Peaches.

I know peaches aren't in season yet, but I had a craving. I started getting the hankering after using some peach flavored paraphernalia. Usually I stay with the classics but sometimes a little extra flavor is good. Because they aren't in season, I thought I would be using frozen peaches but I couldn't find frozen peaches at the store so I got some of those little cups of cut up peaches in light syrup.



I opened up the peaches and strained the syrup off them. While the peaches drained in the sink I got started on the custard. I made a pretty straight forward custard. Milk, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla got cooked up in the usual way; heat the milk, whip the sugar and yolks, when the milk gets hot enough mix some into the yolk mixture and return this mixture to the rest of the milk and heat for a minute. Once I took the custard off the heat I returned my attention to the peaches, pureeing them and then adding the peaches to the custard. A little vanilla was also added at this point. I let the custard cool in the fridge overnight while I returned to a thoroughly satisfying 21 Jumpstreet marathon.


In the morning I added some cream to the peach custard and froze it. When it was finished with the freezing process I mixed more peaches into one of the pints (for Kate) and left the others smooth. I'm looking forward to fresh peaches.

Mocha Rebirth.

I made this about a week ago, so I don't remember it all as clearly as I should.


I assembled all the needed foodstuffs. Milk, chocolate, instant coffee, sugar, vanilla, and eggs. I put the milk on the stove and, while I waited for the milk to heat up, I separated the eggs and whipped the yolks up with the sugar. I held back on some of the sugar because the chocolate had added sugar and I wanted the custard to be dark, rich, and bitter. Once the milk was hot enough I slowly added to it the egg mixture. I took a moment to add the instant coffee as the milk and eggs were mixing. This mixture went back on the stove for a few minutes. When the custard was finished cooking I mixed in all the chocolate. The vanilla was added once the chocolate had been incorporated. The mixture was allowed to cool.


While the mocha custard cooled I made a chocolate syrup. If I remember correctly it was corn syrup, cocoa, sugar, and maybe some chocolate? It was much better than my first attempt at chocolate sauce. Once it had cooled it had an amazingly thick and rich consistency and a nice sweet chocolate taste that would complement the dark bitter mocha custard wonderfully.


When I returned to the mocha custard the next day I found it thicker than any other custard I have made. It had a mooseness that I wasn't expecting. I poured the cream into the custard and the custard was thick enough to hold all the cream on top of it. Thankfully, it all mixed together quite well. I poured the mixture into the machine and waited.



Once all the ice cream was packed up and put in the freezer I made some whipped cream. Cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Whip up the cream into stiff peaks, add the other shit, mix a bit more. Stick it in the fridge until you need it. I was surprised how long it held up.

I made some cones as well. The first try went really bad, I used a TV chefs recipe. They sucked. Maybe in the Nappa Vally your ice cream cones can taste like cardboard and feel like rubber pancakes.... but not around here. I found a good recipe someplace else. The new recipe was just flour, eggs, sugar, vanilla. Super easy. They tasted great, they held their shape once they cooled. I made little cone molds out of aluminium foil. But... I didn't get any pictures of them. I put off taking pictures of the ice cream until I could pose up a nice complete picture; cone, cream, syrup, custard... But I ate the cones like cookies and other people never wanted it all. Regardless, it was a complete success.