What am I... REVEALED!

At the beginning of July, I posted this link with a photo of a recipe in progress. Just to recap, this is the picture that I posted both on the blog as well as on my personal Facebook page: 

 I got some really interesting guesses and someone did finally figure out what this was a photo of.  

This is the base of my very first batch of strawberry ice cream! I typically get into the groove of making ice cream particularly during the summer months. Last summer I made coffee ice cream (which was amazing!) and a double chocolate mint ice cream (vanilla ice cream infused with mint from my chocolate mint plant and then white and dark chocolate chunks in it). 

Lately, I've been craving very fruity based things and with two amazing farmers' markets as well as local farms in my reach, how could I not use what I have in my grasp? I'd picked up some local beauties and knew that their sole purpose would be to make ice cream! I found this amazing recipe at Blissfully Delicious that I knew would be just what I was looking for. It's simple, straightforward and looked heavenly. I will admit that beyond the above picture, I don't have any pics except for the finished product (yup, another case of food blogger-cide!) I promise, the recipe will guide you through everything you need to know :)

Here goes:

Recipe borrowed from Blissfully Delicious and is adapted from David Lebovitz via Fine Cooking

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Table salt
5 large egg yolks
1 lb. fresh or frozen strawberries, trimmed, pureed, strained, and mixed with 1/2 cup sugar (or less, if your berries are very sweet) - I actually skipped the straining, added some small chunks of strawberries into the puree and I only added about 1/4 cup of sugar as my berries were gorgeous!

Directions

• In a medium saucepan, mix 1 cup of cream with the milk, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Warm the cream mixture over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves and tiny bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan, 3 to 4 minutes.
• Prepare an ice bath by filling a large bowl with several inches of ice water. Set a smaller metal bowl (one that holds at least 1-1/2 quarts) in the ice water (be sure to use a metal bowl, it helps cool things down even faster). Pour the remaining cup of cream into the inner bowl (this helps the custard cool quicker when you pour it in later). Set a fine strainer on top. Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl.
• In a steady stream, pour half of the warm cream mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly to prevent the eggs from curdling.
• Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heatproof rubber spatula until the custard thickens slightly (it should be thick enough to coat the spatula and hold a line drawn through it with a finger), 4 to 8 minutes. An instant-read thermometer should read 175° to 180°F at this point (My thermometer's battery has died so I just relied on the running my finger on the back of a wooden spoon test and all was well!) Don’t let the sauce overheat or boil, or it will curdle. Immediately strain the custard into the cold cream in the ice bath.
• Cool the custard to below 70°F by stirring it over the ice bath. Stir the strawberry puree into the cooled custard.
• Refrigerate the custard until completely chilled, at least 4 hours or overnight. Then freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
• Transfer to an air-tight container, and freeze for at least 4 hours or up to 2 weeks.
• NOTE - This recipe made too much mixture for my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker so unfortunately we had to eat some of it like it was a milkshake. Not a single person in my house complained!!!

I ended up loving this so much that I made it again a week later! My Dad, who doesn't do desserts EVER, claimed that this was as good as Haagan Dazs' Strawberry ice cream. I'll allow a bit of that to be related to me being his daughter, but otherwise I will take his honest opinion.

I absolutely love seeing the chunks of strawberry in the ice cream. It made it all that much better. Please, please, please say that you will try this recipe soon!!! It's worth it, I promise.

Hugs to you all and happy Monday!

t

Coping with the Heat Wave!

For those of us lucky enough to be living in Toronto, or its surrounding area, have been experiencing quite the heat wave lately. With temperatures rendering drying off after a shower almost useless, it is very easy to say that we are all roasting like rotisserie chickens!

To help cope with this heat (and because I am slightly addicted) I whipped out my trusty ice cream maker to create some deeeeeeelicious ice cream! I assessed my current cravings and decided that coffee flavoured ice cream was the way to go! Having only had made ice cream at home a few times, I wanted to try something different and naturally that curiosity lead me to my favourite spot on the internet: Google! After some minor research, I came across a recipe for coffee ice cream on the Simply Recipes' Blog which is adapted from David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop.

This recipe calls for some pretty simple ingredients: milk, sugar, whole coffee beans, heavy cream, salt, egg yolks, vanilla and finely ground coffee...

This sounded simple enough for the fact that I had everything except for the coffee beans (for some reason we had already ground all of ours at home!). As I was standing in the grocery store perusing the whole coffee bean selection, I realized that the flavour of bean chosen would change the flavour of the final product. I figured for my first attempt that I would stick with a flavour that I have adored for years: Vanilla Hazelnut.

Side Note: I feel that I must sing the praises of my ice cream maker and how fantastic it is to have one kicking around our house. I received this one as a Christmas gift from my best friend (Thanks Kathryn!) 2 years ago and sadly haven't used it very often. The version of this delightful machine that I was so lucky to receive actually came with two freezer bowls which really just means that it's twice as easy to make ice cream whenever you want (assuming that you have a freezer big enough to hold both bowls... I do not). Once the bowl is frozen, add it to the base, add in the paddle, put on the cover, flip the switch on and add your delicious creamy custard-y concoction and let er' rip! It's THAT easy!

Anyway, back to coffee ice cream! The cream is infused with the delicious coffee flavour and steeps for just over an hour. Maybe it's just me but I think that this is the most gorgeous demonstration of the wonder of food ever! Look how perfectly all the coffee beans just swim in the cream, milk and sugar mixture.

While this recipe is a little more labour intensive that most ice cream recipes I've seen, I promise you this is worth every single second of it. Having enjoyed my share of ice cream over the years, and having worked for Laura Secord I am quite familiar with commercial ice cream and have come to love them all. But the flavour of this ice cream all on its own, without any strange ingredients or things that one can't pronounce, is mind blowing! It is truly incomparable and should be experienced by all!

After the infusing and mixing, the coffee custard is churned through the wonderful ice cream maker for about 25 minutes at which point you end up with delicious soft serve consistency ice cream. If you put it in a container and freeze it for a while, you'll have wonderfully scoop-able ice cream that looks like this (when served over delicious cheesecake with berries):

All I can say is as soon as you have a moment, make this ice cream! It could change your life!!!

Happy Cooking!

t