Tag: technique

Homemade Ice Cream Take 1

During the Christmas-time sales, I bought an ice cream attachment for our Kitchenaid mixer. The bowl has been stashed in the freezer portion of a refrigerator/freezer for several months. I decided to make a maple ice cream for our first batch. I combined the maple syrup, cream, and egg yolks in a large metal bowl. That bowl was used as the top of a double-boiler. Whisked it constantly over a medium low heat until it congealed into custard. Placed my custard in a glass container and stored it in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, I set up our ice cream attachment. Slowly poured the custard into the container … the instructions say ice cream should be formed in 10-15 minutes. It didn’t. Let it run a little over twenty minutes and … nothing even close to ice cream. I put my custard back into its container in the refrigerator, washed the bowl, and asked Google what I’ve done wrong. Turns out the ice cream bowl needs to be frozen absolutely solid – shake it as you remove it from the freezer, it shouldn’t be even a little bit sloshy. Oops. Mine was mostly frozen, but that’s not good enough. So I put the bowl into a dedicated freezer and left it there for 12 hours. Completely solid. I put the bowl back into the freezer and moved the custard into the freezer for an hour too – the colder the custard is, the less it will heat the bowl materials.

So, do this all over again. Get custard and bowl, set up mixer, mix … and it started to harden. I could see the liquid along the side of the bowl freeze and get scraped off. Twelve minutes later, we had a fairly thick frozen base. I transferred the proto-ice cream into a low pyrex bowl, closed it up, and put the bowl into our freezer. About eight hours later, it was Survivor premier / ice cream time. First bite and … what’s that strange grainy texture? Looked it up and everyone is talking about ice crystals. These aren’t ice crystals … it’s just an odd little hard lump.

We were about halfway through the bowl when Scott got a big odd hard lump. It was BUTTER. Frozen butter, but still butter. I’m guessing you cannot re-use custard. If your first attempt at making ice cream doesn’t work … maybe you could re-strain it to remove any little butter bits. Or if it isn’t starting to freeze after five minutes, you know something isn’t right and don’t let it mix long enough to turn into butter. But, this wasn’t the stunning success for which I was hoping.

Next up is a coconut milk / coconut cream / mango ice cream. Hopefully that will turn out better.

Healthy Preschool Valentines Party Snack

I made the heart cut-out PBJ sandwiches – with no peanut butter. Or jelly. But the same idea — you need two heart-shaped cookie cutters. The pair I have leaves about 1/2″ between the two cutters.

We made our own strawberry compote – a pound of strawberries sprinkled with one tablespoon of tapioca powder (to thicken the sauce). This was heated on low until the strawberries got mushy and the tapioca started to thicken. I used an immersion blender to create a smooth sauce, then refrigerated it for a few hours to allow the tapioca to set.

We used two different loaves of bread — a white bread and a whole wheat with sunflower seeds. Use the large cookie cutter and cut out 2 hearts for each sandwich you are making (e.g. we have eighteen people in the class so cut thirty six large hearts). In half of the hearts, center the smaller cookie cutter and punch out the center.

To assemble, take an uncut heart. Spread with ‘butter’ of your choice — we used sunflower butter because the school forbids nuts of any sort. Then spread with strawberry compote. Top with a cut-out heart.

Instead of pre-staging all of the components, Anya helped me make them. She cut one large heart, and while she cut a second heart, I got it spread with butter and compote. As she cut another heart (the back of the next sandwich), I took the one she just made, stamped out the centre, and put it on top. Anya removed the small heart from the cookie cutter, then got her big cookie cutter and started all over again.

You now have a little heart shaped sandwich with a red heart in the middle.