07.27.09
Posted in Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Ice Cream at 2:55 pm by julie
The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network. We were given the choice of making either or both of these two cookies; I would have liked to try both of them, but our waistlines could only handle one. I chose the mallow cookies, since I’ve never had the guts to make my own marshmallow before. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of marshmallows, mostly because of their rubbery texture and one-note sugary taste, but I’d always heard that the homemade variety is a completely different species from the store-bought sort, so I was very curious to know if that were true.
These cookies came together over the course of several days for me, in part because of the heat wave we’ve been having here in Oregon, and in part because our former sticky bun is now able to toddle around after me and cling to my leg, which slows down my progress tremendously. (He also pilfers my fish turner, spider, and various other kitchen implements, but that’s another story.) I made the dough one evening, stuck it in the fridge, and didn’t get around to baking it off until the next day. I had to do a double-take when I realized the recipe called for storing it as a chilled disk, rolling it and stamping out shapes, because I had kind of assumed it would call for slicing it from log form like so many refrigerated cookie dough. It rolled out fine, but made so many cookies that I ended up freezing half the dough—in a log—to use another time.
I didn’t have a cookie cutter as small as the one called for in the recipe, so instead I used a 2″ round biscuit cutter. My cookies puffed up quite a bit when I baked them, so I may not have rolled the dough quite thin enough. I decided to slice most of them in half while they were hot, which worked beautifully and gave me a more wafer-like cookie.
When it came time to make the marshmallow, I realized that I was out of light corn syrup. I took a risk and substituted dark corn syrup in its place, and the color of the heated sugar syrup made me worry that my marshmallows would end up beige and molasses-flavored. As it turned out, however, they whipped up white as snow, and the flavor had just a whisper of brown-sugar complexity that married nicely with vanilla. It would have been helpful if the recipe had specified an amount of whipping time for the marshmallow. Mine took a good ten or fifteen minutes at high speed to whip up to a stiff consistency after I added the sugar syrup, about long enough for the mixture to cool, which I doubt was a coincidence.
My house was so warm that my marshmallow didn’t want to hold its shape for long, so as soon as I got all my cookies piped out, I ran the tray down into our cool basement and crossed my fingers that the mallow wouldn’t end up melting and running all over the place. Since I didn’t bake all the dough at one time, I had about half of the marshmallow leftover, and I poured that freeform on a silpat dusted with powdered sugar, to use for another purpose.
Several hours later, the mallow was more set than tacky, so I went ahead and did the chocolate coating before bedtime. I was tired and cranky from the heat, so I didn’t bother with a bain marie; I just used semi-sweet chocolate chips and melted them over low heat in a saucepan. It worked out fine; no burning, seizing, or otherwise. However, I did run out of glaze before all the cookies were coated, so I had to make more. They went back on a silpat in the basement overnight. (And I have to just say, these look so much like Tagalongs, I might have to make some from that log of extra dough in my freezer…once the weather cools back down, that is!)
The next day I went downstairs to check on the mallows, and the chocolate was still gooey. A good 24 hours after that, it was still not totally set up, even in my cool basement, so I think only the fridge will suffice this time of year—we’ve had over a week of temps in the upper 90’s, are supposed to top 100F for the next few days, and it has got to be at least 85 degrees in my house. The second I pick up one of these cookies to take a bite, it starts melting all over my hand, but the few I’ve managed to taste are absolutely delicious, worlds better than any marshmallow product I’ve ever purchased, so the rumors are true. Homemade marshmallows are worth the fuss. Nolan loves the cookies too, but I think they are about the messiest possible cookie to cut up and share with a baby—crumbs, melting chocolate and sugary goo. We had slightly better luck feeding him our alternative marshmallow application, below.
I cut up the excess marshmallow into sticky cubes and used it in a recipe Jeremy has been requesting to combat the heat—homemade rocky road ice cream. The ice cream base was from The Perfect Scoop, made with a combination of Dutch-process cocoa, Valrhona bittersweet chocolate and Guittard milk chocolate. I mixed it after processing with roasted chopped almonds and the homemade marshmallow, and it is easily the best rocky road we’ve ever had.
