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.
cookbook for a look-see. Five minutes later she was waving the book in my face, showing me all of the post-it tags that marked recipes she wanted to try. As most of them were rather large layer cakes, I asked her to take another swing through the book and try to find something a little more modest in size, "oohhh…good idea, she said, "bikini season's right around the corner"
