Cayenne Cantaloupe Sorbet with Honey-Cornmeal Cones

I somehow got it into my head that I should try making ice cream cones. It wasn’t just the idea of making a frozen dessert and scooping it onto a cone that was fascinating me. It was actually making the cones themselves that I had to do. I wasn’t so concerned with the waffle texture and using a proper pizelle maker, but I did want to form cone shapes not just drape tuille circles over little bowls for crunchy cups. I ordered a cone roller, and was ready to experiment. There are recipes for ice cream cones in The Perfect Scoop, and I opted for the Honey-Cornmeal variation with added chopped rosemary. I’d already decided on the Cayenne Cantaloupe Sorbet from the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book, and honey and cornmeal in a cone seemed like a good match for it. Now, I enjoy a good kitchen challenge as much as the next obsessed home cook, but I will say that making the cones was one of the trickier things I’ve attempted lately. David Lebovitz offers some great tips for baking the batter in the oven and rolling the cones, but there are a lot of variables at play here. I drew six-inch circles on the back of parchment paper which lined the baking sheets. Then, I was able to spread the batter thinly, as instructed, to fill the circles. A baking time of ten to fifteen minutes was suggested, but that produced edges that were far too crispy to roll. You need to catch the baked batter at just the right moment when it’s set and cooked through but still pliable enough to roll into a cone. Oh, and you have to do this while it’s hot, which burns your fingers a bit. After one or two ugly results from trial and error, I pulled on some plastic gloves and got determined about this. Finally, a few cones seemed worth keeping, and the dessert plan was able to happen. 

There are a couple of other sorbets in the Humphry Slocombe book I also want to try which involve Hibiscus Beet and Thai Chile Lime, but I had a cantaloupe on hand so this one came about first. It’s a simple puree of a whole chopped cantaloupe, sugar, a pinch of salt, a couple of tablespoons of rice vinegar, a couple of tablespoons of vodka, some lime juice, and some cayenne. I usually always say that I add more of any hot chile ingredient in a recipe, but here, the one-half teaspoon called for was actually more than enough. I’d use a little less next time. All of the ingredients were pureed in a blender and then poured through a sieve before being chilled and then churned in an ice cream maker. While it spent some time in the freezer to firm, I set about the project that was making ice cream cones. The batter was made with an egg, an egg white, honey, melted butter, sugar, flour, cornmeal, and a little chopped rosemary. Two tablespoons of batter was used for each cone, and it was spread into a six-inch circle on a parchment-lined baking sheet. The batter baked for about six to eight minutes until set and golden at the edges. Once removed from the oven, the baked circles were flipped over with a metal spatula and immediately rolled into a cone on a wood form. The edges should be golden but not so crispy that they break when rolled on the form. Plan to test the first two to gauge the needed baking time. Also, wearing plastic gloves helps with touching the hot cones while rolling. When slightly cooled and firm, the cone was removed from the form, and then next cone was shaped. Since there is a small hole in the bottom of each cone, I melted chocolate for dipping. When the chocolate set on the tips of the cones, the holes were sealed. 

I don’t think I’d want to make homemade cones for a large party, but they were a fun treat for just a few desserts. And, the chile-spiked, fruity sorbet was a great flavor for the cornmeal cones with a hint of rosemary. If you’re going to burn your fingers for a kitchen project, it should be one with a result at least as delightful and tasty as this one. 

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Lemon Ice Cream with Citrus Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies

You know I sometimes go a little crazy with cooking and baking with lemons. I’ve mentioned this before. It just happened again. Just recently, I made a lemon cream sauce for pasta, a few different kinds of lemon cookies, and lemon ice cream all in one weekend. Organic Meyer lemons aren’t always easy to find here but I got lucky one day, so I had a good excuse, right? You see, I do have two Meyer lemon trees, but they’ve had a tough couple of years. From the two trees, I only harvested one useable lemon this year. I blame the squirrels and birds, and well, I should probably keep a closer watch on the trees. So, when I find a good supply of Meyer lemons, I take advantage of it. This ice cream is from The Perfect Scoop, and it’s incredibly easy. Everything is whizzed up in the blender, and there are no eggs and no custard to cook. I love it when a recipe is this simple with a result that’s this delicious. It’s a creamy but tart ice cream that was fun to scoop up with a crunchy shortbread cookie. The cookies are from Martha Stewart's Cookies, and the recipe is also online. Orange zest is suggested for the cookie dough, but obviously, that got replaced with lemon zest here. There’s added flavor and a pretty, pale yellow color from cornmeal both mixed into the dough and rolled onto the edges before the cookies are cut. Together, the ice cream and cookies made a perfectly lemony dessert. 

