Visual Noms

Check out these fantastic ice cream photos!

http://leaflette.org/2011/06/delicious-ice-cream-photo/

Chocolate Bowls?! HELLO.

Chocolate Bowls made with Balloons. This is sheer brilliance at its finest. Best way to serve ice cream ever.

Check it out at:
http://www.bakerella.com/pudding-cups/

#19 Strawberry Lemonade

Sorry for the FOREVER delay in posting, but after much (probably forgotten) anticipation, here it is: STRAWBERRY LEMONADE. This ice cream is partly inspired by my coworker, Lizsl, who was inspired by the McDonald's ad for their strawberry lemonade slushy drink (but obviously my ice cream is WAY better) and partly because I had tried this Strawberry Champagne Cocktail recipe one night and found pureed strawberries to be so tasty and amazing.

Luckily strawberries happened to be on sale at the local grocery store. So with strawberries in hand and a few freshly squeezed lemons, this ice cream came to be.

It's actually a very simple recipe. First, review the cocktail recipe so you can see how to puree strawberries. Then take the following:

1 cup sugar,
32 ounces of strawberries
4 lemons
1 and 1/2 cups cream.

And do this to them:

Put the sugar in a pot.
Puree the strawberries
Juice the lemons (you need approximately 1 cup of fresh lemon juice).

Then add the strawberry puree and lemon juice to the pot with the sugar. Heat on medium to assist the sugar in dissolving. Use the immersion blender to make sure everything is well mixed. Then strain it. TWICE.

Add 1 1/2 cups heavy cream to the strained mixture and then whisk it until thoroughly mixed. Chill it, churn it, enjoy!

See the pictures below. I was having fun with the knife and strawberries. It was basically a strawberry massacre, which might be a good alternative name for this ice cream. It tastes amazing, just like strawberry lemonade. I kind of think it tastes like a fruit roll-up in a way, but that's okay because fruit roll-ups taste wonderful too.




The End.

Pictures!

#18 Salted Caramel

Well, this one has been a long time coming. My coworker, Lizsl, has been requesting it ever since I started making ice cream because it's one of her favorite flavors OF ALL TIME.

The first thing I had to do was figure out how to make caramel. I've never done that before, although I've seen it being made a few times. So I enlisted the assistance of a superstar cook, Travis, who makes awesome caramel popcorn, but it turns out the caramel he makes for the popcorn is corn syrup based rather than sugar based, so we scoured the internet for a real sugar-based caramel recipe that could be transformed into tasty delicious ice cream!

Earlier in the day I found a salted caramel recipe that I liked, but it was for a more chewy type of caramel candy. The recipe is here: http://bakedbree.com/salted-caramels-week-5-of-12-weeks-of-christmas#axzz1MFKvYecP I might try to make these one day, perhaps for someone's birthday in December.

We found a caramel sauce recipe on the same website. I'm not the best baker, but with the help of bakedbree.com I think I might just be able bake some tasty treats some day! Her site looks awesome. There's so many yummy-looking recipes on there. Check it out!

Here's the caramel sauce recipe: http://bakedbree.com/caramel-sauce#axzz1MFKvYecP

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/3 cup water
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

AND (my addition) 1 1/2 teaspoons course sea salt

1. Put sugar in saucepan.
2. Cover with water, medium heat, bring to boil, do not stir or disturb.
3. After about 10 minutes a golden amber color should appear. Well, this didn't happen for me. Instead the sugar began to crystallize. It was very traumatic, like in Return to Oz when you touch the forbidden desert and turn to sand! Only not exactly. We were about to scratch the batch when I had a bout of intuitive inspiration and poured some more water into it and turned up the heat. The sugar crystals dissolved and the golden amber color appeared almost instantly!
4. Add the cream and whisk away! I used the whisking attachment on the immersion blender. This also helped to dissolve the remaining sugar crystals.
5. After it's well mixed (smooth and silky) then add the vanilla and sea salt.
6. Take off the heat. The sauce thickens as it cools. It cools faster in the refrigerator.

