smitten kitchen » Ice Cream/Sorbet

lemon mint granita

deb — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:47:31 +0000

Granitas have never exactly captured my imagination. Flecks of flavored ice in a bowl seemed rather dull, and their place in the dessert repository was kind of lost on me. Trust me, if I’m hoping you’re going to bust out some salted caramel dark chocolate mousse and you come out of the kitchen with pale icy chips? It’s going to be hard for me to feign enthusiasm.

But now I get it. People, granitas are a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine of our kid dreams. They’re the perfect antidote to the sticky, oppressive summer days to come — frosty, crunchy and tart — tossing out that annoying plastic crank in favor of the unbranded simplicity of two forks and a roasting pan, and swapping the unnatural syrups in frightening hues for fresh fruit juice.

... Read the rest of lemon mint granita on smittenkitchen.com

buttermilk ice cream

deb — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:26:15 +0000

In the last week, we’ve made not-so-subtle hints about buns in ovens, cravings and peas in pods so it’s an only natural transition to ice cream, whether or not you eat it with sweet grape pickles.

I’m horribly overdue to finally dish out the recipe for Claudia Fleming’s incredible buttermilk ice cream — she of the scones, the gingerbread and the sandies — something I promised in January and have been going on about since December, when a friend sent me home with a pint she’d made. This stuff is perfection — all of the elements of a great vanilla ice cream with an extra tang that keeps it from being, well, “vanilla”.

Buttermilk is a funny thing. I can’t remember my mother using it once growing up and when I started baking more, was horrified by the stuff, which smells and taste a lot like the curdled milk that it is. How wrong is that? But now I love it. I mean, I haven’t taken to drinking a glass of it warm like a certain cooking instructor told me his elderly mother does — yeesh! — but when I smell it, I think of biscuits and cakes and muffins and I like it. So an ice cream that magnifies this deliciousness was not meant to last long in our apartment.

... Read the rest of buttermilk ice cream on smittenkitchen.com

hot fudge sauce

deb — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:32:35 +0000

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that my mother used to make us homemade hot fudge sauce for our ice cream? Right, I see you’re not new here! Welcome back. But really, the crazy didn’t start with my generation, despite the fact that I may or may not have crafted a really elaborate chicken dish this week when sick and not remotely interested in cooking or eating it. So I didn’t waste the ingredients. Also totally my mother’s daughter there.

Is it me, or does something about hot fudge sauce on ice cream seem distinctively retro? I don’t hear much about fudge sauce and their accompanying sundaes these days. Maybe I’ve stepped too far into the Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream in a pool of cognac, drizzled in the world’s most expensive chocolate, covered with shaved white, black and clear truffles, topped with edible 25-karat gold leaf world… Let me fix that right now.

... Read the rest of hot fudge sauce on smittenkitchen.com

chocolate sorbet

deb — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:14:21 +0000

I’m going to take a brief break from your food phobias today to tell you about my newest one. It lives in the freezer. It controls my mind, and at times, my spoon. And at the rate we’re going, it will be the very end of me. Or my waistline. Or my husband, as he leaves me for the Paris-dweller who envisioned this masterpiece.

It goes by the innocent-sounding name chocolate sorbet but even typing those words was enough to send my resistance into a tailspin and I had to go into the freezer to get another taste, cursing Lebovitz the whole way there and whispering sweet nothings into my spoon on the way back.

I suppose you could say I’m having a Chocolate ~~Weak~~ Week, except it started last week when I was getting a pedicure and they had these tiny chocolate brownie nuggets out and I wasn’t even hungry but the entire 45 minutes of buffing and rebirthing my feet into the kind The Other Half walk on I was thinking “There’s a tiny bite of chocolate brownie in the corner. There’s a tiny bite of chocolate brownie in the corner…” ad infinitum. (When I finally swooped down on my prey an hour later, it didn’t even disappoint.)

... Read the rest of chocolate sorbet on smittenkitchen.com

dulce de leche ice cream

deb — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:39 +0000

Two weeks ago, I had the honor to meet one of the people who has been reading this site in all of its incarnations for so long, she probably knows me better than I do. And yet she still wanted to meet me for lunch! The lovely Marce and I had a weekday lunch on a stunning day at Tabla’s Bread Bar, sitting outside discussing cameras and childcare, the food in Buenos Aires and the freelance life. It was fantastic, and not only because I can never resist an opportunity to have lunch at the Bread Bar but because she brought me…

A jar of dulce de leche from Argentina! I thought I’d won the lottery. I know that aside from being practically the national dish, it’s no big deal to find a jar a grocery store down there but I didn’t know that there is like a whole supermarket aisle of it! I … I think it’s safe to say that it’s best I never find myself in that aisle. It would get sticky; I’d never be invited back.