I wasn’t kidding about how easy this ice cream is to make. You zest two lemons into a blender pitcher and add a half-cup of sugar. Just blend those together until the lemon zest is chopped very fine. Then, add one half-cup of lemon juice. I was using large lemons, so two was enough for one half-cup of juice. Also add two cups of half-and-half and a quarter teaspoon or so of salt. Blend until smooth, and chill for at least an hour before churning in an ice cream maker. The cookie dough is made by creaming together butter and confectioners’ sugar and then adding lemon zest and vanilla extract. Flour, yellow cornmeal, and salt are then added and mixed to combine. The finished dough is divided into two equal parts which are each rolled into a cylinder, wrapped in plastic, and refrigerated for an hour. The logs of dough are then rolled in cornmeal, and I added some sanding sugar as well, and then cookies are sliced and baked for about 30 minutes. 

Of course, other types of citrus could work here, or you could even mix more than one kind. But, once I’m thinking lemon, I tend to have a one-track mind. Right now, my trees are covered in blossoms, making me hopeful for lots of homegrown lemons next winter. I promise to make better use of those lemons than the squirrels or birds would. 

Mint and Chocolate Brownie Chunk Ice Cream

So, taste is subjective, and it’s also subject to change. Back in the day before I made most of the ice cream we have at home, Kurt and I used to stand in front of the freezer section of the grocery store and negotiate about which flavor to choose. He would quickly rule out my favorite, butter pecan, and I would not even let him point to his favorite which was mint chocolate chip. If I remember correctly, we usually ended up with dutch chocolate or cherry garcia. Each of our favorites had to wait for special occasions like our birthdays or something like that. It’s been years since Kurt has even mentioned mint chocolate ice cream, but I thought I’d whip up a special treat just for him and maybe, just maybe, I’d come around to this flavor combination in a homemade version. The fresh mint ice cream recipe is from The Perfect Scoop, and in the perfect pairings paragraph, adding chunks of chewy-dense brownies, also in the book, is suggested. The great thing about the brownies is that they really do remain chewy after being frozen. Little chunks of them were folded into the churned ice cream before letting it set up in the freezer. The ice cream itself was lovely and fragrant from the fresh mint leaves, and steeping the leaves in the milk even tinted it just barely green.

The brownies were made by melting unsweetened chocolate and butter and then adding sugar, eggs, and vanilla. A scant bit of flour along with some salt was added to the batter, and I omitted the chocolate chips and optional nuts. The brownies baked until just set, and then when cool, they were cut into small chunks. To begin the ice cream, milk, sugar, some cream, and a pinch of salt were combined and warmed in a saucepan. Two cups worth of mint leaves were added to the milk mixture, the pan was covered, and it was left to steep for an hour. The mint was strained out of the milk mixture, and the milk mixture went back on the stove to be warmed again. Then, the usual procedure for a custard took place. Five egg yolks were tempered with the warm milk mixture, the whole combination went back on the stove until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, and then it was strained into a bowl with additional cream. The custard was cooled and then churned in an ice cream maker. Last, the finished mint ice cream was layered in a dish with chunks of chewy brownies, and it was frozen until firm.

Steeping the mint leaves in the milk gave it even more flavor than I expected. The freshness of the mint flavor with the richness of the custard took me by surprise. I liked it. And, those chunks of chewy brownie pieces were way better to my mind than those hard, waxy-tasting chocolate chips in the store-bought stuff that Kurt used to like. Kurt, on the other hand, was confused. This was not the mint chocolate ice cream he remembered from years ago. This was something completely different, and it was very good. But, for the record, he liked those hard bits of chocolate chips.

