Entries Tagged 'ice cream' ↓

As Big D’s little S I have been subjected to freezing cold sessions at the crank for a number of years now.  However, it’s only recently that I’ve warmed to the art of icecream making and decided to take the plunge and ask the triple motion crew to get me my own trusty machine (thanks go to Peter and Big D for hunting one down). Said instrument was presented to me earlier on today and with Big D close on hand to supervise, we wasted no time in initiating it and me into the world of icecream making.

Normally I am a die-hard vanilla fan but since that had been done before (and very well) I thought I should work on a signature dish.  After a moments pondering I decided should strive for a cool, creamy, supper smooth lemon ice. I am a big fan of lemon and have been making lemon sponge cake for family birthdays for years. It seemed appropriate to carry this on into my fledgling icecream making career.

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My wonderful, talented, intrepid Antarctic biologist sister was awarded a PhD by Stellenbosch University for being very clever and hard working. Hurray!

My first thought (naturally) was “lets make a batch of icecream to celebrate”. So I threw the ½ gallon freezer in my bag and 12 hours of long haul flight hours later I was in Cape town.

Things didn’t run so smoothly initially when the bag containing my beloved machine disappeared into the black hole of baggage handling. Thankfully it re-appeared 24hrs later with the contents having suffered no ill effects from the journey. However for this brief period the fate of my ice-cream adventure hung in the balance.

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The apple & cinnamon ice cream-scone combination:  truly a winner.

It was inspired by and amazing icecream experience I had in Italy with chocolate gelato in a brioche bun.

Peter and I first tried it out when we made icecream for the great and good of the the UK documentary film community at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival last year (that’s a long story). It was a huge success, I remember standing around on the pavement on a chilly November morning (no danger of the icecream melting prematurely that day) stuffing myself and passers-by with sconey, creamy goodness. The scones were extra useful that day since we didn’t need to buy tubs and spoons to hand the icecream out and they were far tastier than commercial wafer cones.

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By Jove, the blog is as rusted as the mechanism of our beloved machines. But it still works! I just wish other crankers would write more often. And I wish I could crank with them! When is the next meeting of the ice cream team?

Anyway, I brought the machine home for the Christmas holidays in Auvergne. I thought we would serve gallons of frozen dessert, but due to the huge amount of food already present, we did only one batch. It was still worth bringing the machine!

To go with the chocolate cake of Christmas Eve, the best flavour seemed to be tangerine, light and refreshing seasonal fruit.

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We recently made a batch of Chocolate Gelato that was to be served to a 12-year-old girl. Knowing that the young ones among us are often less keen on super dark chocolate I reduced the cocoa powder to just 1/4 cup, hoping that would please her. Unfortunately it was still “too chocolatey and not creamy enough”. Fair enough. I take criticism and try to learn from it.

A few months ago my ice cream services were won in a charity raffle, and the winner requested a batch of chocolate ice cream for a kids party today. So I’m trying a new recipe that should be less dark and more creamy and will hopefully please the young’uns. Not wanting to completely eschew our tried and tested Gelato recipe, I’ve made some simple modifications. My experience has shown that adding a pint of double cream to a gelato results in a mixture way too thick to freeze so I got a pint of single cream and I also reduced the cocoa powder right down. Continue reading →

While I insist to not have favourites, this recipe is certainly high on my list.

So when my dad sent me a new one-gallon White Mountain freezer for my birthday, I knew how I had to inaugurate the new machine.

We first made Whisky and Honey Ice Cream when we were cycling in the Outer Hebrides and it was certainly an amazing experience to make and eat it in the Standing Stones of Calanish.

I decided to celebrate by making a big batch of Whisky and Honey Ice Cream that I could keep in the freezer and enjoy over a few days. I soon discovered this is the perfect ice cream for storage.

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The goal of the perfect nut ice cream often seems elusive. Despite various efforts we do not seem to have technology capable of grinding nuts to the creamy texture we desire. Fortunately there is no shortage of smooth and creamy peanut butter available and we were able to make a fabulously rich ice cream. It’s important to get high quality peanut butter without any added salt, sugar, or oils. And also make sure it is super smooth. The first tub we bought was sold as smooth but still had some small chunks.

• 1 large egg
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 250 ml double cream
• 450g smooth peanut butter (no salt and no sugar)
• milk

The preparation was roughly along the lines of our traditional family recipe. Since the peanut butter is already super smooth, you don’t need to do a lot of work. (Apart from the usual cranking!)

The texture was perfectly smooth and creamy and the flavour unbeatable. This recipe comes highly recommended.

This week end, Dear Old Pat came to visit. Having lived with Peter, he shares our ice cream frenzy, and insisted for doing one batch. No need to say it twice!

I had been wanting to make fig ice cream for a while. I’ve been told this was not a good idea, considering the very light flavour of fresh figs, and the multiple seeds contained in them. But as I’m stubborn, and as figs were cheap on the market, we tried nonetheless.

The Ice book supports the making of a custard to get the best flavour in the ice cream. But custards are long and tedious to make, and the Russell Recipe is so tempting….

Ingredients:
- 1kg of fresh figs
- 1 cup of sugar
- 250 mL of cream
- 2 eggs
- About 1/2L milk

Cook the figs with a few tablespoons of water. Let them simmer until the skin is tender (about 15min). Then blend them, but not too thin (you don’t want to crush the seeds).
Beat 1 egg and a yoke with the sugar. Add the cream. Sieve the fig puree (you can choose to leave a few seeds to keep the characteristic crunch, but do not let them all, it would be most unpleasant), and enough milk to fill the canister.

We went cranking in the street, with 2 other friends. The machine is slowly making its reputation through Paris.

The ice cream was delightful, smooth and creamy. The fig flavour was very light, but nonetheless present. I guess if you want to obtain a strong flavour you have to make a custard, and even infuse fig leaves.

It’s been a while since we’ve made that one, but never too late to write a post!

After the more-than-disappointing lemon ice-cream we made in Carbisdale Castle during our Hebridean trip (the lemon juice curdled the milk, and we ended up with a gross yoghurt-flavoured ice cream… and yet our roommate shouted “It’s the best ice cream I’ve ever had”, in his sleep, in the middle of the night, hu hu…), I needed a better experience with lemon.

I have to say my brother is a huge lemon sorbet fan, he tries them everywhere he can, and his expectations are quite high. When he asked us to make one, pressure was therefore on us…

We followed the recipe from the book “Ices”, that is to say:

-10 lemons

- 750mL of sugar syrup

-250mL water

- 1 egg white

We put the zest of 10 lemon in the syrup, brought it to the boil, then added the juice, and left it to cool. It’s probably better to wait something like 12h, but we did not have time…

The peculiarity of this sorbet is that we opened the machine at mid-cranking to add the beated egg-white. This is supposed to give a better consistency. It’s actually not that hard, you just need another bucket: remove the canister from the machine and open it, then put the ice and water in a separate bucket (otherwise you won’t be able to replace the canister), the replace canister and ice in the machine, and resume cranking!

My brother was not disappointed, and ranked our sorbet among the best ones he had ever tried. It was very strong but not too acidic, and incredibly refreshing. A true success.

We recently made a tangy and creamy batch of raspberry ice cream. I’ve gotten into the habit of doing raspberry as a sorbet, so this was an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable return to a recipe I haven’t done in a long time.

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