This marshmallow recipe stayed pretty sticky and hard to cut up; I’m not sure if that was caused by the heat or an error on my part, or if that’s just how this recipe intended them to be for the cookies. I’ll have to try a stand-alone marshmallow recipe this winter for hot chocolate and s’mores. I was a little afraid my cubes would dissolve when I stirred them into the ice cream, but as you can see, the marshmallow maintained its structural integrity and worked very nicely with the ice cream.
Thanks so much to Nicole and the Daring Bakers for pushing me to give homemade marshmallows a chance. This was another fun challenge! And be sure to look at all the gorgeous mallows and milanos at the Daring Bakers Blogroll!
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
Tuiles – January 2009
Chocolate Valentino and Ice Cream – February 2009
Lasagne of Emilia-Romana – March 2009
Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake – April 2009
Apple Strudel – May 2009
Bakewell Tart and Homemade Jam – June 2009
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02.28.09
Posted in Cake, Chocolate, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Ice Cream at 12:18 am by julie
You may have noticed that I left out any mention of a dessert in my Valentine’s Day post. But no Valentine’s Day (or any other holiday—or most weekdays, for that matter) would be complete without a dessert, preferably something chocolatey. And this month’s Daring Bakers challenge filled that need admirably. The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge. Decadent chocolate cake and ice cream—who could ask for more?
For me, the most difficult part of the challenge was acquiring a good quality chocolate on a shoestring budget. Although most of the time I am content to use bittersweet Ghirardelli bars from the grocery store, I was determined (in the spirit of the challenge, of course) to try out a brand we’d never eaten before. Chocosphere carries more options than I could shake a stick at, but I went with Valrhona Le Noir Gastronomie, a 61% bittersweet. I decided against a higher cocoa content because I was concerned about bitterness, considering the lack of sugar in this recipe. The 1Kg bag of fèves I purchased was more expensive than I would have liked, but on the plus side, I now have just over a pound of excellent chocolate leftover for another recipe.
The cake itself was incredibly easy to make. I went my usual route and melted the chocolate and butter in the microwave, and then it was just a matter of stirring in the yolks and folding in the beaten whites. I was stumped at first by the 50 sq. in. pan requirement, because I don’t have any springforms or cake pans smaller than 9×9, a deficiency I will someday have to rectify. But after taking my tape measure to every dish in the kitchen, I went with a small ceramic casserole of about 6×9, and couldn’t resist saving a bit of batter for my lone heart-shaped ramekin. The casserole went in for 25 minutes, and the ramekin joined it after the first 10.
They both turned out beautifully, and I had no problems with sticking. I decorated the heart with a simple cloud of powdered sugar, and attempted a stencil on the larger valentino that also incorporated cocoa powder.
As for the ice cream element of the challenge, I’ve tried countless ice cream recipes since receiving an ice cream maker a year or two ago, more than one of which was a variety of vanilla. And I was out of heavy cream. So I took the liberty of making peanut butter frozen yogurt instead, adapted freely from several recipes in The Perfect Scoop
. It turned out very well, and beyond the obvious perfections of the chocolate-peanut butter pairing, the sweet tang of the yogurt proved a good counterpoint to the bittersweet chocolate. Too bad Nolan isn’t quite old enough yet to sample peanuts.
All in all, this was one of the more straightforward challenges, and I have to admit it was a welcome one. The cake really does showcase the chocolate you choose. The texture is a bit like crumbly velvet at room temperature, and reheats to fudgy decadence with just a few seconds in the microwave, a perfect Valentine’s dessert that lasted us several days. Thanks so much to Dharm and Wendy for choosing this month’s challenge, and check out all the other chocolate valentinos at the Daring Bakers Blogroll.
