Peach

I picked peaches about a week ago and needed to do something. I also wanted to bring ice cream to help celebrate a friend's birthday (The Leavening Agent's author). Peach ice cream it was.

Well, I made this ice cream last year as it turns. I liked it then and I liked it this year, too. It packs a lot of peach flavor. I'd like to compare it against the recipe from William-Sonoma since that doesn't call for cooking the peaches.

Strawberry, Second Thoughts

I've eaten the strawberry ice cream again. I'm having second thoughts about it.

It leaves my mouth coated in a vaguely unpleasant way. I think this might be due to a combination of the high fat content and the absence of eggs, although I'm not sure about the eggs (I mean, I know the ice cream is eggless).

I still like the flavor of the ice cream but this mouthfeel issue is troubling.

Peanut Butter Banana

I made peanut butter banana late last week. Seems like an obvious flavor but I'd never made it before. It occurred to me after making PB and banana.

I based the recipe on David Lebovitz's PB recipe. I thought that recipe was already a little too sweet and since I was adding two bananas, I lowered the sugar to 2/3 C. Emily Luchetti and Lebovitz both have you roasting the bananas to different degrees before using them but I skipped that. I put all the ingredients into the blender and left it on for a good long while, more than five minutes. I wanted the texture to be as smooth as possible.

I'm really pleased with the results. Smooth texture. The flavors are nice and they're balanced. I'll have to make this again. Also, I might shoot for PB chocolate banana next.

Roasted Banana

As part of the fun for Reach the Beach, I made ice cream sandwiches. I used peanut butter cookies and roasted banana ice cream. The ice cream recipe came from Lebovitz, again. That book is going straight onto my Christmas list.

Roasting the bananas in brown sugar and butter deepened the flavor and also added a taste that was close to caramel. I did make a slight mistake, or rather I did something that just annoyed me. I roasted double-batch worth of bananas in two 9x9 pans. I took them out of the oven and then got distracted. The bananas and the liquid at the bottom of the pans cooled off and hardened. So, it was back into the still-warm oven for a few minutes to loosen things up. Other than that gaff, it was another very easy recipe.

The combination of peanut butter and bananas was very pleasing. Putting mini-chocolate chips around the edge of the sandwich was tasty finishing touch.

Chocolate PB, again

I made the chocolate peanut butter from Lebovitz again. This time, I added chopped-up Reese's PB cups. Splendid. The candy pushes the ice cream over the top. I continue to marvel at how the texture really is quite smooth for an eggless ice cream. The only thing I don't like about the recipe is that the size of the batch it makes is on the small side. The only answer, of course, is to double it in the future.

Peach Blueberry

I picked a lot of peaches and blueberries last weekend, so I had a lot of fruit that needed something done with it. I also had a picnic this past weekend and I needed to bring something. I decided I would make a double batch of peach blueberry ice cream. I based the recipe on David Lebovitz's recipe for peach ice cream.

First, the cook the fruit down in water for about 10 minutes. Then, you puree the fruit and the dairy in the food processor. Done. The only minor hitch was that double batch didn't fit into the food processor all at once.

The color was a really nice light purple. The taste was a nice balance between the two fruits. The texture was very smooth and light. A perfect summer ice cream.

Corn Starch Chocolate, No Fat

I made chocolate ice cream using the corn start recipe. This time I used skim milk instead of a mix of skim and heavy cream. It mixed up fine this time -- no trouble with it freezing too quickly.

I'm not sure why, but there's a bit of an after-taste that I don't really like. I haven't eaten enough of it to be able to describe the after-taste accurately. I did use Stop and Shop-brand cocoa powder, so that might be it. The texture is still good. Next time, I might use whole milk and see how that goes.

Chocolate Peanut Butter

I reserved a copy of David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop at the library a while ago. I just picked it up the other day. I need to buy it. The breadth of recipes is fantastic. The recipes themselves seem well-designed, too.

The book actually has a recipe for chocolate peanut butter ice cream. This is something that I've been fooling around with for some time. The book's recipe is simplicity defined. Pour a pint of half-and-half into a pot, add some sugar and cocoa powder. Heat and stir. Remove from heat. Add peanut butter. Chill. Pour into machine.

The texture is smooth and coats your mouth in a pleasant way with the two flavors. The overall flavor does lean just a little towards the PB side but that's good. If I want to change it in the future, I'd probably add just a little more cocoa powder.

Peach! Philly style

It's peach season in Connecticut. I do love peach season and picking peaches. In comparison to the forever long berry-picking sessions, peach picking is a dream. It's quick. There's no bending over. It's in the shade.

I let some peaches ripen and decided to make the peach ice cream from Emily Luchetti's Passion for Ice Cream. It's a Philly style ice cream. It's a nice technique. The peaches get peeled and roughly chopped and then placed into a put with some sugar. You let them cook down for about 20 minutes -- essentially making peach jam. That gets mixed with the warmed-up dairy and then into the fridge.

I was slightly worried as I put the mix into the machine since it was a little thick. But, the thickness was due to the peach chunks. The ice cream froze pretty quickly. The flavor was excellent. If peach ice cream was always like that, it'd be my favorite. The texture was very smooth, too. I'm making this again. Or possibly making peach blueberry.

Chocolate Strawberry

With strawberry season underway in Connecticut, I'd been itching to make chocolate strawberry ice cream, because how good are chocolate-covered strawberries? And how great would that be to have in ice cream?

When I decide to make a flavor that I don't have a recipe for, there's always hemming and hawing about which direction to go. In this case, I could use a chocolate base and add in strawberries or I could do the opposite. This time, I sort of took a middle road.

I settled on the strawberry recipe from the Williams-Sonoma Ice Cream book. It's an interesting recipe. Essentially, you make sweet cream ice cream and then add in the strawberries just as the ice cream is finished in the ice cream maker. I added two tablespoons of cocoa to the base and let that sit in the fridge overnight. I put the in the ice cream maker and it spin for a while until it seemed as if it was close to done. Then, I added in the strawberries, half of which I had mashed with a fork and the other half I had left as a rough chop. Then, just before it finished, I added in some chopped bittersweet chocolate I had chilling because I just felt it was going to be missing something and that something was chocolate chunks.

I'll admit to being a little skeptical about this recipe but it did have a nice strawberry flavor along with being chocolately but not overly so.