David Lebovitz -

by unsightly

Endless Ice Cream: Cherry Whiskey Caramel

When I saw the Father’s Day cake from bakersroyale, I knew I had to make it. Actually, I made two. It was one of those fortuitous days where I had everything on hand for the recipe, plus a little extra. Have you ever eaten something that has left you breathless, wordless? That’s how I felt about this cake. The combination of flavors was just perfect. So of course I had to convert it to ice cream form: almond flavored ice cream, with a salted caramel swirl and whiskey-soaked cherries. And while the ice cream didn’t leave me quite as stunned as that cake did, it is very, very delicious. The cherries can be made and refrigerated up to 3 days ahead, and the salted caramel sauce can be made up to 2 weeks ahead if you’re not up to tackling everything in one day.

Cherry Whiskey Caramel Ice Cream

Endless Ice Cream: Peanut Butter Pretzel Ice Cream Truffles

At some point last year I came across a recipe for ice cream truffles. It seemed easy enough. You scoop the ice cream, flash freeze the scoops, coat them in melted chocolate, freeze a little while longer, then indulge. So I grabbed a pint of Häagen-Dazs vanilla bean ice cream out of the freezer and happily started away.

Good lord, it was a holy disaster. I’m pretty sure it ended with everything thrown unceremoniously in the garbage, quickly followed by the crack of a beer. But since I started making my own ice cream, my mind has often wandered back to that terrible day, and made me wonder exactly what went wrong. I started researching and I determined it was three things:

1) When the ice cream scoops started to melt I kept going instead of popping them back into the freezer.

2) When the temperature of the chocolate dropped and quit adhering easily to the ice cream I did not heat it up again.

3) Dipping the ice cream with my hands was messy and slow, increasing the speed of melted ice cream and cooling chocolate.

So I decided to give it another whirl, and this time the results were pretty fantastic…

Where There’s Smoke…There’s Bacon

I appreciate the idea of hummus because it’s such a stinking fantastic dip and it’s not even based in fatty sour cream or cream cheese. I think eggplant based dips, to be honest, aren’t as delightful as bean dips, but I keep trying anyway, especially with almost-out-of-season eggplants filling crates at the farmers market.

I googled for a few baba ganosh recipes and turned to my friend Justin’s fav, David Lebovitz. Lebovitz accentuated the smoky qualities of the dip and I ran with it, adding extra smoky flavor everywhere I could.

David Lebovitz

Endless Ice Cream: Cherry Whiskey Caramel

Cherry Whiskey Caramel Ice Cream

Endless Ice Cream: Peanut Butter Pretzel Ice Cream Truffles

Where There’s Smoke…There’s Bacon

Smoky Eggplant Dip with Bacon-fried Tortillas