Peanut Butter Frozen Yogurt
3 C plain yogurt, whole or lowfat
3/4 C sugar
1/4 C brown sugar
about 2/3 C peanut butter (I used natural, and didn’t really measure)
1 tsp vanilla
Combine all ingredients in a blender, and process until homogenous. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight, then churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
Tuiles – January 2009
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01.29.09
Posted in Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Ice Cream at 6:16 pm by julie
This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Baking Soda and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux’s Finest Desserts. And thank goodness they chose something so light and versatile, because I wasn’t able to try my hand at one of the recipes until this morning!
Payday isn’t until tomorrow, so the cupboards are looking a little bare. Part of this Daring Bakers assignment was to pair our tuiles with something light: a dip, a mousse, a sorbet, something fruity, you get the idea. I had the ingredients to make a chocolate-coconut sorbet from The Perfect Scoop, so I decided to pair that with a simple vanilla tuile. I was able to mix up the sorbet base before Nolan woke up this morning, but he’s been getting up earlier and earlier these days (a bit sad for me, as I was able to get so much done in the mornings when he slept until noon), so he got to supervise the tuile construction from his high chair. I cooked up the egg yolks leftover from making the batter, and they kept him busy while I worked.
The pizza dough I made the other night had screwed my Kitchenaid mixing bowl too firmly into the base for me to remove myself (this always seems to happen when I knead dough in it), so I took a chance and whipped up the tuile batter in my food processor instead, making sure to pulse as little as possible to avoid overbeating it.
I first made a single test-tuile by simply smearing some batter on my silpat with a spoon, trying to keep it thin and even, and pulling it out of the oven when the edges were just starting to brown. I shaped it over my rolling pin for simplicity’s sake, and although it came out a little spongy, eventually it did harden into a little cookie-taco thing. I would definitely recommend doing test-rounds, because the recipe was not very specific about how thick the batter should be, and with such delicate wafers, the difference between a soft cookie and a burned one could be a matter of seconds since every oven bakes in its own time.
While the cookie sheet cooled down, I decided to make a quick stencil for my next batch of tuiles, realizing how much easier that would make spreading the batter thinly and uniformly. I didn’t really have time to get creative with the shaping, since Nolan’s interest in the egg yolks was flagging, so I cut out long strips to shape into curls, and a wider rectangle to make cigars. I would have loved to make ice cream cones for the sorbet, but lacking any sort of cone shaper, that will have to wait for another time, maybe this summer. For the stencils, I just cut my shapes out of a piece of cardboard salvaged from a Costco-sized box of Mini-Wheats, slightly more sturdy than your average cereal box, but still less than a millimeter thick. The batter spread easily over it with my new off-set spatula.
I curled the strips around #13 straight knitting needles to make my corkscrews. It took a few rounds to get the right balance of baking time (6 minutes in my oven was ideal for the stenciled shapes) and shaping speed. I think I burned a few of my fingers a little in the process—those cookies are HOT while they are malleable!—but eventually I got a few decent curls, and I even played around with decorating my batter as the recipe suggested.
This photo shows my learning curve. I had definitely improved by the time I ran out of batter, but I could really use more practice. I can understand how people could really get into the creative aspect of making tuiles: they are incredibly fun and versatile, with thousands of options for shapes and flavors and whimsical decorations. Having made these, I now want to try making Parmesan salad cups and almond-butterscotch lace ice cream cups and fortune cookies and tuile flowers and butterflies and all number of things.
I had to photograph the sorbet fresh from the churn so it started melting really quickly, and I wasn’t able to get a very good photo of it. I’ll have to try again once it’s ripened in the freezer for a bit. It tasted great with the tuiles, however; they made delicious little scoops that tasted just like fortune cookies. I was surprised at the rather small yield of the batch, and under my present circumstances, it did seem like kind of a lot of work for the outcome, since they require rapt and immediate attention that doesn’t combine well with the demands of a 10-month old. But it was still fun to try, and whetted my appetite to play with tuiles again in the future.
The recipes are available at our hosts’ websites, and be sure to check out the wild creativity of all the other Daring Bakers at our blogroll!
