by admin on July 27, 2010
I’m totally smitten with my new
ice cream machine. It’s probably my best
unnecessary necessary purchase of the year. That and the chipping piece of door frame the ice cream is sat on, which cost me about the same as the machine and ironically I found at a store called
Junk. Silly me for thinking that a Junk shop might actually be cheap. But enough of the vintage junk- back to the ice cream, which is anything but junk. It’s vanilla ice cream deliciousness and just about the only appropriate thing to eat when even toasting bread makes you break into a sweat.
I’ve have gotten into this habit where I mix my store-bought ice cream with Greek yogurt to make the sweetness a little less abrasive. So I wanted to create something that like that here. A cross between rich vanilla ice cream and Greek yogurt- slightly tangy, creamy….just like mixing some plain yogurt into your scoop of vanilla.
So the process- I started with a traditional custard base, but using less egg yolks and a little cornstarch (corn flour in the UK) to make the custard thicken. I used a pure cane sugar (golden caster), which is less refined and has a gorgeous light molasses flavor and fresh vanilla beans. Now, if I was a millionaire, I would use fresh vanilla pods in everything- but being that I’m a few dollars, pounds and euros shy of a seven-O bank account, I have come to accept that with most things a good vanilla extract does the trick well enough. However, with ice cream I love the little specs of vanilla bean that give it a gentle polka dotted look just too much to be stingy. That said, if you omit them, you’ll be churning up batches of ice cream for pennies.
There’s slightly less than half the amount of sugar in here that you’ll find in Häagen Daaz and Ben and Jerrys- about 14g per serving but instead of something rich and creamy this is much lighter, ever so slightly tart and just begging for some crushed almonds raspberry puree to be drizzled over the top. You wait, it will be begging you too. And whilst your giving in to almonds and berries you may as well serve it on an expensive piece of junky wood too.
Because of it’s low fat nature of this ice cream it is best served on the day that it is churned before it sets too hard. Alternatively if you do serve it a couple of days later, allow it to sit in the fridge a slightly soften for an hour- an hour and a half before serving.
Makes 3 cups
500ml/2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla pod
2 egg yolks
50g/1/4 cup pure cane sugar (golden caster sugar)
1 Tbsp corn starch (cornflour UK)
200g/1 cup Greek yogurt (0% is fine)
• Slice the vanilla pod down the middle length-ways. Place in a medium-sized saucepan with the milk and over a medium heat bring the milk up to scalding point. This is not boiling- as soon as you start seeing little bubbles forming around the side of the pan turn of the heat. Allow the milk to sit and infuse the vanilla for 10 minutes.
• Remove the vanilla pod from the milk and use the blunt side of a knife to scrape the seeds out from each side of the pod. Stir the seeds back into the milk and discard the pod. Or leave it to dry out and then place in a sugar jar for vanilla sugar.
• In a medium-large bowl beat together the egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch with a wooden spoon until fully combined and thick. Slowly pour in the hot milk whilst you stir with the other hand.
• Return the mixture to the milk pan and over a gentle heat stir the mixture until you have the consistency of thin custard. the mixture should coat and stick the back your wooden spoon when it’s complete. Do not be tempted to walk away from the pan or turn up the heat or you will end up with scrambled eggs!
• Once you reach this stage, remove the pan from the heat and pour back into your bowl. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard and chill completely. Once cool whisk your yogurt until completely smooth and then stir into the custard.
• Set up your ice cream machine and pour the mixture in. Churn until thick then store in a sealed plastic container in the freezer.
by admin on July 20, 2010
As I write this there is a pesky bead of sweat in my hairline that is just itching to make the same journey as its predecessors. It’s doing its luge-like back and forth preparations before it takes off and slides down my right temple. What he clearly does not know is how quick I was to swipe away his forbearers before they hit my cheekbones. His fate will be no different. This will be no joyride.
I have been practically making-out with the fan all morning. No matter how much it flutters my cheeks and wind-styles my hair I keep going back for more. Being that this is perhaps the most hateful summer on record the only words that can express my feelings towards a sluggish a/c unit remain entirely as expletives. Were this winter, I would happily curl up next to it and call it a heater. Which is why there is now another bead of sweat gathering up momentum to take the ride of its life.
Walking to the shops only presents a more optimal occasion for the sweat bead face races to take place and what with my hands tied up with bags they can run a free course. I can just hear than shouting Weeeeeeeee! as they take off. It’s not attractive, it’s not pleasant and it’s even worse when I run. Oh hateful, hateful summer!
