Week 24: Oh Snap! - Molasses Ginger Snap Ice Cream

This week's ice cream is perfect for Christmastime. I love gingerbread and this has all of those wonderful flavors in frozen goodness. The molasses ice cream on it's own is tasty but the addition of cookies makes anything better in my opinion. The cookies did get soft but I added some fresh ones crumbled on the top for crunch. You could create some great desserts with this ice cream. If you leave out the cookies in the ice cream you could layer it between two gingerbread men and make gingerbread ice cream sandwiches. I may make those for Christmas next year! You could also serve alongside or layer it between gingerbread cake. A frozen ice cream pie would be delicious with a ginger snap cookie crust. The cookie and ice cream combinations are endless.

On the box of ginger snaps I bought there was a cute note. According to Swedish tradition, you place a cookie in your hand, make a wish, then tap the cookie with your finger. If it breaks into 3 pieces then you're wish will come true. So far, every time I've tried this it's broken into 3. I'd like to hope that my wishes will come true. We'll have to wait and see.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I'll be taking a break for New Year's but I'll be back with a special sous chef. My cousin will hopefully be joining me the week after.

See you in the new year!

Week 23: Egg Nog Ice Cream

I have to be honest in saying I really don't enjoy Egg Nog. I wasn't particularly thrilled about making this one. But I'm also sad to report that it didn't blow me away. I thought it might make me like egg nog. To be honest it tastes like an eggier (I'm making that a word if it isn't) version of the cardamom ice cream. I didn't think about it till now but the first thing Rob said after tasting it was that it tasted like a chai latte to him. To be honest it's the same flavors in cardamom as in this, nutmeg, citrus zest of lemon and orange, orange flavor of grand marnier, and almond flavor of desarono. Not being a egg nog drinker I didn't know what to expect. I'm rather supprised that she would duplicate the flavors of a recipe for another recipe. Maybe it was unintentional. The one thing I omitted for severe lack of taste in is the anisette liquor. I hate the flavor Of licorice and maybe the duplicating of flavors is my fault for not adding it. It may have made it taste different. To me not better but others might disagree. To anyone out there who has made egg nog or egg nog flavored anything. What are the associated flavors? My bosses father used to mix egg nog with creme de menthe, so for her I made a bowl where I added peppermint extract. I think I put in a bit too much. It is a little overwhelming. This ice cream is very rich but for mr not in a good way. I like richness of flavor when it comes to a chocolate or coffee base, but a nutmeg, citrus, egg thing - I'll pass. I hate to diss her recipies but I think this would have been better with just putting bottled egg nog in the ice cream maker and flipping the switch. I hate when I make something I dislike, but I didn't have high hopes for this one. Sorry. I'f you love egg nog, I highly suggest experimenting with making your own ice cream with store-bought or homemade egg nog. If you do I'd like to know the results.

Happy holidays!

What Would You Do-oo-oo?

So I'm stepping it up a notch this week with homemade Klondike bars. But not just any Klondike bars, Triple Coconut Klondike bars. They have great coconut flavor and crunch from toasted coconut, sweetened flakes coconut, coconut milk, and I added cream of coconut to make it even more rich. So if you want to be technically correct its Quadruple coconut. Once I thought about the process it was really easy to make. You make the ice cream as usual, when it's still soft you spread it into a baking dish lined with wax paper (so the ice cream doesn't freeze to the pan). I used a 9x13 pan but if you had more ice cream you could use a deep cookie tray or sheet cake pan. I would just suggest that the mixture fill the container at least an inch high. Let it freeze until it's set enough but not too hard. Remove from pan with wax paper an cut into squares. My mom suggested that the new brownie pans that have inserts to make them precut would work great. I dont make brownies that often to need a pan like that, but they do seem neat. Once they are cut you can return the pan to the freezer if they thawed out too much, if not it's time to dip them in chocolate. I used magic shell! I love this stuff. I've used it before to make carvel-like ice cream cake. This stuff is amazing. I read online that you can make your own (see recipe below) by melting chocolate with coconut oil. Coconut oil is rather expensive, but maybe I'll try it sometime. You coat the bars in magic shell and then refreeze. It takes more magic shell than I thought, but it didn't solidify as quickly as I imagined. You have a little time to top it with nuts or cookie crumbles if you wish to add more texture or flavor. I meant to top some with almonds but forgot in the process of making them. You have to work somewhat quickly because if the bars get too soft the chocolate doesn't stick as well to them. The melted ice cream sort of seizes up the choclate a bit making it harder to get an even coating. But they're handmade, they don't have to be perfect. Mine certainly aren't but they sure taste like it. This is a great thing to try with any store bought ice cream too. You can come up with lots of different flavor combinations. The one benefit to making your own magic shell would be that you can make it with any type of chocolate. White chocolate would be beautiful with mint ice cream for Christmas. This is too easy and too good a treat not to try. It's one of those simple but fancy things that wow people. There's not much I wouldn't do for a Klondike bar, how about you?

Magic Shell Recipe:

1 1/4 Cups Chocolate Chips

1/2 Cup Coconut Oil (measured when solid)

Melt the coconut oil over very low heat. Slowly stir in the chocolate until completely melted and blended. Add a dash of salt. Store your topping in a jar or squeeze bottle. You don't need to refrigerate it, but if it does solidify, just nuke it for a few secs to make it all melty again.