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
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10.09.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dairy, Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream, Italian, Pies & Tarts at 7:37 pm by julie
I apologize for the long delay in getting back to the story… Nolan came down with his very first cold last week, and I caught one to commiserate, so we’ve generally been pretty fussy and sleepless around here. For once, the little guy fell asleep on Daddy’s chest instead of mine, so here I am. Anyway, our friends brought over a beautiful cake from Konditorei for the party, but I was feeling like an overachiever and wanted to provide another option, particularly in view of all the luscious fruit that was in season. To keep it relatively simple, I opted for a freeform summer fruit galette, filled with local peaches. Thinking I might combine the peaches with something else, I stopped by one of the berry stands, even though I don’t much care for berries personally. Blackberries are particularly low on my list because I find them to be so gritty and sour, not to mention pernicious and thorny. But somehow, for the sake of politeness, I found myself agreeing to sample all the berries at the stand, and was pleasantly surprised. Not only did I eat my very first non-sour blackberry, but I also realized that boysenberries were in season, and impulsively bought two pints.
I used all my fresh fruit to make a peach-boysenberry crostata following the summer galette recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. (What is the difference, by the way? In some recipes, galettes and crostatas appear to be the same thing, just French and Italian, respectively.) I made the pie crust in my food processor the day before the party, then rolled it and filled it and baked it off the next morning. I’ll definitely use this crust again, as it produced very flaky results and wasn’t too fussy to work with. Wish I could say the same for the peaches, which refused to slip their skins neatly despite two blanchings. The galette was absolutely simple to put together, and looked beautiful until I poured the simple custard over the fruit: it spilled right over the sides of the crust and burned, so it was fortunate I had the foresight to be baking on a silpat. I’m still not quite sure what it added to the finished galette, and it made such a sloppy presentation that I saved it as a tidbit for the guests of honor to sample, rather than putting it out for everyone. It was, however, delicious, both at room temperature and sliced straight from the fridge the next day. Jeremy wasn’t really interested in trying it at first, but said it had really grown on him by the time we finished it off, and I, who love nectarines but not peaches (especially cooked ones), am now very tempted to make the custardy peach pie from the same book next summer.
Since I still had over a pint of boysenberries leftover after the galette, I offered to make Jeremy some boysenberry sorbet or something. He countered with a request for vanilla ice cream with boysenberries swirled through it, so I adapted David Lebovitz’s raspberry swirl ice cream. The recipe calls for slightly mashing and macerating the berries with sugar, then layering it through freshly churned custard-style vanilla ice cream. This sounded good in theory, but when I actually made the ice cream this way, my berries froze up rock solid in the ice cream and made a difficult, if tasty, eating experience, not to mention that the seeds were really bothering me in this application. If I were to do this again, I would either just macerate the berries and spoon them over the ice cream as we served it, or puree and sieve the fruit with a higher sugar content (to keep it from freezing rock solid) before layering it much more thinly in the ice cream, or just stir it right into the custard and lose the swirl aspect. It looked pretty, but just wasn’t worth the effort, and we ended up eating around the berries, which was a terrible waste.
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09.09.08
Posted in Chocolate, Dairy, Dessert, Ice Cream at 11:17 am by julie
One night a week or two ago, I was craving brownies. Nolan was still awake, but I thought I could pull it off pretty quickly anyway while he was hanging out with his daddy. I opted for the semi-sweet variation of my favorite brownie recipe, which I’d never tried out before. (Usually I go for the bittersweet version, but we have a ton of semi-sweet chips.) As soon as I measured out the chocolate, however, Nolan started fussing, and I ended up holding him and dictating the recipe to Jeremy. The batter turned out more like cookie dough, so much so that he had to pat it into the pan, but the recipe had warned that the cocoa butter content of the semi-sweet chips would create a stiff batter, so I brushed aside my doubts.
