Buttermilk Ice Cream

It is my fantasy to someday soon make ice cream with fresh, local eggs with fresh, local, non homogenized cream. Eric has been getting fresh eggs from a man at his work, so that part's covered. Sometimes we get cartons full of little bitty eggs, half the size of normal ones, and it's so fun to eat tiny fried eggs with tiny toasts. I'll keep you updated on my mission for fresh cream.

This ice cream is another recipe that I made while spending the week with Eric's Family at the Lake in New York. It went great with all our desserts for the end of the week- like Micah's mixed berry pie and my mother in law's fantastic thin-but-tender-heart-shaped-waffles and currant sorbet/syrup

It has a custard base, so it stays smooth and creamy in the freezer. It tastes sort of like frozen yogurt, but with the buttery richness of buttermilk giving it that je ne sais se quoi- that indescribable quality that makes something irresistible.

Don't be fooled by the looks- this is not vanilla ice cream by anyone's standards.

Buttermilk Ice Cream, from The Last Course via Smitten Kitchen

2 cups heavy cream

1 1/4 cups sugar

8-12 egg yolks (I used 10)

2 cups buttermilk

2 t vanilla

pinch of salt

Heat the cream and one cup of sugar to simmering in a large pot on the stove. Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks with the remaining 1/4 cup sugar.

Temper the egg yolks by whisking little amounts of hot cream into the yolks at a time, and so gradually raising the temperature of the yolks so they don't curdle. Once most of the cream has been added slowly and the eggs mixture is hot, you can whisk the rest in all at once.

Cook the egg yolk mixture over the stove until it can coat the back of a spoon (and thus becomes custard). Don't, DON'T, DON'T boil, or the eggs will curdle. However, if they should curdle, carefully blend the custard in a blender until smooth again.

Strain the custard into the buttermilk and stir in the salt and the vanilla.

Cool the mixture for several hours until completely cool, then freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

It will be very soft at first (which isn't bad at all, just melty), but a few hours in the freezer makes it just the right consistency.

One of the best meals of my life- those waffles with currants and gooseberries and buttermilk ice cream and currant sorbet. Oh, and fresh whipped cream. Enjoyed on a cliff by a impossibly blue lake.

Peanut Butter Ice Cream

I've been on SUCH a peanut butter dessert kick lately.

Ahahah, can you picture me swerving through traffic trying to get a picture of the peanut butter cookie ice cream sandwich in my hand? It wasn't easy, especially since I kept taking bites between shots...

Really, that ice cream sandwich was stupid good. I used Lebovitz's Peanut Butter Ice Cream recipe from The Perfect Scoop, which is incredibly easy. (No custard necessary because the PB keeps things soft and non-icy. And it uses half and half instead of heavy cream so its good for you...right?) And I used the double chocolate peanut butter Levain cookie recipe by Lisa at Parsley, Sage and Butter. I used all regular chocolate chips instead of PB ones. Find the cookie recipe here.

And here is the Peanut Butter Ice Cream Recipe:

Makes about 1 quart

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter

3/4 cup plus 2 T sugar

2 2/3 cup half and half

Pinch of salt

1/4 t vanilla

Puree all the ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth.

Chill in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.

...yes, that's it! Go make it!

Oh, and here are a few other peanut butter desserts from The Fox Fix if you, like me, are obsessed with them as of late:

Chocolate Cake with PB frosting

Peanut Butter Torte

Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake

The King Cake

Lets just say I feel like this when I eat Peanut Butter desserts.

Easy Chocolate Icecream

Here I am, talking about David Lebovitz again. Get used to it- I'm on an ice cream kick.

This is not ice cream as we know it- it is incredibly easy to make, requires no ice cream maker, and I am going to claim that it's healthy. It has very little dairy and a lot of banana. And chocolate. And a wee bit o alcohol.

The alcohol keeps the ice cream from freezing solid and the banana (which as we discussed in the last post, is an emulsifier) keeps everything suspended and homogenous. And the chocolate makes it delicious.

I made this ice cream a lot while we were going through the moving process. It was just too easy to whirl the ingredients around in the blender, pop it in the freezer and come home later to something refreshing after a long day of painting and packing.

This ice cream does not have the creamy ice cream texture we expect from ice cream, but offers mucho refreshment for very little effort.

Ingredients:

1 banana, peeled and chunked

2 oz semi-sweet chocolate

6 T milk

7 T liquor (you can use pretty much any type- though some will taste better than others. I've found combinations of rum, baileys and kahlua to work well. Also, I've used a bit less liquor before and it turned out fine- but the less you use the more icy the ice cream will be.)

