Filed under: food, ice cream by ramune

It’s been a bit since I put my ice cream maker to use and it’s already mid-August. I still have dreams of making maple bacon ice cream (soon my friends . . . soon), but I happened to have some delicious white peaches from the farmers market and found a lovely (and simple) recipe from David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop” (see my fig ice cream from last year). Although I didn’t manage to get a photo of the final product (it disappeared pretty quickly when I brought it to a friend’s place), I did enjoy learning how to easily peel the skin off of a peach. You simply put the peaches into boiling water for 20 seconds and then pour cold water on them until they cool down. It shocks the peaches and the skin rubs right off.

I plan on making the ice cream again and maybe will update this entry with an actual photo. Until then, please excuse my poor excuse for a project this week and drool over some skinned peaches.

Filed under: favorites, food, friends, ice cream by ramune

Six years ago my mother was given a little fig sprig that her friend’s grandmother brought back from a fig tree in Italy. Today this fig tree is 12 feet tall and produces hundreds of figs each year.

The image many people have of a fig is a dried-up shriveled nugget of fiber that is consumed by the geriatric community to get things “moving”. My view of figs has completely changed since I have spent some quality time with the fig tree. When you cut open a fresh fig it is one of the most beautiful fruits out there (in my opinion). It is not brown and shriveled at all. To the contrary it has a vibrant red center full of little blobules (spellchecker says this is not a word, but I think it should be) surrounded by a pale green and aubergine skin.

It’s amazing how many people have never had a fresh fig before (I am sure the exorbitant price doesn’t help). If you are one of these people I suggest you remedy it immediately. I don’t want to get your hopes up but it is a very different experience than eating a dried fig (which I still like).

With dozens of ripe figs waiting to be picked each day it’s hard to keep up with eating them all (if you did it might get things “moving” a little faster than you’d like), so I decided to make ice cream. I also needed to make a dessert for my friend Scott’s housewarming party so this was the perfect solution. After my last disaster with a horrible ice cream recipe I thought it would be a good idea to get it from a reputable source. In my search I kept reading wonderful reviews about the fresh fig ice cream found in the book A Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. Unfortunately it was sold out at every bookstore within 10 miles of me, so I drove out to the one store that had it (before some other ice cream lover could get it . . . sorry if that was you.

The recipe was easy and and the process was delicious. In fact, when I tasted the figgy jam part of the recipe I was in heaven. If you know me, you know I am a serious foodie and I get pretty excited about it (there is always something to look forward to!). This was a different level of excitement altogether. The best way I can describe it is like someone meeting their soul mate and never being able to live without them . . . but maybe not on such a dramatic scale. I now feel the need to have a fig tree wherever I live for the rest of my life (because buying fresh figs all the time is quite an investment). As if the figgy jam part wasn’t good enough the ice cream came out even better. I was nervous that it would be too hard (homemade ice cream has a way of doing that) but I think it came out a perfect consistency. Now I am not trying to toot my own horn here (I hope it isn’t coming off that way), I am tooting the figs’ horn and A Perfect Scoop‘s horn. Toot! Toot!

This was initially going to be two posts (since I am still behind by two) because after the ice cream I made a flourless chocolate-hazelnut cake (my friend Maya has a gluten allergy). Unfortunately I was in a bit of a rush to get it done and did not take enough time to get good photos of the process. The cake came out well though and I have included a photo below. I don’t think anyone else had the “soul mate” experience I had, but I think it was well received and I didn’t see any leftovers in anyone’s plate, so that’s always a good sign.

Filed under: failure, food, ice cream by ramune

A few months ago I decided I wanted to buy an ice cream maker. Once the idea was in my head I could not get it out. When I couldn’t find the ice cream maker I wanted, I got mildly frustrated because I had these grand plans to create ice cream that would blow the world away (well not really, but it would be fun to send delicious ice cream care packages to friends). After a few hiccups, mainly getting screwed over by iKitchen when they sent me a refurbished maker and took far too long to reimburse me, I finally got a new working ice cream maker. I am not sure how it happened, but my ice cream maker sat in the closet unused for most of the summer . . . until this past week when I finally decided to take it out and put it to use.

I probably should have gone straight to Epicurious or some respectable ice cream recipe page, but I didn’t. I looked up “ice cream recipes” in Google and picked something that sounded good and relatively easy for my first batch: Crunchy Pecan Maple Syrup ice cream (I am not going to post the link because it’s not worth it). The recipe was simple . . . probably too simple. Even while I was making it I thought that it could use a few extra ingredients but I figured for my first time making ice cream I should just stick to the recipe. Unfortunately the recipe I chose was lame and although I am not happy with the results I thought I should post it anyway (it’s all part of the process anyway, right?).

The next time I make ice cream I am going to look up a few more recipes and do some serious research (Bobby Flay just did a throwdown that involved making Maple Spice ice cream . . . mmm). Maybe once it’s worth eating I will test it out on some friends. In the meantime, here are some photos of the process. I am still without a tripod so there are some shots I wanted to get and just couldn’t.

Roasting pecans

Mixing the ingredients

The final product, Crunchy Pecan Maple Syrup ice cream . . . mediocre.