Twenty minutes went by, and I managed to get Nolan down for a nap just in time to pull the pan from the oven. I knew immediately that there was a problem, because the brownies looked heavy and dull. A touch confirmed that they were hard as rocks, and suddenly it struck me: the flailing baby had distracted me so much that I forgot to tell Jeremy to put two eggs in the batter. No wonder my brownies looked more like a huge square sablé cookie. Good thing we had that 10-lb bag of chocolate chips from Costco—I darted around the kitchen whipping up a second batch of brownies, this time double-checking myself at every addition. Into the oven they went, and I pondered what to do with the evidence of my failure. I could probably have tossed them out and Jeremy would never have been the wiser, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw out something that still tasted fine. I had just decided to break them up for ice-cream mix-ins when Nolan woke up again and off I went.
A few days later, once gooey, delicious Brownie Batch #2 had been eaten up, I went back to Batch #1, crushed it up into cookie crumbs in a ziploc bag, and mixed it into freshly churned Philly-style vanilla ice cream. The result was like upscale cookies-n-cream ice cream, so fantastic that I will be sorely tempted to “forget” the eggs in future batches of brownies just for that purpose. The recipe is below, in case anyone else would like to make the same mistake.
Brownie Crumbles for Ice Cream
10 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
5 T unsalted butter
2/3 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C flour
Preheat the oven to 350F, and line a 9×9 pan with foil or parchment, extending up past the edges of the pan on two opposite sides for easy removal after cooking.
In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the chocolate chips, butter and sugar. Microwave just until chips and butter are melted (for mine, I did 60 seconds at 80% power, stirred, then back in for 30 seconds at 60% power); stir with a wooden spoon to combine, then add the vanilla and salt.* The batter will be thick like cookie dough. Press into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes, until the brownies are cooked through. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan using the parchment or foil edges and allow to cool to room temperature on a rack. Crumble into chunks and crumbs for stirring into vanilla ice cream, or eat shards like cookies.
*If you want to make actual brownies with this recipe, beat in two cold eggs one at a time at this point. The batter will be thick, glossy and pourable. Bake for about 20 minutes, and remove when the top is shiny and crinkly, but the insides are still moist.
Source: Adapted from Bittersweet, by Alice Medrich
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08.18.08
Posted in Dairy, Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream at 10:40 am by julie
Since we had to suffer through several straight days of 100F+ weather, I was determined to make a batch of ice cream to combat the heat. The Orange Popsicle ice cream from The Perfect Scoop was the perfect candidate for several reasons: It gave me a means to use up a big bag of sweet little clementines I’ve been trying to eat singlehandedly for several weeks; it called for half-and-half and sour cream, both of which I was able to run to our little corner market and pick up in a matter of minutes (they don’t carry whipping cream); it is a blender recipe, which is awfully convenient for chilling and later pouring into the running ice cream machine; and most importantly, it isn’t a custard-based recipe, which means no heat required!
I was a fan of orange creamsicles growing up, and with my addition of vanilla extract (the original calls for orange liqueur, which is not my thing), this recipe matches that flavor beautifully, with a creamy texture and refreshing hit of citrus. I predict that this ice cream won’t last the weekend in our fridge. But I have to admit that I actually liked the textural contrast of crunchy orange popsicle and creamy vanilla ice cream in the original treat, so I’m also tempted to make plain vanilla ice cream sometime and top it with orange granita to get that citrus crunch.
Creamsicle Ice Cream
2/3 C sugar
Grated zest of 5 clementines
1 1/4 C freshly squeezed clementine juice
1 C sour cream
1/2 C half-and-half
1 tsp vanilla extract
In a blender, pulverize the sugar together with the zest until very finely ground. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until the sugar is entirely dissolved. Chill thoroughly in the refrigerator before churning in your handy-dandy ice cream maker.
Source: Slightly adapted from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz (p. 50).
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05.31.08
Posted in Chocolate, Dessert, Ice Cream at 8:19 am by julie
I was left with a good quantity of Guittard white chocolate wafers after finishing my Opéra Cake for the Daring Bakers, not to mention 5 unaccounted-for egg yolks. That combination just screamed white chocolate ice cream to me, so I sent Jeremy to the grocery store for heavy cream with the promise of brownie sundaes for our Memorial Day dessert.