Chocolate Dipped Ice Cream and Sorbet Sandwiches

It's no surprise that we're having a hot summer here. We always do. We have had an impressive 40 days of temperatures at or above 100 degrees F though, and it's only July 25. From the looks of the weather forecast, we're about to add seven more days to that total. What this means is that all I really want to eat is food that's cold and preferably frozen. Last August, there was a photo in Bon Appetit of a stack of chocolate dipped ice cream sandwiches. The sandwiches were all different flavors, one end of each had been dipped in melted chocolate, and then sprinkled with jimmies or toffee chunks or chopped nuts. This photo had been touched up with added vapor swirls around the sandwiches to further highlight their lovely coldness and perfection as a treat during the heat of summer. That pile of extremely cold sandwiches was something I needed in my freezer. You could use whatever ice cream or sorbet you'd like for the filling, but since I'd been waiting to find fresh, organic cherries for a few weeks, there were a couple I'd had on my mind. First, I made candied cherries and used them in white chocolate cherry ice cream, and then I cooked some cherries and pureed them for cherry sorbet. Both of those recipes are from The Perfect Scoop. The fillings were already delicious on their own, but the brown-butter cookies and chocolate coating with chopped almonds didn't hurt them one bit.

Yes, that was brown-butter cookies. And, the technique, found in the Bon Appetit recipe, for making these sandwiches was an interesting one. The cookie was baked in one solid layer in a nine by thirteen inch pan. I cut the sheet of cookie into four pieces horizontally. Two were filled with white chocolate cherry ice cream, and the other two were filled with cherry sorbet. In each case, the bottom cookie sat at one edge of the pan in which it was baked, ice cream or sorbet was piled thickly on top, and the other cookie piece was placed on top of that. With an off-set spatula, you can smooth the exposed edge. Then, each long piece of filled cookie sandwich was wrapped in plastic wrap, left in the pan, and placed in the freezer to firm up. After a few hours, the cookie bars were cut into separate, little sandwiches. The great news is that these brown-butter cookies cut easily with a serrated knife. They didn't break or chip apart as I feared they might. The cut apart sandwiches were placed back in the freezer once again before the next step. Last, chocolate was melted, one end of each sandwich was dipped into the chocolate and then into chopped nuts, and they set up in the freezer until dessert time arrived.

Almost any cookie would make a good ice cream sandwich, but some are easier than others to bite into after being frozen. The cookies used here performed perfectly for filling, cutting, and biting. The process of filling a long piece of cookie and then cutting the sandwiches after they were frozen and firm worked amazingly well. I haven't decided which filling, the white chocolate cherry ice cream or the cherry sorbet, I like better, but opening the freezer to find two different options for frozen treats is certainly making our hot summer a little more bearable.

Mocha Sherbet Freeze

I spotted this sherbet on Saveur.com the other day, and it seemed like a very good antidote to our unrelenting August heat. I was ogling the frothy, icy, chocolaty beverage and wishing I had a glass of it in my hand when Cowgirl Chef all but dared me to go ahead and make it. So, I did. The recipe is also found in The Perfect Scoop, and since it’s a sherbet, it’s not terribly decadent. It’s made with espresso, cocoa powder, and milk. Once the sherbet has been churned in an ice cream maker and then left in the freezer to firm up, it’s then blended into a slurpingly good mocha freeze and topped with whipped cream making it a little more decadent than how it started. I made one change to the blended beverage by adding some Kahlua, and it did help alleviate the hot weather at least until my glass was empty.

I have to tell you a little more about the whipped cream garnish. I received a creative whip from iSi North America which makes whipping cream a very fast operation. I added a couple of teaspoons of sugar to a small container of cream, closed the top and shook the container to dissolve the sugar, and then poured the cream into the creative whip which is charged with nitrous oxide. You shake the creative whip canister a few times, and then pull the trigger for thick, whipped cream. That was so much easier than whisking for several minutes or pulling out the mixer. Obviously, you could use this tool for all kinds of creative foams or meringues, but I was thrilled to simply have effortless whipped cream on my mocha freeze. As I mentioned, I added some Kahlua. To make the freeze, you combine scoops of the sherbet with ice cubes and more espresso in a blender pitcher. I used half the suggested amount of espresso and half Kahlua. It was blended until smooth, whipped cream was piped onto it, and chopped chocolate-covered espresso beans were sprinkled on top.

Coffee and chocolate are great year-round, and in a frozen format, this fit perfectly with my criteria for summer desserts. It was cold, not heavy, and flavorful without being too sweet. Scoops of the sherbet all by itself were delicious too, but the blended beverage was a special treat.

David Lebovitz, What Are You Reading?

After working as a pastry chef at several restaurants in San Francisco, including almost thirteen years at Chez Panisse, David Lebovitz now lives in Paris where he leads culinary tours and writes books that we all know and love. A couple of the latest of those books are The Perfect Scoop, which is a favorite of mine, and The Sweet Life in Paris, which is a great read with great recipes like dulce de leche brownies. His brand new book is Ready for Dessert, and this one brings together the best of his desserts with new photos and additional recipes. On David’s blog, there’s always something entertaining, delicious, or informative and probably a combination of all three. I had to ask him, what are you reading?


