Inverted Root Beer Floats.

This ice cream was super simple. If you remember back to the coke custard, you will remember that I reduced cans of soda on the stove in order to get a syrup. I was pretty disappointed with the lack of a strong cola flavor that time, so this time I got a couple of cups of syrup from a soda fountain. Acquiring that syrup was probably the most difficult part of this custard. But, even that wasn't too hard. Big thanks to Lil' Nora!

The custard started the same as always. The only change this time was no sugar. Because the root beer syrup was mostly sugar I didn't want to add any more sugar to the custard. In fact I was a little concerned that the syrup would be too sweet.

So... a sugarless custard was made with six egg yolks and milk. Once the custard cooled I added the syrup and cream. I then poured it all into the machine. The syrup was very sweet and I was concerned that the more root beer flavor I added the more sugar I was adding. The final custard wasn't too sweet, but It wasn't as intense a root beer flavor as I would have liked. The custard was obviously root beer flavored, I was just looking for a more intense flavor. Next time I suppose I will try an extract, maybe a combination of syrup and extract.

This was the first time I had used an inverted sugar in my ice cream. Ironic that it was for inverted root beer floats. Anyway, the sugar caused the finished custard to be really smooth and ready to scoop right out of the freezer. I was a little worried when it was freezing (or actually not freezing) that it wouldn't get firm enough. But I figured it would firm up once I packed it up into the containers and let it freeze more in the freezer. This is what happen when alcohol is added to ice cream as well and that's never much of an issue so I didn't really sweat it. The only problem it brought up was knowing when to stop the machine. I can usually tell by sight or ear, hearing the machine start to slow down due to the custard firming up.

When the time was right I scooped the root beer ice cream into glasses of vanilla soda.

Oatmeal with Whiskey Soaked Raisins.

This one started a little different, I poured some whiskey over the raisins and let them soak that shit up as I got busy with the rest of the ice cream.

I started by making a pot of oatmeal, using half milk and half cream. A good amount of salt and some cinnamon sticks were added as the oatmeal cooked. Once the oats were fully cooked I allowed them to cool and removed the cinnamon.


As the oats cooled I made a custard. The regular mixture of egg yolks, sugar and milk were cooked in the usual way. As some milk gets heated, the sugar and egg yolks get mixed together. Then that mixture gets tempered with some of the hot milk. The warm egg mixture goes back in with the rest of the hot milk and is allowed to finish cooking for a few minutes. Once the custard was cooked it was mixed with the oats and some vanilla.


The custard mixture cooled in the fridgerator until it was time to freeze. I didn't add any additional cream, as the oats sort of took the place of that part of the custard. Once the custard was put into the machine the plumped raisins were drained. About two thirds of the way through we added the whiskey soaked raisins.
The texture was great. Little chewy oats are probably the best textured "add - in" I have come across so far. The flavor was right on. maybe a little too much vanilla, but that isnt really a problem. It tasted just like a slightly sweet bowl of oatmeal.
Eventually I got to share it.

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.

The Blacker The Berry.....

It has been disgustingly and unseasonably hot outside the past few days. Despite all the cream, I think of sherbet as a lighter desert than ice cream, so I figured I would make some to help counter this filthy heat, while still leaving straight up ices for the summer.

I took a bunch of blackberries, washed and dried them, and tossed them over with a bit of sugar. I let them macerate for a few hours. While they sat around I cooked up a simple syrup, vaporised some herb, and listened to the Open Strings comp. Actually only the first two lps, not that some of the later two aren't good. It's just that I was feeling the oldies.

After some hours had passed, I blended the blackberries. The resulting "liquid" was really thick so I added the syrup before I strained out the seed, I though this would help move the liquid move through the strainer more easily. I'm not sure how much it helped. Next time I won't use a blender at all, I'll smash the berries up with something that's blunt, without a blade. Because, while the strainer worked wonderfully on the whole seeds, the bits of seed that the blender chopped up still got through.

Once I got all of the fruit strained I mixed in enough heavy cream to fill up my machine. It took about 15 minutes for the machine to do its thing. I packed up some pints and put them in the freezer. When I was ready to eat this sherbet I thought I would whip up a little cream to top it off. Cus, well.... I can't help but think about awesomely interracial things.

The Blacker The Berry, The Sweeter The Juice.

Kiwi Green Tea Sherbet.

A while back I had to scrap a kiwi custard. I had a couple of kiwis on hand the other day, so I decided to go again with another kiwi thing. I really enjoyed the clementine sherbet I made in december, so why not work on some kiwi sherbet?

A simple syrup was made with the addition of the zest from one lime. I brewed about a cup and a half of strong green tea. After the syrup and tea had cooled in the fridgerator for a few hours I skinned five kiwis and pureed them along with the juice of that lime. The tea and about one quarter cup of syrup were added to the kiwi mixture. Enough heavy cream was added to make two pints. The mixture was frozen.

A Dimension Of Perfectly Ordinary Vanilla.

They say the classics never go out of style, so today I made a classic vanilla ice cream. I started by tossing two split and halved vanilla beans into about a cup and a half of milk, heated it to just before a boil and let the vanilla beans steep in the milk for 20 minutes. The only reason I halved the beans was because they were too long to fit in my pot, otherwise simply splitting them lengthwise would be enough.


As the end of the twenty minutes approached I separated out the yolks from the eggs that had been sitting out, warming up to room temperature. The yolks were placed in a mixing bowl along with some sugar and whipped together.
Today, I have decided to make a change in my basic recipe. I have been thinking about it, and from now on I am going to add one more egg yolk to my custard. From now on I will use seven yolks. This is a purely "superstitious" addition. I hope the addition to "lucky" seven yolks will improve the power of my ice creams. The perfection of the egg will now be increased with the godly symmetry of seven.


After the twenty minutes had elapsed I removed the vanilla beans from the milk. I added some of the warm milk to the egg mixture a little bit at a time, and then poured that mixture back into the warm milk and slowly cooked it for a few more minutes until my custard was cooked.
While the custard was cooking I scraped the seeds from the beans and put them back into the custard. When it was finished cooking I strained the custard and allowed it to cool. Once the custard had cooled I added some heavy cream and threw the mixture into my machine.




"...a fallacy that is becoming more and more widespread, and that is that unfamiliar things are more interesting than familiar things. The argument being that familiarity with an object exhausts the object, we know all there is to know about it, and it holds nothing further for us. Nothing could be more mistaken. The less we know about an object, the more primitive the concepts by means of which we try to grasp it... As the sounds become more usual, so the listener is invited to penetrate more and more into them. In this way something unfamiliar is brought home."
-Cornelius Cardew