As I mentioned on Monday I felt like I have not been around the blog much lately.
For this I seek to put the blame on one object.
Yep, this ice cream maker is the culprit. You see, my grandparents gave me their ice cream maker a few months back and my intention was to try making some tasty ice cream, take a few photos and blog about it for one Foodie Friday.
I started out with your basic strawberry ice cream recipe from ice-cream-recipes.com, unsure of what to expect. With my roommate Alex as my helpful sidekick in this endeavor, we got cooking. From this first batch I discovered if you are going to use frozen fruit you must let it thaw to room temperature. This may seem like an obvious fact, but when you are excited to get going, mostly thawed and mashed seem like they will do. I think it gave the fruit a bit of an icy taste at times. We did however enjoy the ice cream so much we consumed all of it before I got around to photographing it. There is of course only one solution to this problem, more ice cream making.
For our next attempt I decided I needed to get a bit more elaborate and went with a Cherry Ice Cream recipe, but instead of chunks of chocolate I went for bits of homemade brownies. This round was also gobbled up. Yet, I was left a bit unsatisfied. I mistakenly made a large pan of brownies when I should have used a smaller pan to make a thicker batch. Something was also a bit off with the consistency.
More experimentation was needed!
After our whirl with Cherry Brownie Ice Cream, it was decided to stick to a chunky ice cream theme. Which lead us to try Cookie Dough Ice Cream. The recipe was from Fashionably Foodie and the reason I decided to try it was because it was more of a custard based. The recipe also talked about the dangers of raw egg in the cookie dough, which I never worry about, but thought, hey, maybe I should. I therefore made the cookie dough without egg and it turned out a bit funny. It was not gelling together, so I added more milk, which was of course too much. I added more flour, but it was still off, so I beat it longer and it became fluffier than I had ever seen cookie dough get. At this point I gave up and added it to the ice cream. BEST. MOVE. EVER. Oh and the fact that the recipe calls for half the cookie dough into the mix, but I added it all. This was not your chunky cookie dough ice cream, but every bite had cookie dough love screaming on your taste buds. Another key factor to this success was using dark chocolate chunks in the cookie dough instead of your standard little chocolate chips. Sometimes, it is all about the little things. If you ever decide to make cookie dough ice cream I would recommend making a light over mixed batch of cookie dough which infuses into the ice cream.
Have you guessed the next point in our tale? A chocolate based ice cream of course! Chocolate Fudge Swirl Peanut Butter Ice Cream to be exact. Using a recipe from Brown Eyed Baker it was time to dive into the world of chocolate. This one has had the smoothest texture of all the ice creams I have tried thus far. Once again your two heroes had to take the serious business of ice cream making one step further by making another batch of cookies for the ultimate cookie ice cream sandwich. Which of course lead me to a new realization this week.
I could not only be making ice cream flavors I wanted for their sake alone, but now my baked goods could be accompanied by the exact ice cream flavor I wanted. Oh the madness! So earlier this week I made Pear Upside Down Cake using a maple topping on the cake. What better ice cream to pair it with than Maple Pecan?!?! I used a recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini and I think it turned out well. When I asked Alex if he had any thoughts on the latest ice cream, he stated, “yeah, I wish I had more.” So there you have it, I’ll be doubling the batches from now on.
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