David:

Right now I'm reading The Belly of Paris, a new translation, and what I'm particularly enjoying about it is that it brings the city of Paris from a whole different era back to life. The giant market, Les Halles, must've been amazing and the descriptions of the piles of food and the people who worked there are so vivid and make me a bit sad that the market was torn down in the name of "progress."

I recently read Kitchen Chinese, by Ann Mah, a novel about a young woman moving back to China and rediscovering her identity by becoming a food writer.

I also enjoyed The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones. A lot of people don't realize how important she's been to modern cooking; she discovered and was responsible for getting everyone from Julia Child to Marcella Hazan published. She lived in Paris, too, which made the book a nice reminiscence of a time when French cooking was still loaded with cream-soaked gratins and bustling bistros.

Am looking forward to baking my way through Farmers' Market Desserts, by Jennie Schacht. It's filled with things like cobblers and pies, using all those wonderful fruits that are starting to appear at my market this month.

On deck, is The Butcher and the Vegetarian by Tara Austen Weaver. Am looking forward to diving into her story about her conversion from vegetarian to meat eater. She's a great writer and when I pull myself out of the kitchen, I'm devouring this book next.








Thank you for participating, David! Check back to see who answers the question next time and what other books are recommended.

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Strawberry-Rhubard Sorbet and Vanilla Ice Cream with Rhubarb-Red Wine Compote

It’s time for dessert. After tapas and paella, dessert was, well, not exactly Spanish. I wanted to make use of spring-time strawberries and rhubarb and turning them into something frozen seemed right. Since a frozen dessert would be made well in advance, that meant I could put together a few components and nothing would require last-minute attention. When I read The Perfect Scoop, I was inspired by the suggested pairings of sorbets or granitas with ice creams and sauces. I dreamt up a vision of fruity strawberry-rhubarb sorbet served next to a sinfully rich scoop of vanilla ice cream, and I found those recipes in that book. Following the strawberry-rhubarb sorbet recipe, there’s a note about serving it with a red wine-poached rhubarb compote which sounded perfect. Sorbet, ice cream, and compote was a good start, but I thought a nutty, crunchy item would make it complete. For that, I turned to Martha Stewart's Cookies and chose the lacy nut cookie. I had a plan, but I had no idea how to best present those items on a dessert plate. I should probably read a book on plating and presentation.

Each part of this dessert was very easy to prepare. For the sorbet, rhubarb was chopped and cooked with sugar and water until tender. That was pureed with strawberries, chilled, and churned into sorbet in my ice cream maker. The next day, I made the custard for ice cream with whole milk, sugar, cream, a vanilla bean, six egg yolks, and vanilla extract. I’ve tried a few different recipes for vanilla ice cream, and I can now gauge how delicious the result will be based on the number of egg yolks used. Six is a lovely number of egg yolks for vanilla ice cream, and it was very delicious. The compote was a simple mix of chopped rhubarb, red wine, sugar, honey, a cinnamon stick, and ground cloves. That combination was simmered until the rhubarb was cooked and the sauce reduced, and then I stored it in the refrigerator. Before serving, I brought the compote back to room temperature. The last item was the cookie. The dough was made from mostly butter but also confectioners’ sugar, corn syrup, bread flour, and chopped pecans. Once mixed, it was rolled into a log, wrapped in parchment paper, and chilled. Pieces were sliced from the dough log and baked on silpat-lined sheet pans. I quickly learned that these cookies spread even more than you would think. The dough log I created was a little big, and I ended up cutting each slice in half before baking. The shape of the dough doesn’t matter so much because it spreads into a circle regardless while baking. The cookies baked into lacy and somewhat fragile wafers of buttery crunch.

I ended up with just what I wanted for flavors, textures, fruit, and nuts, but I had no idea how to make it look nice on a plate. Should I have put the compote on the bottom, drizzled it on top, or placed it to the side? What about the cookie? I couldn’t decide how to position it either. It could have been the platform on which everything else sat, or it could have rested on top like a lacy veil over the frozen scoops, or it could have sat in a more vertical pose. I played with the plating and snapped the photos seen here well before dinner time. Then, when it was time for dessert, my final plating decision was to set out a buffet of sorts and invite everyone to help themselves. Problem solved.

