Get Out Your Ice Cream Machine or Buy One

Yum!

Last Christmas, I made cranberry sorbet. That was both festive and delicious.

I might like that, even though I learned to hate cranberries as a child. That was via my mother entering contests back in the fifties. She did win some prizes - I remember a big sunflower shaped plate (a tuna contest). But the cranberry contest made us pretty cranberry avoidant thereafter.

Still, I use them in muffins, in the dried form. You live nearer to real cranberry 'fields'. I'm remembering an a2ker, earlier of abuzz, who either had a cranberry (field?) or somehow worked with them. Her name is close to the surface in memory. Chun chun, maybe.

Yes, it was chun chun.
http://able2know.org/topic/59092-1
I wish she'd come back. She was part of a memorable duck thread, back on abuzz, with jespah and others. I nearly died laughing.

Maybe she still uses the same email account and this will show up for her. I don't remember the name.

I am seriously thinking of pumpkin ice cream.

I made a pumpkin pie this week, cutting some of the sugar in the recipe, providing me with a fun breakfast or two or three or four. Not from a real pumpkin, just the canned stuff. I can see using squash, more accessible to me than 'cooking' pumpkins.

Sure, you can use squash. I read once that what is sold as canned pumpkin is at least partially, if not wholly, squash. I suspect those enormous blue squashes are used, the ones that are too big to cook at once.

You can also use sweet potatoes, although the flavor would be different.

On another note, one of my favorite sorbets is made with grapefruit. I was between my first and second ice cream machines when I first tasted grapefruit sorbet at a small ice cream shop in Concord (MA) center. The shop was a branch of a small ice cream maker from VT (not Ben and Jerry) but was pushed out by a jeweler, whose wares are boring, but who offered the landlord more money. I was heartbroken. That's when I decided to replace the burned out ice cream maker.

Thanks for sharing a great ice-cream recipe, Osso. I copied and pasted it into my recipe folder...along with that luscious photo lol. Mmmm...chocolate, cashews and coffee...I love that it's coffee flavored. Ina Garten always puts a bit of coffee in her chocolate concoctions, saying it enhances the flavor of the chocolate.

Tangenting from ice cream to cake..

probably my favorite cake recipe ever:
torta di noci e cioccolato (chocolate and walnut cake, has coffee in it)
http://able2know.org/topic/106632-1#post-2932804

That looks like something even I could handle. Being a chocolate-lover, I might top it with Ina's easy-to-make ganache (she puts a teaspoon of espresso powder in it). Would be good with the whipped cream, too, though...which is what I'm sure Mr.Irish would vote for.

I may have to make it again myself. Hmm, bundt pan or springform? I've made it in both. Seems like a nice healthy breakfast food to me, heh, all those walnuts. Anyway, I remember it as quite easy, which is good, since I have no patience for baking fancy stuff. Infinite patience for eating it though. I don't eat a lot of sweets, as I'm sure I've mentioned, but occasionally there is nothing better.

I know what you mean about breakfast. Mr.Irish really likes it when the bananas get left too long and go black. Banana bread for breakfast!!

I like banana walnut bread for breakfast, but whatever the last recipe I made it from was, it was way too sweet for me. I'm a sugar cutter (1/3, half, or 2/3 in a lot of recipes, but my antennae weren't up on that one.

That was chun chun, I now remember.

On the pumpkin theme (I see I was posting on the wrong food thread), I've just finished making pumpkin and currant ice cream, using this recipe as a starter -

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-icecream20-2008nov20,0,5255599.story

I didn't use all cream, adding some half and half as part of the dairy. I didn't do the caramel pecan thing. (I did soak some thousand year old currants overnight in a splash of bourbon with added water, then drained them and added to the bowl of chilling ingredients). I used only the 5 tbs of brown sugar and no other sugar.

Ummmmmm, good.


One of these days I'm going to have to venture into using ice cream/gelato recipes that involve eggs..

Have to add that on second taste, I didn't like that pumpkin ice cream so much. Could be something I did wrong though.

To make up for that lapse, I'll had this link, from the LA Times today -
Frozen Chocolate Zabaglione

So I finally tried making gelato. Oh my, it's fabulous. And it was easier than I had worried about.

I used Ina Garten's Deeply Chocolate Gelato recipe (and, of course, altered it)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/deeply-chocolate-gelato-recipe/index.html


Ingredients
2 1/4 cups whole milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar, divided
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (recommended: Pernigotti)
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
4 extra-large egg yolks
2 tablespoons Mexican coffee flavor liqueur (recommended: Kahlua)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Large pinch kosher salt
8 chocolates, roughly chopped, optional (recommended: Baci)

Directions
Heat the milk, cream, and 1/2 cup sugar in a 2-quart saucepan, until the sugar dissolves and the milk starts to simmer. Add the cocoa powder and chocolate and whisk until smooth. Pour into a heat-proof measuring cup.

Place the egg yolks and the remaining 1/4 cup sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and very thick. With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour the hot chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Pour the egg and chocolate mixture back into the 2-quart saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. A candy thermometer will register about 180 degrees F. Don't allow the mixture to boil!

Pour the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and stir in the coffee liqueur, vanilla, and salt. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the custard and chill completely.

Pour the custard into the bowl of an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's directions. Stir in the roughly chopped chocolate, if using, and freeze in covered containers. Allow the gelato to thaw slightly before serving.

Osso - I only used half (or even less of the cocoa since it already looked chocolatey enough), and no other chocolate at all. It's still a very rich tasting gelato. I used five "large" egg yolks instead of four "extra large".
Used vodka instead of Kahlua. (One of these days I should make my own Kahlua again)

If I keep this up, I'm going to get chubby.

So I went nuts last evening and cooked up the chocolate custard for gelato. (see recipe above, still used only 1/2 c. cocoa).

What was I thinking, way too hot in the house to stand over a custard making sure it got to temp but not boil. Yikes.

But it got to cool overnight in the fridge and today, I've got a neat batch of gelato.

Next time, I'll do it in the afternoon when the swamp cooler is working..

A whole cup of cocoa sounds like a lot!!! I'll try your way when I make it, for sure.

Would you try Brussel Sprout ice-cream?? I guess if you add enough sugar, eggs and vanilla, you can make anything taste good LOL!


Father Christmas tastes the '12 ice-creams of Christmas' at the opening of Harrods Christmas World department in London. Flavours include Gingerbread, Mulled Wine, Mince Pie, Apple & Chestnut Stuffing and Brussel Sprout.
Picture: GETTY

I might try one teaspoonful of someone else's. I'm not a brussels sprout hater (when they're cooked smartly), but the idea doesn't attract me. I can see savory sorbets more than I can see savory as a mode for ice cream, but that's just me.

So, I was looking at chocolate at the grocery store. All the good stuff costs so much. I did find out that the giardelli's (I don't think of them as tip top, but still a reach for my wallet), same stuff, was cheaper in the baking aisle than the candy aisle. hmm. Now there's a life lesson.

While in the store I remembered that I have some Ibarra Mexican chocolate hanging around.

So - that's next.

http://www.mangiodasola.com/2009/09/mexican-chocolate-ice-cream.html and that in turn points to a link to simply recipes.com.

I made blueberry sherbet. Just some blueberries (don't ask how many! the blueberries that were left over!) cooked with a little sugar and then cooled for 24 hours and enough whole milk to fill the ice cream maker to what should be the maximum level. Very rich and delicious.

BTW: I use Pernigotti chocolate but I buy it from Amazon rather than Williams Sonoma.