It’s farmers’ market season in Regensburg. One of the things I look forward to every year are the tiny little “Forest Blueberries” — Waldheidelbeeren — we can (sometimes) find at the Donaumarkt. They make for a nice sauce, perhaps to use with a lovely brunchy plate of crêpes.
But this oppressive heat (now that it’s finally here!) calls for something more seasonally appropriate to be done with these berries. Continue reading Blueberry Ice Cream
One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie. Moving to Germany and having to make the puree ourselves (really, it’s not that hard) has raised my appreciation for that pie. It’s strongly connected with the season…but wouldn’t it be nice to have a slice in July? Continue reading Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream
The strawberries have been calling to us. Yesterday at the Donaumarkt we heeded their summons. We picked up a kilo (2 × 500 g Schalen, which I guess are about a pint each).
It’s been so dang hot around here lately that we only wanted to do something cool with them. Having had such great results with homemade chocolate ice cream and a few other varieties so far, we tried our luck with homemade strawberry frozen yogurt. Big benefit here: it all happens at room temperature or cooler. Not an ice cream = no custard = no cooking! (And it was the logical next step after loving David Lebovitz’ chocolate and vanilla varieties). Continue reading Homemade Strawberry Frozen Yogurt
Got inspired by this: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2011/04/grapefruit-campari-sorbet/. We made significant changes, using bottled, non-pink grapefruit juice and Aperol, because that’s what we had on hand. The grenadine helps make it a little rosier.
Yield: slightly less than one 1 quart
Adapted from: David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Ice Cream
Result: Excellent!
This is a milk chocolate flavor. I love that there’s no “don’t let it boil” admonishment and no eggs involved (which you have to cook, but not cook into scrambled eggs while shooting for custard). Go for a nice 50%-70% cocoa content in the chocolate bar. It doesn’t have to be richer than that.
We did the variation that David Lebovitz mentions on his site (resulting from a typo in the book, originally) and are sticking with that because of the extra smooth and dense texture, and a more intense chocolate flavor (owing to the reduced sugar) — more like a chocolate gelato than homemade chocolate ice cream.
Extra trickiness for European kitchens: you need ice (yeah, frozen water) around to make an ice bath near the end of the batter preparation. I’m not sure what other methods you could use to lower your batter temperature while keeping it pourable, but if you have some ideas, please share them in the comments! Before we got our stand-up chest freezer, we never had room in our two midget fridges to keep ice cubes around at the ready. But now we do.
1 cup (250 ml) whole milk
4 teaspoons corn starch
1/4 cup (60 ml) heavy cream — we used whipping cream (Schlagsahne)
1 cup (250 ml) evaporated milk
1/2 cup (100 gr) sugar
2 tablespoons (60 gr) light corn syrup
1/3 cup (35 gr) unsweetened cocoa powder, natural or Dutch-process
3 ounces (85 gr) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2/3 teaspoon vanilla extract
Make an ice bath: Find a smaller metal bowl that will fit into a larger metal bowl. Add ice, along with some cold water, to the larger bowl then set the smaller bowl into the ice. Pour the ice cream mixture into the smaller bowl and stir until completely cool.
The original recipe suggests pouring the batter into a zip-top bag and then submerging the bag in an ice bath for 30 minutes, and we tried this, but it was a PITA to get the batter out of the bag and into the ice cream dasher. And you waste a zip-top plastic bag in the process (either because you cut the corner to squeeze it out, like a pastry bag, or because it’s impossible to get all the batter out of the bag for any possible reuse).
Next time, we’ll use the alternative method with the two metal bowls he mentions (above).
