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.

Golden Summer Cake

When we were at Lake Skaneateles in the Finger Lakes, Eric and I stumbled upon a library book sale. We dove in head first and came away with tons of books (books that made lugging our bulging carry-ons around the airport miserable.)

While browsing through the cookbooks, I found such gems as The Microwave Bible, 1,000 Microwave Recipes and Dinner from the Microwave. I like my microwave as much as the next person, but I had no idea that we required such extensive instruction for using it. I guess in the 1960s when it was marketed to the public, things like microwave dinners and steam-able vegetable packets didn't exist, so people really were cooking from scratch with their microwave. Unthinkable!

(confession: I know microwaves have dubious effects on health, but I can't help but stare inside and watch my food cook! Eric is often horrified to walk into the kitchen and find me with my nose almost touching the microwave door.)

Back to the book sale...

One of the books I picked up is called Rosie's Bakery: All-Butter, Fresh Cream, Sugar-Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book. Excellent, I know.

In this book is the absolute best vanilla cake recipe I've encountered yet. It's texture, flavor and look are unparalleled. It also had an idea for a "Summertime Cake," which I've adapted to create my Golden Summer Cake. Lemon Curd fills the delicious yellow cake, and it's topped with fluffy vanilla frositng. It's divine.

Golden Summer Cake (doesn't that sound nice?) adapted from Rosie's Bakery Book.

Vanilla-Sour Cream Cake (makes two 9 or 10 in layers to be cut in half. You could also make three layers from this recipe)

3 3/4 cup cake flour (make sure to pour into the cup measure and scrape the top- don't just scoop)

1 1/4 t baking powder

1 1/4 t baking soda

3/4 t salt

3 1/2 sticks butter

2 cups sugar

2 t vanilla extract

6 egg yolks

2 eggs

1 1/4 cup sour cream

Preheat to 350 degrees.

Grease and line 2 or 3 pans with parchment rounds.

Sift the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl.

Use an electric mixer to cream the butter and sugar until very fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the yolks and eggs one at a time, blending each well and scraping down the bowl as needed.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the sour cream in 2 or 3 additions. Mix only until incorporated before adding the next addition. When everything is added, turn the mixer to low and blend until the batter is very smooth. It tastes so good at this point :)

Divide the batter between your pans and smooth the top. Drop the pans a few times from a few inches up to get the bubbles out. Bake for about 35 minutes, until the cake springs back when you touch it and a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Cool the layers completely before cutting in half. Take a long serrated knife and work around the sides of the layer to make sure it's cut evenly.

While the cake is baking, make the Lemon Curd Filling

2 t finely grated lemon zest

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 4 lemons)

1 cup sugar

4 large eggs

1/2 stick of butter

Mix the zest, juice, eggs and sugar in a saucepan and heat, stirring very often, over medium heat until it boils and is thickened. Pour through a strainer into a medium bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces and stir into the lemon curd until melted. Set the bowl into an ice bath and stir occasionally until cool. When cool, put into the fridge for at least an hour.

Finally, make the vanilla buttercream. Rosie's book introduced me to adding significant amounts of cream to the butter when making buttercream. When mixed long enough, the cream actually turns into butter itself. Pretty cool.

1 lb (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups heavy cream

2 t vanilla extract

1 pound or 6 cups powdered sugar

Mix all the ingredients with the paddle attachment in a stand mixer. You can do this with a hand held mixer, but the frosting takes at least 10 minute to come together, and thats a long time to stand there, hand vibrating.

Mix on medium-high until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least ten minutes, scraping down the bowl as needed. At first some of the cream might want to splash out, so I recommend wrapping some plastic wrap around the open part of the bowl.

This frosting is great because you can flavor it with just about anything. So far I've used espresso to make mocha frosting, I've added white chocolate, and I've added raspberry jam.

To assemble the cake, take your split layers and stack, spread about a 1/2 cup lemon curd between each. Spread a thin crumb coat of vanilla buttercream all over the cake and stick in the fridge for 10 or so minutes before completing the cake. For an easy garnish, I like to cut thin slices of lemons and slit them on one side to make little lemon curls as seen in the above picture.