Nolan has started to fall into a kind of natural schedule, which includes 5-7 hours of sleep overnight (sweet!), lots of naps during the morning and early afternoon, and a very wide awake period from dinnertime straight through to about 1:00am. Making dinner these days generally means racing at top speed back and forth between the hot stove and the sobbing baby in the next room, culminating in a finished meal just as my timer goes off to pump milk. Sigh. So I had time during the afternoon to cook up the base for the ice cream, research potential brownie recipes, and blanch the ribs for dinner.
Then I was sidetracked by a phone call from my cousin. When we hung up, Nolan was wide awake, wanting to be held, and dinner was off to a late start. Jeremy appeased the little guy long enough for me to get the ribs fried off and simmering in their sauce, then I popped him into his little throne on the kitchen table and stood next to him, making brownie batter at top speed and possibly breaking some sort of record in an effort to get them in the oven before he became inconsolable. With that sort of pressure, I turned to a brownie recipe I’ve made several times before, which doesn’t require unsweetened chocolate and produces perfectly ooey-gooey brownies every time. I further shortened the prep time by using bittersweet chocolate chips and the microwave, rather than chopped chocolate and a bain marie; I think the pan was in the oven baking within 5 minutes, and I just barely managed to squeeze in a past-due pumping session before they were done.
Classic Bittersweet Brownies
6 1/2 oz bittersweet chocolate chips, such as Ghirardelli
7 T unsalted butter, cut in several chunks
1 C sugar (or less; these come out quite sweet)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
2 cold eggs
1/2 C flour
Preheat the oven to 350F, and line a 9×9 pan with foil or parchment, extending up past the edges of the pan on two opposite sides for easy removal after cooking.
In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the chocolate chips, butter and sugar. Microwave just until chips and butter are melted (for mine, I did 60 seconds at 80% power, stirred, then back in for 30 seconds at 60% power); stir with a wooden spoon to combine, then add the vanilla and salt. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the flour, and stir just to combine; the batter should be thick and glossy. If desired, now is the time to add mix-ins like nuts or chocolate chunks. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes, until the brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan and the top is crinkly and appears dry; a toothpick inserted should still come out quite gooey. Cool for 10 minutes, then carefully remove from the pan using the parchment or foil edges and allow to cool to room temperature on a rack before cutting into squares.
Source: Slightly adapted from Bittersweet, by Alice Medrich
After dinner, I had another short reprieve to clean up the kitchen and get the ice cream churning. It came out a lovely ivory color and elusively flavored with cocoa butter. No other garnish necessary, we scarfed down melting dollops of the silky stuff over warm brownie squares (Jeremy even managed it while balancing a wide-eyed, windmilling Nolan), and it was a perfect way to end the evening… at about 11:45pm, as it so happened.
White Chocolate Ice Cream
8 oz white chocolate, cut into small pieces
1 C whole milk
2/3 C sugar
pinch of salt
5 egg yolks
2 C heavy cream
Place the white chocolate in a large batter bowl and set a mesh strainer over it. Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, heat the milk, sugar and salt until the sugar dissolves. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and temper them with the warm milk mixture by drizzling about half of it into the yolks very slowly while continuing to whisk. Return the yolk-milk mixture to the saucepan and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Remove from the heat and pour through the mesh strainer into the bowl with the white chocolate. Stir until the white chocolate melts, then stir in the cream. Place the bowl in an ice bath and continue stirring until it comes down at least to room temperature, then chill thoroughly in the refrigerator before freezing in an ice cream machine.
Source: The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz
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01.09.08
Posted in Chocolate, Cuisines, Dairy, Dessert, Ice Cream, Italian, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 11:33 am by julie
I think I was just meant to make gianduja gelato last week. When we ate through that tin roof ice cream so quickly, I had Jeremy take a gander through the book and pick out our next flavor. He couldn’t decide between roasted banana ice cream and gianduja gelato, but I thought the choice had been made for us because I definitely had bananas but only a small stash of hazelnuts. We had a rough day on Thursday, so I decided that some fresh roasted banana ice cream was in order for a pick-me-up. I took the book in the kitchen to start gathering up ingredients, and it fell open right to the gianduja, which has a pretty mouthwatering photo. I ended up digging around in the baking cupboard to find out how many hazelnuts I actually had, just in case; it turned out that I had precisely the 1 1/2 cups needed for the recipe, no more, no less. That sounded like fate to me.