Blueberry Kefir Ice Cream

I was already a big fan of drinkable yogurt when I was asked if I would like some samples of Lifeway kefir. Kefir is also a drinkable, fermented dairy product, and I was happy to get to taste several different flavors. In addition to the health benefits of the calcium and live and active cultures in kefir, it also lasts a nice long time in the refrigerator. The samples I received arrived at the end of January, and the expiration dates on them are in mid-April. I immediately popped open the strawberry kefir to have a taste, and it was well-flavored, not too sweet, and pleasantly thick while very drinkable. Kurt and I could have happily and easily just enjoyed all of those samples as beverages, but I decided I needed to get a little creative. I thought a frozen yogurt kind of concoction would be a good direction to take, and I set about finding some sources for inspiration. First, I looked at the blueberry frozen yogurt in The Perfect Scoop, and then I found Clotilde’s recipe for lemon kefir ice cream.

In The Perfect Scoop, the blueberry frozen yogurt is made with lots frozen blueberries. I started with that idea. I pureed three cups of frozen blueberries with some blueberry flavored kefir in the blender. In the book, since plain yogurt was used, additional sugar was added to the ingredients to be blended, but since my flavored kefir was already sweetened, I skipped the sugar. That puree was then pushed through a strainer to remove the blueberry seeds and skins, and the result was a very smooth, purpley, and tasty puree. In Clotilde’s recipe, lemon zest and limoncello were added to the mix before the ice cream was churned. My limoncello still wasn’t ready, so I added some orange liqueur and orange zest instead. Then, the finished mix went into the ice cream maker for 35 minutes.

It wasn’t as icy as a sorbet, but the frozen fruit content took it in that direction. The texture actually fell somewhere in between sorbet and ice cream, and the subtle bit of orange offset the blueberry flavor well. To take it one step further, I also used the blueberry kefir ice cream in a shake blended with some peach kefir since I’ve been a fan of that combo since I first had blueberry-peach pancakes many years ago at Kerbey Lane Cafe. That was a glass full of frozen, fruity goodness. It was fun to mix and match the flavors and make frozen treats, but the remaining samples will be great instant breakfasts too.

Ancho Pine Nut Brownies with Cinnamon Ice Cream

A couple of weeks ago, we had some of the coldest weather this part of Texas has experienced in many years. We get a little uneasy around here with near-freezing temperatures, and when it dipped into the 20s (F) we were confused and concerned. So, what was I doing to prepare for this weekend of serious winter weather we were about to have? I was making ice cream. The ice cream was going to be served on warm brownies, but still, it was 20 degrees in Austin and I pulled out the ice cream maker. Maybe I should start by telling you about the brownies because that might make more sense. I wanted to mix up a southwest, chile powder-infused kind of brownie, and I found the perfect recipe in Nuevo Tex-Mex. The recipe was created by Rebecca Rather, and it includes ancho chile powder with semisweet chocolate, chocolate chips, and pine nuts. I thought big squares of those brownies warm from the oven would be great topped with a generous scoop of cinnamon ice cream. The cinnamon ice cream is from The Perfect Scoop.

The brownie recipe makes a large batch, so I cut the quantities in half and baked it in an eight inch square pan rather than a nine by thirteen inch pan. Still, the halved quantities included a half pound of semisweet chocolate, half a pound of butter, four eggs, and a cup and a half of sugar along with flour, ancho chile powder, chocolate chips, and pine nuts. These were kind of serious brownies. The batter was very easy to stir together without a mixer, and they went into 325 F oven for about 35-40 minutes. The recipe suggests a baking time of 20-25 minutes, but my brownies were nowhere near done at that point. The cinnamon ice cream was started by steeping broken cinnamon sticks in warm milk with sugar and a pinch of salt. Then, a custard was made with egg yolks and the warmed milk, it was strained, and cream was added. The custard was churned after being chilled.

The ancho chile powder in the brownies accented the chocolate in the same way espresso would. There was clearly something more than chocolate happening, but the chile flavor was just a supporting role and not obvious at all. The texture of these brownies was delightfully lighter than I expected and definitely not dense. The crackly top gave way to an almost cakey but near-fudgy interior. They were somehow the best of both worlds, and the pine nuts were a nice addition too. While I don’t think cinnamon ice cream would be a bad choice to set atop any brownie, I was especially happy with it on top of these. I’m also convinced this dessert was a good distraction from our freakishly cold weather at least for a little while. And just for the record, it's 75 degrees (F) today, and that's my favorite kind of January weather.