free chocolate chip cookies. I made them small for ice cream sandwiches and broke the leftover cookies into the batter with chopped up Rolos and crushed Fritos blended into the ice cream at the end. The salty sweet combo is scary addictive, and the ice cream promises to be as tasty as the original cookies.

Tomorrow is my ice cream party. I still have a single ice cream to churn in the morning, because I decided to nap this afternoon. My goodness I needed that nap. I wonder if I can manage to find time for another nap tomorrow before the party.

a dreadful miscalculation

So, I thought I had ordered extra cannisters for my ice cream making on Sunday. Well, today they still hadn't arrived when I got home so I went through my email.

Now, I've been having a bit of computer trouble. Safari decided to give me the white screen of death, and apparently the order never went through. I called the company and I should have these on Friday. It is almost a day late dollar short, but I will still be churning ice cream. It's just a difference in what I need to make for batches on Saturday.

Today I churned mega rocky road (otherwise known as a Paul killer). It is my nutella rocky road layered with a separate peanut butter rocky road (peanut butter ice cream with chopped peanuts, mini chocolate chips and marshmallows). I had too much to fit into the tupperware I use for storage, so I got to taste test. Yum.

I also prepped the pink grapefruit-champagne sorbet tonight, which necessitated a walk to the local alcohol/minimart during the half time of the Manchester United-New England Revolution game. I love making this, because while the large pink grapefruits were pretty difficult to squeeze my hands smell so wonderful I don't care. It is awesome and makes up a lot of mistakes I've made in party prep this week.

another canister

Today I did math. I have 11 ice cream bases to make and 15 ice creams to churn. Before bed I will churn one more ice cream (vanilla), but that is still at least two ice creams a day all week. So I ordered the Kitchenaid ice cream bowl, so I can make swirled ice creams like my mega rocky road at the same time.
I love ice cream time, but I should have started churning last week!
Completely unrelated, I churned today the energy drink ice cream I've been threatening to make with Blood, an energy drink I was given as a gag gift. It tastes kind of like fruit punch with a multivitamin thrown in!