ice cream - - Page 7

by ML

Homemade Ice Cream Cake

My roommate Kate is somewhat of a culinary genius. Not because she cooks fabulously ornate meals or spends hours slaving over the stove. But because in the age of shortcuts, spice mixes, and semi-homemade bullshit, she still cooks with simple, high-quality ingredients all the time. She does not buy anything prepackaged. She pulls together fabulous dinner parties on the fly quite often, and last week she outdid herself, again. Something I just learned about her is that (a long time ago), she worked at a chain ice cream shop, and her job during the day was to make the cakes. And in typical Kate fashion, she took that skill and made something even more fabulous out of it.

I present to you the homemade ice cream cake, using Kate’s standard formula: 2 ice creams, 1 cookie, 1 candy, 2 drizzles. In this particular instance it was a birthday cake, so the birthday guy got to choose: vanilla, coffee, oreos, Reeses cups, chocolate and peanut butter.

The Pauly Special

by unsightly

Endless Ice Cream: Coconut Curry Chocolate Chip

If you’re thinking that this is an ugly ice cream, you are right. The picture doesn’t even begin to do justice to the weird, neon yellow color of this ice cream. But what it lacks in looks it makes up for in taste. The depth of toasty goodness will keep you spooning more and more into your face. The toasted coconut hits you first, followed by the mellow, smooth, warm curry. The chocolate chips add little bursts of sweetness to offset the spice of the curry. For all of you adventurous curry lovers out there—this one’s for you.

Coconut Curry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

in Desserts / Endless Ice Cream / Featured / Recipe 1 comments

by unsightly

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…

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by BS

The Endless Road Trip – San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 6. Uni Everything

We were excited enough to eat live sea urchin at the farmers’ market in San Diego, but that wasn’t the end of our uni adventures. At Sea Rocket Bistro, those salty, meat-y, rich little bites of pink flesh come served in a sea urchin shooter, submerssed in nothing else but our liquid obsession of the moment—ginger beer—plus chili flakes and lemon juice.

A seafood smorgasbord…and and even crazier sea urchin usage…after the jump.

in Fish / Food Travel 1 comments

by unsightly

What the Hell am I Supposed to Do With All These Egg Whites?

As I mention in the custard-based ice cream recipes, egg whites can be refrigerated or frozen and used later. If you refrigerate them they should be used within a couple days; in the freezer they will last for a couple weeks.

Now there are quite a few ways to use them up. One is to simply beat a couple into your omelet or scrambled eggs in the morning. Another is meringue topping for a pie, or light meringue cookies (like French macarons). Coconut macaroons are always delicious (and easily frozen for a make-ahead dessert). Egg whites are great for sealing homemade pierogies or raviolis. My favorite way to use up a good amount of egg whites is making these utterly awesome friands, or tea cakes, from Ottolenghi.

To say I’m obsessed with Yotam Ottolenghi is a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. I love that man. The accessibility and ingenuity of his recipes never fails to surprise me. To date, I’ve easily made over 3 dozen of his recipes, and not one has been a flop. This is my favorite of his desserts.

Blackberry and Star Anise Friands

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by unsightly

Endless Ice Cream: Coffee-Maple-Bacon

My house in the summer gets disgustingly, unbearably hot. I once clocked 96 degrees in our living room. This means the oven pretty much gets a three-month vacation starting in June. However, no air conditioning can be the mother of invention. I’m forced to grill everything (I’ve made pizza, soup, bread, even lasagna on the grill), or get creative with no-cook and make-ahead recipes. This ice cream is in anticipation of those sticky, crabby mornings where it’s so hot I dream about moving to Alberta.

Whole bean coffee is steeped in cream, then cooked into a custard base. Maple syrup is whisked into the chilled custard. Then after it’s churned you fold in some pre-made chopped, candied bacon.

So there you have it: coffee, bacon, eggs, and maple syrup. Ice cream breakfast. If you’re lucky enough to have air conditioning, make pancakes and scoop this on top of ’em. I guess I’ll be tinkering with cast iron skillet pancakes on the grill.

Coffee-Maple-Bacon Ice Cream

in Bacon / Breakfast / Desserts / Endless Bacon / Endless Ice Cream / Featured / Pig 1 comments

by unsightly

Endless Ice Cream: Asparagus

While at the farmers market recently, I came across a big booth of super fresh local asparagus. I knew it was destined for ice cream.

Most of the ice creams I make are a custard (egg) base, but I thought it would be too heavy for such a light, crisp flavor. I figured this would be the right time to try out Jeni Britton Bauer’s method of ice cream making. You may already be familiar with Jeni: on top of running 8 ice cream shops in Ohio, she also published an amazing compendium of her ice creams, and, oh, also was a James Beard Award recipient this year. Her method involves 3 bowls: a slurry in one, the salt and cream cheese in another, an ice bath in the third. You then boil the milk, cream, sugar and syrup for 4 minutes. The slurry is whisked in and returned to a boil. The hot milk gets whisked into the cream cheese, then everything goes into a big Ziplock bag and gets plunged into an ice bath. Then comes churning, freezing, and eating. Sound like a science experiment to you? That’s kinda how it felt.

By time I had finished with this my kitchen looked like a tornado had ripped through it. The clean-up was pretty intense. And as for the taste? Well, it depends on whether or not you like asparagus. I had 16 people taste this ice cream and asked their opinions. Without fail, every person who liked asparagus loved this ice cream. The two people that did not like the ice cream didn’t like asparagus anyway. So if you are not a lover of asparagus, this is not the recipe to change your mind. If you do love asparagus, get ready for one of the creamiest, freshest, sweet and pleasantly crisp ice creams you will ever taste.

Asparagus Ice Cream

in Desserts / Endless Ice Cream / Featured / Recipe / Veggie 0 comments