That's it! Now put the milk in a cup and put the chocolate in the milk. Microwave for 30 seconds and stir to melt the chocolate. Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend til smooth. Pour the chocolate mixture into a bowl or tupperware, cover and freeze for about 4 hours.

Be sure to let me know how many times you make it this week!

Cinnamon Oatmeal Praline Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

That name is quite the mouthful, eh? Let's add on to it and make it Smooth-Crunchy-Creamy-Chunky-Luscious-Cinnamon-Oatmeal-Praline-Chocolate-Chunk-Incredible Cream.

And after all that I have to admit that string of descriptors goes nowhere in describing how utterly divine, just how perfect it is. Thank you, David Lebovitz, for equipping me with the tools to make it.

disclaimer...this absurd number of egg yolks is for a double batch

This ice cream has three components: 1. A custard base, which means it uses a ton of egg yolks and remains soft and creamy in your freezer, rather than getting icy and hard like ice creams that use only cream and milk. 2. Oatmeal Pralines- toasted old fashioned oats tossed with hot caramel an sprinkled with sea salt, cooled in a sheet pan and smashed to bits with a heavy object. 3. Chocolate chunks- I recommend chopping up bar chocolate in slivers and chunks. I used ghiradelli baking dark, but I think semisweet would be just as good, if not better.

Order of prep:

1. Make custard, place in ice bath in fridge.

2. Make Oatmeal Pralines, set out to cool.

3. Chop chocolate, place in bowl in the freezer.

4. When custard is totally chilled (at least three hours later), churn in ice cream maker.

5. While churning, smash the praline to bits and place in bowl in freezer.

6. When ice cream is churned, put it in a bowl or tupperware and fold in the praline bits and the chocolate.

7. Cover bowl. Freeze for several hours (I recommend overnight) to soften pralines and firm ice cream.

8. Enjoy your hard earned ice cream. Try to share with your friends and family, and try not to stick your whole face in the bowl when you take it out of the freezer. Feel free to sneak a spoonful every time you pass the freezer.

Cinnamon Ice Cream, from The Perfect Scoop

Makes about 1 quart. I doubled it, and it still only lasted 2 days. There were 7 people though.

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup sugar

Pinch of Salt

Ten 3-in cinnamon sticks, broken up. I used 2 tablespoons of Saigon Cinnamon instead.

2 cups heavy cream

5 large egg yolks

Warm the milk, sugar, salt, cinnamon sticks and half the cream in a pot. Once warm, let steep for an hour to infuse the milk with the cinnamon. If you're using ground cinnamon, skip this step.

Heat the milk mixture, remove the cinnamon sticks and discard. Prepare your icebath- fill a large bowl with ice and a bit of water, and put a smaller bowl inside the big bowl. Pour the remaining cream in that smaller bowl. Have a strainer on hand to make sure there are no eggy bits in your ice cream.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Whisk the hot milk into the egg yolks a little bit at a time until the egg yolks are the same temperature as the milk mixture. Whisk the hot egg mixture into the milk mixture.

Stir constantly over medium heat until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. DON'T BOIL. You can also tell it's done when you can feel it starting to coat the bottom of the pan. If you think its coating the spatula, it probably is.

Pour the custard through the strainer into the cream in the icebath bowl. Stir until cool. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, then churn according to the instructions that came with your ice cream maker.

Oatmeal Pralines, also from The Perfect Scoop

3/4 rolled oats (not instant)

1/2 cup sugar

Pinch of coarse salt

First, toast the oats. You can either do this on a sheet pan in the oven, or, if it's a hot summer day and you don't feel like turning on the oven, you can toast them in a wide skillet on the stove top, stirring constantly. Like so:

Place a sheet of aluminum foil on a baking sheet.

Spread the sugar evenly in the bottom of a medium, heavy bottomed pan. Cook over medium heat and cook attentively. When you see the edges liquify, stir carefully to get the rest of the sugar to melt. Be aware that if you don't stir, the bottom can burn while the stop is still white. Once the caramel is deep golden, remove from heat and dump the oats in. Stir the oats to coat with the caramel, then scrape them onto the aluminum foil on the baking sheet. Spread them out as evenly as possible. Sprinkle with salt and let cool and harden.

Once cool, break up into pieces and put in a heavy duty plastic bag. Whack them into bits with a rolling pin or other heavy blunt object.

The pralines will be very hard, but will soften in the ice cream. I recommend mostly small bits, like the size of a fingernail.

Stir together ice cream, pralines and chocolate, freeze for a bit and enjoy!