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by admin on July 14, 2010
Cutting down on fat and sugar in cookies is perhaps the hardest battle of all. The sugar not only determines the sweetness of the cookie but it also effects the texture- how soft or crunchy the cookie is, how much it spreads on the cookie sheet and how much it tastes like a cookie. But when people say that you have to be precise in baking the truth is- in order to get a particular result you have to be precise. But that doesn’t mean that it’s the only result that works. Perhaps you didn’t want a crunchy crisp oatmeal cookie in the first place. With a lots of fiddling and tweaking I’m making big progress in the @Sweetbyhalf kitchen and that’s meant munching my way through quite a few sub-par cookies before they hit the big time. Oh for the day when I have a garden , chickens and a compost heap (can you compost cookies?).
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This has been no week for turning the oven on. I promised myself that I would not going to sit here and winge about the weather but seriously?!? 103°! How is one supposed to train for a marathon in this kind of heat?! Thank god there are cookies to be had and better than that- one’s that do not need to be baked. Unbaked cookies? But doesn’t that mean….Yes, that means you can eat the dough straight from the bowl without the slightest fear of salmonella and in fact if it gets to 105° I think I might just serve the dough in the mixing bowl and hand out spoons. Having said that, raw dough with eggs has never had me thinking twice about having a taste. My friend Steph and I used to store bite-sized balls of cookie dough in the freezer at her house- why turn on the oven when the dough tastes so good raw?
I was concerned that like with many no-bake cookies they would end up too soft and too one textured and I for one require a cookie with bite. I wanted them to be more like a refrigerator cake, only without all the chocolate because that would have required heading out into the heat and that wasn’t happening. After a small amount of rummaging I found some leftover Digestive Biscuits from Don’s outrageous birthday cheesecake. I crunched a few up in hands and then having tasted the dough (because as we’ve already discussed this if fully acceptable) I decided they needed something else. A smattering of cocoa nibs did the trick- with two of my favorite ingredients hanging out in the same bowl these had to be good. If you have trouble locating either then you can find them (and everything else I use in my kitchen) on my newly created Amazon Store. You also really can’t mess up these up- I would say that they are perhaps the easiest recipe on this site and if you manage to cock them up…well then you’ve clearly spent way too much time out in this heat.
Print This Recipe
No-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies
These cookies must be stored in the fridge….or what Iike is keeping them in the freezer which makes them crispy.
Makes 24, assuming you don’t eat too much from the bowl
1/4 cup coconut oil (or ½ stick butter)
1/2 cup honey or sugar
60ml/1/4 cup almond milk (or soy/ regular milk)
2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup natural peanut butter (creamy or crunchy)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
4 digestive biscuits (or 6 Carr’s whole wheat crackers), broken into 1 cm
pieces
2 rounded Tbsp/30g cocoa nibs (plain or chocolate covered)
• In a small saucepan melt together the coconut oil, honey. almond milk and cocoa powder over a low heat the bring to a boil and allow to boil for 1 minute.
• Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter and vanilla until the peanut butter has melted down.
• In a medium-sized bowl mix together the dry ingredients then add the liquid and mix until fully combined. Line a large baking tray with parchment or a Silpat baking sheet and then using either a 1 Tbsp size ice cream scoop or two teaspoons. Flatten with the palm of your hand or bottom of a glass- these will set in the shape that you leave them so make sure they look how you want them to.
Normally unafraid of calories and fat content, every once in a while my husband will say in passing that he will get fat if he eats another one of my baked goods. It’s the sad reality of a well-fed guinea pig. Since marathon training began his concerns of padding out his pouch have somewhat changed and I have found myself initiating a code orange security watch on my own dinner plate. Hey, I’m marathon training too!
Cheesecake is no longer considered a fat-boy treat- in fact his birthday cake which I claim to feed twenty is almost entirely gone and only four slices were eaten by a few lucky friends. There are clearly some perks to having your birthday party when everyone is out of town for the holiday. I wanted to do something a little different with this cake- it was a 30th birthday celebration , after all. I toyed with the idea of peanut butter and chocolate, then a of dulce de leche and chocolate made the list- but in the end I settled with something a little more sophisticated. I was hoping that the chocolate would set a little softer- like fudge but you can’t have everything in one go and just because it’s not a soft fudge setting doesn’t make it bad. Nope, there’s nothing bad about this cheesecake…..except maybe how many miles you will have to run to burn it off. I figured my fifteen-miler this weekend would just about cover a slice.
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