Currant Frozen Yogurt

Serves 6-8

Talk about enjoying the fruits of our labors! On Tuesday my friend Harmony and I, after months of scheming and failed attempts, finally made our first trip this season to the magnificent Berry Patch Farms in Brighton, CO, a family owned you-pick organic farm. Among the other things that we harvested that day was an incredibly labor-intensive pile of currants. Neither of us has much experience with fresh currants, and Harmony had the unparalleled idea of turning them into frozen yogurt. This was a total boon because I’d been meaning to try frozen yogurt in my ice cream maker for awhile and just hadn’t gotten around to it. One batch of homemade yogurt later, the dream was alive. It’s amazing how it’s sweet, tangy, and creamy all at the same time.

But first, a few pics from the farm. Here we are in the hay wagon!

 

Dragging the kids around past snack and bedtime:

Strawberry fields forever—Sawyer eats every other berry he picks:

And here are the luscious, ruby red currants.

And now the recipe:

2 1/2 C thick plain yogurt (I used my homemade yogurt recipe with organic one and a half percent milk, strained to make it thicker)

1/2 C sugar

1 1/2 C currants, washed and picked through to remove debris

1/2 tsp vanilla

Puree the currants in the food processor then run the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds and bits of skin. Stir the remaining puree into the yogurt. Add the sugar and vanilla and stir until blended.

Cover and chill. Process in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Degustez!!

 

 

Cake scrap ice cream cake

Oh yeah! Thanks to my sister-in-law Sheri who had the brilliant idea of turning wedding cake scraps into an ice cream cake. Though I feel like I betrayed her vision a little by turning it basically into more wedding cake…with ice cream. Here’s the idea, in any case: put your cake scraps in the food processor and turn them into crumbs. Press them into the bottom of a pan (I’m using at 8x8 square here, but it obviously depends on your quantity of leftover cake scraps). If you have leftover fillings, you could layer them like I did here: raspberry filling, topped with vanilla ice cream (I softened the ice cream in the fridge for about 40 minutes before spreading it, and had previously frozen the raspberry layer for about the same amount of time), topped with lemon curd (I refroze after the ice cream addition for about an hour). After that press another layer of cake crumbs on top, and frost with any leftover frosting. When it came time to serve this last night I let it soften on the counter for about a half hour before trying to dig in—it would have been a futile exercise otherwise, but 30 minutes was just perfect. This particular ice cream cake is riiiiiiich. Or in the immortal words of Le Mechant Pat Hibulaire: “Riche! Riche! Richissme!!” So if anyone nearby wants a slice, PLEASE come to our house and take some; we’ve been up to our ears in cake practice rounds and leftovers for awhile now, so please help us out!

Mango Kulfi

serves...a lot. This came bursting out of my ice cream maker. Um, maybe a quart?

This is a recipe that I cut out of Vegetarian Times and have been meaning to try for awhile. It is allegedly an Indian frozen treat. I’ve never had the real thing, but this was tasty. The texture is different from ice cream…less creamy, but fluffier somehow. 

flesh of 2 mangos

2 12-oz. cans evaporated milk

1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

Puree the mango flesh, transfer to a large bowl and whisk in the milks and cardamom. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Chocolate Chocolate Cookie Dough Ice Cream; a dream a year in the making

About a year ago a little cafe and ice cream shop called Snowcap opened their doors down the street from us. I normally don’t care that much about ice cream, as desserts go, but I think everyone in Erie was thrilled to see that some legitimate commerce was finally moving in. So we made the requisite pilgrimage over there with our neighbors to check it out, and what did I see on their flavors board but “Chocolate Cookie Dough Ice Cream.” “What could it mean??” I wondered aloud. “Is it chocolate ice cream with regular cookie dough? Or vanilla ice cream with chocolate cookie dough? Or could it be…*gasp*…chocolate ice cream with CHOCOLATE cookie dough????” So I went to the counter to ask about it and the employee replied, “Yeah, we’ve been getting lots of questions about that, sorry. It’s mistake on the sign, it’s just regular old chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.” I would say that my dreams had been crushed, if it weren’t for the fact that I had just gotten an ice cream maker for Christmas, and that, while I’m not so crazy about going out for ice cream or buying store bought ice cream (no matter how good it is), I become completely possessed (seriously, by DEMONS), when I conceive of a homemade ice cream flavor that I want to try. So a year later, with company coming tonight, I decided to realize the dream.

Ice Cream:

2 C cream

1 C half and half

3/4 C sugar (I’m thinking about cutting this down next time…it is REALLY sweet)

6 Tbs cocoa powder

pinch salt

Puree ingredients in blender until well combined. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Cookie Dough:

4 Tbs butter, softened

6 Tbs sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla

2 Tbs milk

2 Tbs cocoa

3/4 C flour

1/2 C mini chocolate chips

Mix butter and sugar with a fork until well combined. Add vanilla and milk and stir well. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined (dough will be stiff)—I found it easier to use my hands to get a homogenous dough.  Chill for 20 minutes.

During the last few minutes that the ice cream is churning, break the dough into little chunks (about 1/4-1/2 tsp each). I spread them over my ice cream tupperware like this:

When the ice cream was done I poured a layer over the chunks in the tupperware, then put the chunks on the lid on top of that. Then I covered it with the rest of the ice cream, and any chunks that I had left over. At the end it looked like this:

We ate this with friends tonight that were over for game night, and they adored it. We agreed that walnuts would be a divine addition.

Easy Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

   

I wanted to make a special dessert for Oscar night, since Chris' parents were coming over to celebrate the annual Oscar ballot battle with us, but my fridge was virtually devoid of the usual baking staples (like eggs, heh). So then I hit on homemade ice cream, and I was thinking ginger. Whoops, I have no fresh ginger. And then this peanut butter cup idea came into focus: finally a homemade ice cream that is low-maintenance, affordable and delicious. I’m too cheap to use real Reese’s, and too lazy to make my own to exact specifications, so see below how to make a great approximation.

Lazy person’s peanut butter nuggets:

1/2 C smooth peanut butter

1/2 C powdered sugar

1/2 graham cracker crumbs

1/2 C mini chocolate chips (milk choc, if you can find it—I could only find semi-sweet)

Mix all ingredients. Roll into small balls and freeze on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper for 30 minutes before adding to ice cream. We determined tonight that the balls should be much smaller. You could probably just break off little pieces of dough and not worry about rolling them because, really, no one will notice because they’ll be too busy swooning.

Ice Cream:

1 C half and half

2 C cream

3/4 C sugar

2 tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

Mix sugar, half and half and salt, and whisk together 1-2 minutes until sugar is dissolved. Stir in cream and vanilla. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Here’s mine churning away.

 

Remove ice cream and fold in peanut butter nuggets before putting in a container and freezing for few hours or overnight before serving.