Make it this weekend and tell me how you liked it!

Lake Skaneateles Vacation

We just got back from the best vacation. We were in the finger lakes area of New York, spending time in Ithaca and with Eric's family on Lake Skaneateles. They just bought a Geodesic Dome-Home on the lake; a lovely little absurdly shaped cottage, full of bright light and perched on top of a cliff. Tilting steps make their way down to the water where there live two kayaks, a row boat named Lyng (which means flower in Norwegian), a dingy, and- the pride of the place- a sailboat.

We're sailors now!

Our favorite thing was to stand up at the front of the boat while Mr. Fuchs expertly caught the wind by zig-zagging the boat across the lake. Every time he "tacked" or made a turn, we had to move back and duck down to avoid the jib sail flying across the deck to the other side of the boat. At these times he loved letting the boat lean far over the water while we were perched precariously, our feet dragging in the water.

I'm steering the boat. Right is left and left is right.

Behold! The Dome-Home in all it's glory!

The water of Lake Skaneateles is a breathtaking blue and shockingly clear. Doesn't it look like water that belongs in Tahiti?

The dome-home's water comes straight from the lake, and the towns nearby get their water from it, too. It's one of the cleanest lakes in the US.

Leah and Drew came through Ithaca on their Northeastern road trip. You can see more pretty pictures of the lake on Leah's blog.

BFFs!!

Eric's brothers, Isaac and Micah, are into food and restaurants and cooking...so this week was the week of delicious food. And the week of David Lebovitz, actually, because Micah brought his new cookbook, Ready for Dessert (which I cannot wait to obtain), and I brought his ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop. And there was much rejoicing.

Micah, crimping the edges, and his mom's hand demonstrating the proper position for the thumb and forefinger

We grilled out almost every night, every thing from porkchops and chicken to pizzas and sandwiches to corn on the cob and watermelon. Mrs. Fuchs used her home grown black currants to make sorbet. Isaac made Lebovitz's chocolate chip cookies and Micah made his double crust mixed berry pie. And I made two batches of truly stellar ice cream (one adapted from Lebovitz)- and I will gladly share the recipes with you.

i said, "Christine, make it look like you're enjoying it."

Mint Oreo Ice Cream

I'm back! I'm so sorry I left you for so long. It's been the most hectic month. I saw some of you this past weekend and the general consensus is that you're sick of seeing the planter every time you check out the Fox Fix.

If I may offer some excuses- we packed up our house and shoved everything in our new one and spent a long weekend at Spencer and Liz's wedding and I had the worst case of poison ivy EVER. (I have no idea where I could've gotten the poison ivy, which is pretty scary. I feel like it could get me again at any time. My left eye and forehead swelled up so bad I looked like one of the aliens in the movie Avatar. Thus, in addition to everything else, I was also on steroids this month. Lemme tell you, I was a real joy to be around.)

We're now living surrounded by boxes. Our new place is about half the size of the old one, especially if you consider that we had a basement before where shoved everything we didn't want around. So slowly, slowly we're moving things around and unpacking. It's like trying to solve a rubiks cube, this place is so packed with stuff.

I'll share one before picture with you, just so you're duly impressed when the after pictures come in who knows how many weeks or months. Our mattress is on our couches in the middle room and is an oasis where we hang out, sleep and have meals.

What's that you say? This is a food blog? Oh, right. I'm supposed to share a recipe with you.

I actually have about 15 different posts that have been building up over this month, because I haven't stopped making things (only stopped showing up here), so I'm going to make an effort to post every day this week to try to catch up. So stay tuned!

If I may be so bold...this recipe may actually be worth the wait. It's Mint Oreo Ice Cream, based on a recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Made with fresh mint, it is perfectly creamy and utter bliss. It's pretty much convinced me that I will always make custard style ice cream. It's definitely worth the extra effort.

And speaking of worth-it things, if you have any interest at all in making ice cream, you need to buy The Perfect Scoop. It's chock-full of fantastic tips and explanations and recipes, from ice creams to sorbet to gelato to sauces and beyond. Lebovitz's blog is excellent and full of recipes, too.

Ingredients:

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups heavy cream

pinch of salt

2 cups lightly packed fresh mint leaves

5 large egg yolks

Warm the milk, sugar, 1 cup of cream and salt in a small saucepan. Stir in the mint leaves, cover the pot, and remove it from heat. Let it sit at room temperature for an hour to infuse the mint flavor into the milk mixture.