The recipe was one of the more complicated that I’ve made from The Perfect Scoop, but the results are infinitely worthwhile. First you toast, skin, and chop the hazelnuts, then soak them in a mixture of warm milk, cream and sugar for an hour. The nuts are then strained out and squeezed to retain every last drop of hazelnut-infused milk, which is transformed into a custard base on the stove. Finally, you combine it with a mixture of warm cream and melted milk chocolate, chill it with an ice bath and a trip to the fridge (and/or freezer, if you want to expedite the process as I did), and churn it up into hazelnut heaven.
This gelato came out perfectly smooth and creamy, with a pronounced flavor of hazelnuts and just the right amount of subtle support from the milk chocolate. If there were any more—or darker—chocolate, the hazelnuts would have been lost and all that careful steeping pointless. If you wanted to make a plain hazelnut gelato, I think you could leave the chocolate out entirely with no detriments: I found myself scraping dribbles of hazelnut creme anglaise from the cooled saucepan with my finger because it was so delicious. Another option that I believe would work equally well is substituting toasted and ground almonds or pistachios for the hazelnuts, with or without chocolate.
I have to wonder if this should really be called gelato, however. David Lebovitz certainly has more first-hand experience with the stuff than I do, but I’ve always thought that the primary difference between gelato and ice cream was that gelato had less fat and frequently no eggs at all. Fat coats the tongue and can consequently mute flavors over time, and I thought part of the reason that gelato is so intensely flavored is because it is by nature lower in fat, sometimes even using corn starch as a thickener instead. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was surprised to see a gelato recipe calling for more cream than milk and a custard base involving 5 egg yolks. It’s a minor point, because gelato or ice cream, this gianduja stuff is absolutely heavenly, and I don’t think we’ll be able to resist making it again and again.
I won’t provide the recipe here. You can find it reproduced on Serious Eats. However, to be honest, even if all the other ice cream I’ve been churning out over the last year wasn’t enough to tempt you, this gelato is definitely worth buying the book for, and an ice cream maker too if you don’t have one already. I’m just sayin’.
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12.29.07
Posted in Dairy, Dessert, Ice Cream at 6:23 pm by julie
If you ever have a surplus of egg yolks, I would highly recommend making ice cream. My problem is generally the opposite, but I found myself with a little bowlful of yolks leftover from making the yule log, thanks to its Swiss meringue buttercream and meringue mushrooms. I gleefully handed the ice cream book to my dad and asked him to pick out something custard-based to take care of that little problem, and he put his finger down on Tin Roof Ice Cream, a delectable concoction of French vanilla ice cream layered with fudge ripple and chocolate-covered peanuts. It lasted us all of two days.
My adjustments included using vanilla paste instead of a bean and 1% milk instead of whole in the custard. The resulting ice cream was nevertheless incredibly creamy and pleasantly perfumed with flecks of vanilla bean. I think, in fact, that it may have been my best vanilla ice cream effort to date. I cut the recipe for chocolate-covered peanuts in half to get the right amount for the ice cream, but I didn’t halve the fudge ripple and I have quite a bit of that leftover. Since polishing off the tin roof ice cream, we’ve already been eyeing the gianduja gelato, and I have a inkling that a fudge ripple would not be an unwelcome addition.
Tin Roof Ice Cream
3/4 C 1% milk
3/4 C sugar
Pinch salt
1 1/2 C heavy cream
2 tsp vanilla paste
4 large egg yolks
3/4 C Chocolate-Covered Peanuts (recipe below)
Chilled Fudge Ripple (recipe below)
Warm the milk, sugar, salt, and 1/2 cup of the cream in a medium saucepan (I added an extra splash of cream to bring the fat content closer to that of the original recipe, which called for whole milk).