I think this recipe made about 2 cups of caramel sauce.

For the ice cream I used 1 1/2 cups of the salted caramel sauce as the base and then added 3 cups of half & half. Yes, I'm trying half & half this time instead of heavy cream. Just because.

I sprinkled a few course sea salt crystals on top of the ice cream after it had frozen, which added a little extra salty kick. Although I might recommend serving this ice cream with a little sea salt on the side so the devourer can add as much or as a little salt as they desire. This ice cream truly captures the essence of the salted caramel flavor.

According to Lizsl there's only one word that describes it: Heaven!

#17 Chocolate Peppermint

Going on vacation made me fall a little behind on my one ice cream per week schedule, so I'm going to try and catch up over the next few weeks. To get back into the swing of things I made a simple chocolate peppermint ice cream.


I had one package of German baking chocolate left over from the German Chocolate Cake ice cream, so I threw it into the pot along with the other ingredients from the basic ice cream recipe.

After the chocolate melted I used the immersion blender and mixed everything up until it looked smooth and silky. I was tempted to pour myself a glass of this super sweetened hot chocolate milk, but I resisted. (Although I did taste it a few times more than was necessary. /shameless confession)

Next I added 3 cups of cream and 2 teaspoons of peppermint extract. Also, this happened.

Then I chilled it, churned it, and garnished the chocolate peppermint ice cream with some crushed peppermint candy!
And there you have it.

A simple super-tasty chocolate peppermint ice cream dessert of deliciousness!

Four things I learned tonight while making ice cream...

So, after an awesome two week hiatus in Thailand I'm back and I'm making more ice cream, RIGHT NOW, but first I must share...

Four things I learned tonight while making ice cream:
1) dripping peppermint extract onto a burning stove can cause a rather large flare up of FIRE
2) knocking plastic measuring devices into fire (while in shock) will result in more fire and melting plastic
3) burning peppermint extract smells way better than burning plastic.
4) making ice cream is oddly dangerous...or maybe it's just me!

RIP TEASPOON

#16 Harvey Wallbanger

What is a Harvey Wallbanger?

It's a cocktail.

I had no idea. Kip requested this ice cream for his office party as well. According to the interwebs o' knowledge here is a typical recipe for the Harvey Wallbanger drink:

1.5 ounces Vodka

4 ounces Orange Juice

0.5 ounces Galliano Liquor

Shake and serve. You can also garnish it with an orange slice and maybe a maraschino cherry. (And a little umbrella, if you're going to be sitting outside on the beach beneath a larger umbrella...)

Having never had this cocktail before I really had no reference for the flavor. So I winged it.

Alcohol doesn't willingly freeze like water, milk, and cream, so incorporating it into ice cream can be dangerous. So I abstained from adding vodka to the ice cream recipe, but I did use a 1/4 cup of the Galliano Liquor. First I reduced the liquor for about 15 minutes so that most of the alcohol would boil off.

Next I began heating 1 cup of cream with 1 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of cornstarch, 1/4 teaspoon of corn syrup, and 1/8 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Once that was heated I added in 2 squirts of fresh lemon juice, 1 cup of fresh orange juice (no pulp), and the remainder of the reduced 1/4 cup of Galliano liquor. Next I added 2 cups of cream and continued to heat and whisk the mixture. Finally, it was chilled and then poured into the ice cream machine, and thus a cocktail turned into ice cream!

Here's what Kip had to say about:

"The Harvey Wallbanger ice cream was really creamy and tasted a lot like the little orange cream cups you get as a kid that you eat with the wooden spoon. It had a hint of the Galliano... it was really, really creamy."

"Too creamy?"

"No, not at all. I think you should hold on to that one. It was really good."

Another positive review! Woohoo! Picture time!