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!

Banana-Lime Jam

Recently, some friends confessed that they are loathe to eat a banana in any less than perfect condition. They are so averse to banana bruises, strings and speckles that it even deters them from buying bananas at all. "What's the point?" they sigh in resignation.

I do not fear brown bananas. In fact, I usually buy massive bunches of bananas in the hopes that a few will dodge consumption and become soft, mottled and sweet.

I have no shortage of uses for these imperfect perfect fruits*, the easiest of which involves breaking into pieces and freezing in ziplock bags for use in smoothies or banana soft serve. My favorites are Hummingbird Cake and Blueberry Banana bread.

When I ran across this Banana-Lime Jam recipe in Cooking Light, I just happened to have some lovely ripe bananas on my counter. It was one of those times when I moved without thinking- I grabbed some limes and started squeezing.

Combine:

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

in a saucepan. Bring to a boil.

Add:

Three peeled and sliced over-ripe bananas.

Reduce heat to medium and cook for 45 minutes, occasionally stirring and smashing the bananas with the back of the spoon. When thickened, remove from heat and stir in two tablespoons of butter. The jam will thicken more as it cools.

This jam is utterly delicious and reminds me of caramelized bananas. It would be fantastic on english muffins, and I really like it on whole grain breads. All the sugar preserves it very well, and mine's still doing fine in a jar in the fridge after a couple weeks. Ah! I just thought about banana jam on pancakes! Mmmmmm.

*My thoughts on the banana:

What an odd and lovely fruit. It requires no washing. No juices dribble down your arm when you take a bite. No messy fingers- it's got a built-in wrapper. Just grab and go. A perfect package of fiber, potassium, vitamin c and more.

Bananas are emulsifiers- they keeps ingredients from separating, keep things suspended, which is why they are so good in breads and cakes and smoothies, and you can often cut down or exclude eggs or butter because of this. What's more, they are the only fruit I can think of that is really opaque. Could bananas save the world?

Homemade Bomb Pops

Eric's current popsicle obsession is Bomb Pops. His taste in popsicles has self-admittedly matured over the years, moving from a "quantity over quality" stance (think mountains of skinny and oh-so-cheap freezer pops) to an appreciation for the finer things in life (aka Edy's Strawberry Whole Fruit Popsicles).

As a gift one day I decided to surprise my man with delicious and healthy home-made Bomb Pops.

But first, dear Readers, a question:

Why the name Bomb Pop? And why is it red, white and blue? The flavors are cherry, lime and blue raspberry, so the obvious color combo there is red, green and blue. Which came first? The shape, the name or the colors? And why should the makers assume that the three go together? America = bombs?

A quick google search revealed not much information about the origins of the bomb pop except that they were first produced in the fifties by Blue Bunny. That's during the Cold War, folks, when everybody had bombs on the brain. Clearly it made sense to reinforce the nation's dominance and paranoia in the minds of children with patriotic popsicles.

On to the subject at hand!

To make these bomb pops, I simply pureed strawberries with a little simple syrup (half sugar, half water, heated in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved), and poured it in the bottom of my popsicle molds. If you don't have popsicle molds, you could always use small paper cups.

Next I added a bit of vanilla yogurt, but you could try lemon or limeade as well.

Finally, I pureed some blueberries with simple syrup and used them to top off the molds.

Add the popsicle stick/plastic knife/mold caps and freeze away!

In a few hours, you can enjoy your Bomb Pop with the knowledge that you are eating real fruit. And for your information, National Bomb Pop day is celebrated the last Thursday in June. Missed it this year, but I'll be ready next year. We'll have a party, ok?

To unmold, just run hot water around the outside of the mold or cup for a few seconds, and slide the popsicle out.

Obviously, the popsicle is a very adaptable frozen treat. Try different fruits or flavors of yogurt- even frozen pudding!

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."