Thankful for Butter Pecan Ice Cream

Per request from my family, I made Butter Pecan ice cream for Thanksgiving. I ended up making two different recipes. One was from Paula Dean on the food network, the other I found online was an adaptation from the joy of cooking. Both were pretty easy recipes. I've provided them below. Paulas was by far the easiest but didn't really provide enough real butter pecan flavor. It has pudding mix which is mostly what I taste when I ate it. It is less sweet than the other but tastes more like cake batter ice cream. The other recipe is really, amazingly good. Very rich in flavor and a lot of nuts which I loved. Both are creamy and smooth. Most of my family ate the one I favored, probably because I sold it better. But to be honest if I had just made Paulas recipe they would have loved it anyway. (A) because I made it and (B) it does taste good. One thing I will say I liked about Paulas recipe besides being ridiculously simple is that the pudding mix gave the ice cream a great buttery yellow color. So try both and see what you prefer.

Recipe Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Butter Pecan Ice Cream on the Food Network

Back by Popular Demand...

So Oreo was a big hit last week except there wasn't enough of it for everyone to try. So I'm making it for a second week. I'll make a double batch this time so I can bring some to my dad. I'll be posting again when I make Butter Pecan for Thanksgiving. Stay tuned.

Week 22: Or-eo-eo Ice Cream

Perhaps the hardest thing about making this ice cream was scraping the cream filing off the cookies. Yes, I said it! I was shocked that the recipe said to do so, but I think it would have made it too sweet. And I get what she was trying to do here, the ice cream is the cream filling. I hated throwing that filling out but really couldn't stand eating it. I'm not really into eating frosting, and thats basically what it is. This ice cream was so easy to make, you could make it for any late night craving. You just make a simple syrup ahead of time (one cup of sugar and one cup of water, simmered till the sugar dissolves). It lasts for a couple months in the fridge. Equal parts whole milk and heavy cream, and you could really add the sugar syrup to taste. The recipe called for 1/4 cup for the 3 cups of heavy cream and milk together, and a dash of vanilla extract. Put this into a maker and then five minutes before its done churning, add the crushed oreo cookies. You could try it with the filling if you want it more sweet but I went for what the recipe said. If you do try it with the whole oreos, I'd like to know how it comes out. I wonder if Nabisco has thought of selling just the cookies. They would be great for desserts or people like me who just love the cookies. I'll have to make my dad a batch of this sometime, he loves oreos! I'm attempting to eat healthier and cook more at home, besides ice cream, but its hard to have the leftover sweets in the house. I still have most of the package of oreos left. I think I'll bring the cookies into work tomorrow so as not to tempt me.

I decided to make an oreo ice cream sandwich when I tasted it. It was delicious. Most people like oreos - they are the cookie of your childhood. They're nostalgic and comforting. This is a perfect combination of chocolate and vanilla. Its so easy you have to try it.

Week 21: Its the Great Pumpkin Gelato, Charlie Brown

I apologize for the huge delay in posting. I'm not having great luck lately. I wrote out a post yesterday and then lost it due to a blogger error on the iPad. Last week we were out of power as a snowstorm hit CT. I had to decide between plugging in the lights or running the ice cream maker. Sadly I chose the lights. Because of this I wasn't able to make my last week of pink ice cream for October. I feel disappointed for not being able to finish it but a donation will still be made to Susan G. Komen.

It was a week of adjustment. You don't realize how much you depend on power until you loose it for a week. I feel for those who are still without power. Because this was such a different week I was totally out of my routine. We stayed with my parents who had a generator and then got their power back mid week. I am so grateful for not having to sleep in a freezing house and see my homemade ice cream melt.

I had great plans for this weeks post but those didn't seem to work out well either. I downloaded an app called Dragon Dictation which types out what you speak into it. I thought this might be a fun and easy way to speak/write these blog posts. I was having some difficulties with the app. You dont have the ability to see what the program is typing as you are saying it, so you dont know what it has picked up until you stop the recording and look at the text. I had to speak very slowly to achieve accuracy and that gets kind of annoying after awhile. This app is great for short sentences or phrases, like a facebook status or tweet. I know they make a computer version which I think works better as it trains the program to learn your voice. I'll have to look into getting that. Anyway enough about that - Lets get to the ice cream!

It seemed perfectly fit to make Pumpkin Gelato as Thanksgiving is a few weeks away. Its also a very comforting and homey flavor that helps when you've had a stressful week. I had made pumpkin ice cream last year for Thanksgiving and didn't have great results. This was before I had this book of course. The texture was never quite right. I thought by adding butter cookies it would taste more like pie but it ended up making it gritty. On another attempt I think I added too much pumpkin and that was too strong a flavor and made it less creamy. But third times a charm I guess. This is creamy without too much spice to be overwhelming. Its not too sweet which I like. If you preferred it sweeter, to be more like pumpkin pie, I would drizzle some maple syrup on top or even better make maple whipped cream. Pecans on the top would add a great crunch. This would be nice to serve alongside pumpkin pie or any pie at Thanksgiving. Its easy simple ingredients will impress your holiday guests and make them very thankful for you and your ice cream.