Strain the milk into a medium saucepan; discard the leaves. Depending on your mint, your milk might be a lovely shade of green. Mine was just barely tinted. Take a sip- mint milk! Pour the other cup of cream into a large bowl and set the strainer on top. If you want to speed the cooling process that will need to happen later, you can put this bowl of cream into a larger bowl of ice.

Re-warm the mint-milk. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolk. Slowly pour the mint milk into the yolks, whisking all the time. This stabilizes them so they don't curdle immediately when heated in the pot. Pour the yolk-mint-milk back into the pot.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Here is where I screwed up- I forgot I wasn't making pastry cream or something, and I boiled the milk. And it it curdled. So don't boil the milk- it needs to reach a temperature of about 175, but much higher and the eggs will curdle.

However, if you like me scramble your eggs, don't lose hope. Do what I did and put the warm liquid in a blender and run til smooth. Then you're back on track.

Pour the custard through the strainer into the cream bowl and stir until cool over the ice bath.

Then chill until absolutely cool in the refrigerator. If you try to churn too-warm custard, the final product's texture will be off. So be patient! And when it's cool, just freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions. OR this icecream does perfectly well if you just put it in your freezer and stir it every half hour or so, more often at the end. So if you're planning to be at home for the night, this is a perfectly viable option.

I added chopped oreos to my mint ice cream, which was very tasty. You could also try chocolate or brownie bits. However, the mint flavor is so fresh and creamy and unlike store bought (nasty green overpowering mint extract) icecream, that you could definitely enjoy it with no add-ins.

I'm very impatient for an excuse to make this bliss again. Come visit and we'll make ice cream!

Cherry-Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

Possibly one of the greatest perks to having a wedding is the fact that you get to make a huge list of everything your heart has ever desired and then everyone you or your mother has ever met will go out and buy those things for you.

And if there's anything at all that those people overlooked, be it garlic mincers or fancy microplaners or 100,000 thread count sheets, you can always return the duplicates and buy the rest of the loot yourself. (before you think me shallow and doomed to marital failure, note I said this is the best thing about a wedding, not about the marriage).

Everything we got for our wedding was super cool (thanks everyone...again...and if you're in the very small minority that maybe somehow missed the thankyou card boat, I'm very sorry, and thank you very much.) However, there were two things I'd set my sights on as soon as I wrapped my head around the receiving of gifts deal: the juicer and the ice cream maker.

The juicer gets action more days than not, but somehow this weekend was the first time we used our icecream maker! I talked about it non-stop for 6 months before we received it, then it sat in the basement for another 7 months! What was I thinking?

Now that we've done it, I'm not sure we'll be able to stop. I'm already planning the next batch.

Cherry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream, found on Simply Recipes.

When I chose this recipe I was thinking about Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia Ice Cream, my absolute favorite ice cream in the world. Unfortunately, this is not that ice cream. It is very good, though, with cherry and chocolate chunks, and is even better if you let it soften a bit after the freezer and before you eat it. Next I'm going to try a custard-based ice cream; I want to maximize the creaminess of the next batch.

1 1/2 cups pitted ripe sweet cherries (from about 3/4 lb cherries) (i used frozen)

3/4 cup milk

1 3/4 cups cream

1/2 cup sugar

1 pinch salt1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 Tbsp Amaretto, cherry liqueur, or rum (optional)

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine, keep in freezer until use (I used half ghiradelli semi sweet bar and have hersey's special dark bar)

Put cherries, milk, one cup of the cream, sugar, and salt into a medium saucepan. Heat on medium heat until the mixture is steamy, then lower the heat to warm and just let sit for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat. Blend the mixture just a little bit. I wanted cherry chunks in my ice cream, and more than a couple whirls will annihilate the chunks.

Put mixture into a large bowl. Stir in the remaining 3/4 cup of cream. Chill for several hours in the refrigerator until completely cold. (Can also place bowl over an ice bath, to speed up the cooling process.) (Apparently it's really important that the batter for ice cream is quite cold)

Before putting the mixture into your ice cream maker, stir in the lemon juice and the Amaretto or other liqueur if you are using. Note that you can skip the alcohol if you want, but the addition of it will help the ice cream from getting too icy, and the amaretto can add a nice flavor boost to the ice cream. Churn the ice cream in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Once the ice cream has completed churning, the ice cream should be pretty soft. Gently fold in the finely chopped chocolate. Put in an airtight container and place in the freezer for at least an hour, preferably several hours.

Makes about one quart.

I doubled the batch because we have a three quart machine. I didn't realize at the time that this would make a LOT of ice cream. We still have a huge bowlful in out freezer. Feel free to come help us eat it!