Pour the remaining cup of cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. In a separate medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Mix in the vanilla paste, then pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream to cool. Stir this bowl until cool over an ice bath, then chill thoroughly in the refrigerator.
Before freezing, make and chill the fudge ripple, then make the chocolate-covered peanuts and allow to harden. Freeze the ice cream in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. While the ice cream is freezing, chop the chocolate-covered peanuts into bite-sized pieces, and fold the pieces into the ice cream as you remove it from the machine, layering it with Fudge Ripple. Start with a puddle of Fudge Ripple in the bottom of the storage container and then alternate layers of ice cream with layers of sauce.
Chocolate-Covered Peanuts
2 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts
Put the pices of chocolate in an absolutely dry heatproof bowl. Set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water to melt th chocolate, stirring until smooth. In the meantime, stretch a piece of plastic wrap over a dinner plate.
Once the chocolate is melted, remove it from the heat and stir in the peanuts, coasting them with the chocolate. Spread the mixture on the plastic-lined plate and chill in the refrigerator. Makes 3/4 cup.
Fudge Ripple
1/2 C sugar
1/3 C light corn syrup
1/2 C water
6 T unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Whisk together the sugar, corn syrup, water, and cocoa powder in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture begins to bubble at the edges.
Continue to whisk until it just comes to a low boil. Cook for 1 minute, whisking frequently. Remove from the heat, stir in the vanilla, and let cool. Chill in the refrigerator before using. Makes 1 cup.
Source: Slightly adapted from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz
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11.29.07
Posted in Dessert, Ice Cream, Leftovers at 9:12 am by julie
It’s time for a fresh installment of Julie vs. The Sweet Potato Puree. To recap:
In Part 1, we tried Sweet Potato Pancakes. Delicious, fluffy, easy to make, they are a good first line of attack in combatting the orange blob. But using up less than a cup of puree per batch, be sure to have a back-up plan.
In Part 2, we made a more concerted effort with a big panful of sweet potato cinnamon rolls. These used only slightly more puree, but were equally delicious and potentially capable of inducing a sugar coma.
Today, in Part 3, I turned to David Lebovitz for guidance, and made a batch of sweet potato ice cream with wet maple pecans.
Fresh from the machine, this ice cream tasted super-sweet from the maple, with a slightly starchy texture from the sweet potatoes that put me off a bit. I had to concentrate on the texture of the pecans to put it out of my mind, so I was glad I decided to make them. Last night, as a break from all the apple and pumpkin, I made us some little sweet potato “pie” parfaits, layering ice cream with whipped cream and our last few pie crust cookies (which turned out to be the ideal garnish). I think that the ice cream was more balanced after it had a chance to cure: less syrup-sweet and less yam-starchy. In any case, it was a highly successful reincarnation of a leftover side, certainly worth making again.
Sweet Potato Ice Cream with Wet Pecans
1 lb leftover Vanilla Sweet Potato Puree (recipe here)
1 C 1% milk
2/3 C packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
a pinch salt
A few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste
Wet Pecans (see recipe below)
Put all ingredients from puree to salt in a blender and process until very smooth, at least 30 seconds. Add lemon juice to taste, then press through a mesh strainer and chill in the refrigerator. Churn in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer instructions, and add the Wet Pecans and their syrup at the end, stirring through. (My ice cream maker didn’t want to continue churning after I added them.)
Wet Pecans
1/2 C plus 1 T dark amber maple syrup
1 1/2 C pecans, toasted and chopped coarsely
a big pinch of salt
Heat syrup in a small saucepan, just until it reaches a full boil. Add the nuts and bring back to a boil. Stir and cook for 10 seconds, then remove from the heat and cool entirely. The nuts will remain wet and sticky. Prepare shortly before use, as advance preparation can make them lose their crispness.
Source: Adapted for leftover sweet potatoes from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz .
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