Of course, I immediately started scheming what I could make with it, but I wanted to be really cautious about not picking a recipe that would bury the dulce’s charms. Oh, I loved those Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Squares as much as you all did in January, but said then and maintain now that the dulce flavor was not particularly strong in the delicious end product. When someone lugs a one-pound tub of this caramel of the gods more than 5,000 miles to you, you want to treat it with the utmost respect.

... Read the rest of dulce de leche ice cream on smittenkitchen.com

butterscotch ice cream

deb — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:56:02 +0000

Everyone needs a motto, an inspirational catchphrase or a daily affirmation and at least for the duration of this post, mine is going to have to be: when life gives you stupid, annoying pudding that never, ever sets, make ice cream. What? You don’t think it will work for t-shirts and taglines? I’m crushed.

But I have, indeed, come a long way from my late-February butterscotch pudding nadir. On the heels of the Valentines-timed chocolate pudding rave, it occurred to me that the world really needs more pudding recipes. They’re a great thing to master–not too difficult, not too heavy and complete and total comfort food. And while some (coughmomcough) have tried the chocolate pudding and still feel that it doesn’t have much on her beloved My-T-Fine [Deb shakes head in shame, clucks tongue] it is impossible to argue that store-bought or from-a-mix butterscotch pudding has any relation whatsoever to that which is coaxed from a brown sugar, vanilla and bourbon-hinted caramel.

... Read the rest of butterscotch ice cream on smittenkitchen.com

fennel ice cream

deb — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:39:08 +0000

I’m patting myself on the back right now–no, not for finishing NaBlo, because I think we have already established that an 86 percent effort doesn’t count–but because I have finally made the fennel ice cream from the October Gourmet and it is absolutely wonderful. You have no idea how many things have had the balderdash to get in my way.

It actually starts long before October, when I was trying to make the roasted banana ice cream from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. In a small kitchen with one counter, I rarely take pictures of my mise, as it is simply disgraceful. Things are piled and messy and muddled and as long as I can find a clear corner to work on, I excel in ignoring everything else. We all have our skills, non? This usually works for me (ahem) except for that day that it didn’t, and the ice cream maker, all of its parts and sticky, delicious banana batter ended up splayed across the kitchen floor, breaking the plastic paddle that churns the ice cream. Alex and I ordered a replacement part ($8 piece, $9 S&H) from Cuisinart that night which took EIGHT weeks to arrive, abruptly halting my ice cream making season in its tracks.

... Read the rest of fennel ice cream on smittenkitchen.com

coconut pinkcherry yogurt

deb — Wed, 23 May 2007 20:03:53 +0000

Like ten zillion other brides with mile-long registries, I received an ice-cream maker as a wedding shower gift two years ago, but when I finally busted it out last summer, I ended up really struggling to find good recipes. Why so much sugar in a cantaloupe sorbet? Isn’t it already sweet enough? Why should I add an equal part of water to watermelon puree? It’s a weak flavor to begin with, why dilute it so? Why do so many frozen yogurt recipes call for oddities like gelatin and milk? Can’t you just freeze yogurt? These questions nagged at me as I tried recipe after recipe, and save for a single strawberry sorbet that I still dream of late at night, each final product disappointed me in the exact ways that I predicted it would.

Yet, being a newbie in the world of homemade frozen things, I lacked the confidence to go out on my own, which is why when my new best friend (shh, I haven’t told him yet) announced that his newest cookbook would be aptly titled “The Perfect Scoop” I just knew that it would have the guidance that I needed. By some obvious, glaring oversight on the purchasing department of my Chelsea Barnes and Noble had the nerve to not stock it, and in the two weeks between the time I ordered and received the book, my torture was increased tenfold by having to view countless other examples of the awesomeness of this cookbook.

... Read the rest of coconut pinkcherry yogurt on smittenkitchen.com

onion pizza + strawberry sorbet

deb — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 23:01:46 +0000

I’ve heard so many people say that they don’t understand the purpose of wedding registries. “Can’t we just have the cha-ching?” they ask, “Who needs all that crap?”

And I’m here to say, “I do.” Yes, to the Kitchen Aid. Yes to the carved oak salad bowl set. Yes to the entire Cuisinart family from the Griddler and Food Processor to the Ice Cream Maker and Hand Blender. Yes, I find satisfaction in a well-outfitted kitchen and I am not ashamed to admit it.

I don’t blame these registry nay-sayers, we’re just different sorts of people. They don’t harbor secret fantasies about Williams-Sonoma stores and an unmonitored personal slush fund; they probably don’t get intoxicated with 6″ cake pans and ceramic pie weights at the Bowery Kitchen Supply; the prospect of a 9-color sugar sanding kit has probably not once ever made their entire week; and I’m sure their higher income bracket daydreams don’t include an entire web page of Kitchen Aid accessories.

... Read the rest of onion pizza + strawberry sorbet on smittenkitchen.com