This has nothing to do with anything, but last night I felt like I just discovered fire or that cold vodka is useful in making pie crust.
I like to make my own ice cream. I have a hand cranked thing that uses a cylinder that I set in the freezer a day or so before. Some of my neighbors have had my creations. I tend to make chocolate and BAM!Vanilla! (as my cousin calls it) and I tend to like it more than anything I’ve had elsewhere. However, the new gelato place on 7th St in Penn Quarter is pretty darned good too. Anyway, the only problem, if you consider it a problem, is my ice cream is typically too dense. The chocolate is like eating a frozen brownie sometimes. Or it bends spoons. I figure I’m just not churning it enough.
But last night, I made a Strawberry Sage ice cream using a recipe from an Irish Ice Cream store and it called for whipping the cream. I’ve never whipped the cream when making ice cream and this whipped concoction is lighter in texture. The whipping I see makes it less dense and easier to scoop.
Now the whole fruit herb combo makes me wonder if I can make a Twizzler’s sorbet with strawberry and tarragon.
As I said, this has nothing to do with anything.
Having the ice cream base very, very cold before actually putting it into the ice cream maker helps with the texture too. Whipping the cream sounds like a really good idea too!
I usually do a frozen custard in mine, using Alton Brown’s 9-8-3-2-1 recipe:
9 oz sugar
8 egg yolks
3 cups half-and-half
2 tsp vanilla extract (or vanilla bean scrapings if you’re fancy)
1 cup heavy cream
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/vanilla-ice-cream-recipe/index.html
I said it was good, not healthy.
Fun flavors I’ve made:
Mexican Hot Chocolate (Chocolate & Chili powder)
Habanero Vanilla
Meyer Lemon Rosemary Sorbet