Blueberry Streusel Ice Cream
A tasty mashup of sweet fruit streusel and rich vanilla ice cream
Ice Cream + Frozen Desserts
Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream with Toasted Hazelnuts
It turns out that my beautiful wife is quickly becoming my ice cream muse. For quite a while now I’ve based my ice cream making on recipes by the amazing Jeni Britton Bauer, founder of the now rightly Jeni’s Ice Cream. Everything I’ve made from her fist book on the subject has been amazing. Recently however, my wife has been struck with flavor inspirations and has challenged me to build on Jeni’s well researched (though unusual) base recipes with some new bolt-on flavors.
A few weeks back she had a hankering for a “blueberry cobbler” ice cream, a vanilla base with both blueberry and streusel swirls for fruity sweetness and crunch. It sounded great, though I was a bit concerned that the streusel might somehow get soggy and gummy in the process of making the treat. Rather than make a blueberry sauce from scratch, I used the exercise as an excuse to use a jar of “Stonewall Kitchen – Maine Wild Blueberry Jam” that had established a long-term residence in our pantry. For the streusel, a few handfuls of Trader Joe’s “Pecan Praline Granola” did the trick, staying perfectly crunchy for the duration of its short tenure in our freezer.
Bittersweet Chocolate Semifreddo
Frozen Chocolate Deliciousness Without an Ice Cream Machine
See these two beautiful balls of frozen beauty? They’re the super lucky result of a kitchen fail!
Working at America’s Test Kitchen I get paid to make recipes fail (in a sense) over and over again until they are positively bullet-proof and guaranteed to deliver great results for our fans. At home however, I try to keep kitchen failure to a minimum. That said, last weekend when making this semifreddo (Italian for half-frozen), I misread the recipe and ended up making a very different dessert from what the author intended. I was in a hurry to throw something together and get it into the freezer for dinner guests that evening, and in my haste, “lost” an entire cup of cream from my mix. Merde!
For those of you unfamiliar with the wonders of semifreddo, its a frozen dessert that can be made without an ice cream maker, and has a softly frozen consistency that feels more like a frozen mousse than an ice cream or gelato. The key to its airy texture is that its made with a light, fluffy Italian meringue that doesn’t freeze as solid as the custard base typically used when making ice cream.
Blackberry Swirl Ice Cream
Not yet wanting to let go of summer I'm running around like a mad man consuming all the fresh corn and fruits I can get my hands on these days. Even though the morning air has a bit of a chill this time of year, afternoons are still nice and warm and we've had such a nice stretch of cloud free days that I recently had a craving for one more batch of a fruit infused ice cream.
Bittersweet Chocolate Gelato
I’m not one of those people that can sit on the couch at 9 PM with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, fire up Netflix and call it a night.
Actually, let me rephrase…..I can TOTALLY do that, I just try very hard not too because with every passing year, those night time indulgences get harder to work off the next day. Hear what I’m sayin’?
Brownie and Dulce de Leche Ice Cream Sandwiches
These little darlings were inspired by a post I saw on Deb Perelman's awesome blog, Smitten Kitchen. The technique I employed is basically the same as hers, but I added a few extra steps by making my own ice cream, then not able to leave well enough alone, a batch of pressure cooker dulce de leche to kick these babies into the stratosphere.
Gravel Road Ice Cream
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you've all enjoyed a festive, peaceful and wildly indulgent holiday season. For those of you who are waking up today with an eye toward acting on the New Year's resolutions you proclaimed last night in a drunken stupor, hold your horses. You're gonna want to make AND eat a batch of this amazing ice cream before you head down to your local gym to re-activate your membership.
Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk Ice Cream
Hey gang, guess I spoke too soon when I told you that with summer travels over we were ready to roar back into the Oui, Chef kitchen to share some great new recipes. It's been over a week since my last post…..oops.
Truth is, our summer schedule has been busier than anticipated and has kept me from my regular twice a week posting schedule as of late, and circumstances are unlikely to change until all the kidlets are back in school. I really do miss being here with you all more regularly, and am looking forward to things getting back to normal as all of the kids start heading back to school in a couple weeks.
Mango Sorbet
Every now and again our love of fresh, colorful fruit gets the best of us and between my wife and I, we end up buying a bit more than even our large family can maw through in a reasonable amount of time. So it was last week when the crisper bins of our fridge started to look something like a "Noah's Ark" of fruit, as they appeared to contain at least 2 of every variety known to mankind.
Lime Cheesecake Ice Cream
Within minutes of polishing off the last of our stupendously good homemade coffee ice cream, my wife and I were back to pouring through Jeni Britton Bauer's Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home cookbook for another inspired recipe of hers to try. I fell hard for the "Salted Caramel", while my wife was drawn to the "Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Cherries".
Guess which one we made?