Maybe I Should Post Something About Ice Cream

I'll vacuum a few cobwebs from this site and spruce it up for a moment with a new post.

Recently I made some strawberry ice cream. Here's how things went down:

INGREDIENTS

1.5 cups fresh strawberries

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

1/2 teaspoon Stevia (or 1/2 cup white sugar for the stevia-phobes)

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

2 Tablespoons vodka

DIRECTIONS

Put it all in a blender and blend until relatively smooth. Pour into your ice cream churn and churn until it looks like a texture you can live with. Spoon into a shallow freezable container and freeze.

I was lazy about the level of blending but it turned out pretty tasty. Obviously I didn't bother to take any good photos but a video of some churning excitement is HERE on my Instagram account. I suppose if you wanted to go vegan with this you could likely use a combination of coconut milk and cashew butter instead of the milk and heavy cream, but I am unsure what the texture would be like. Why don't you try it out and let me know how it goes? 

Slumming It in Hawaii

I recently had an opportunity to work remotely in Hilo, Hawaii. Being the never-ending cheapskate, I opted for a housing situation that was literally a bedroom built on top of a patio between a house and a garage. It did not include a kitchen, but did include a lot of cute geckos as well as a microwave and a toaster oven. It was an amazing opportunity to improvise all kinds of cheap and fun dishes out of local weeds. Here is one of my favorites.

Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia) Vine Ramen

Ingredients

A generous handful of small Momordica charantia vines, the tenderest ones

1 egg

1 packet spicy ramen such as MaMa

Directions

Wash and chop the vines, set aside.

Microwave the ramen with hot water in a microwave safe bowl. When it's boiling hot, stir in the egg well. Microwave 30-60 seconds longer. Toss in the vines. Stir. 

Consume.

You should eat it

A Random Cookie Recipe for the Blessedly Rainy Day Lazies

 Peanut Insanity Chocolate Chip Cookies

Just came up with this when I wanted cookies last night and wanted to work with what I had on hand. It’s similar to other cookie recipes but the peanut powder (available at health food stores or in bulk online) packs extra peanut protein and flavor. This is not a “less sweet” cookie like some of my other abominations-- it contains plenty of sugar.

INGREDIENTS

Moisty Bits

¼ cup butter, at room temperature

1 cup brown sugar

¼ cup+2 tablespoons peanut butter

1 large egg

¼ cup water

¼ teaspoon liquid stevia

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Dry-y Bits

½ cup peanut powder

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon flax meal

½ teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup dark chocolate chips

1 cup ground roasted peanuts (I use Asian style skin-on peanuts but use whatever you want)

DIRECTIONS

Stir together your moisty bits in a big bowl in the order presented. I recommend a hand mixer to ensure even mixture. It will be pretty wet. You need it wet because the peanut powder will absorb a lot of water.

Get your dry-y bits and dump into the moisty bits. Stir to combine nicely but you don’t need to hyper-wild.

Drop in the chocolate chips and peanuts. Stir to combine. It should be a little crumbly but hold together fine when you shape into balls, similar to peanut butter cookies. If it isn't, add a tablespoon of water at a time until you feel pleased with the texture.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375°F. Put balls of dough on a parchment lined cookie sheet in tablespoonfuls, about 1 inch apart. They don’t spread. Flatten so they’re about ½ inch thick or so (if you leave them rounded, the bottoms may burn before the tops are done). Bake about 12-15 minutes or whatever length of time looks right to you in approximately that range when you look at them in the oven. 

Let them cool on the parchment for about ten minutes. Eat several to make sure they’re good. Then move to a cooling rack. Eat more to make sure they're cool.

Dang I forgot to tell you about this ADDITIONAL (FREE) cookbook!

 Do you want to read an awesome cookbook and discover that it has been defiled with one of my own recipes? Check out the 2020 Husky Cookbook!

This is a cookbook written by various members of the UW community to celebrate cultural cuisine/food diversity and healthy eating. If you have a UW NetID you can download it via the above link.

Or you can just look at my own copy here.

Oh, so which recipe is actually in the Husky Cookbook? My Norwegian lefse recipe (also found in Leave Me Alone I Just Wanna Bake This). It can be located on page 30 of the book (page 34 of the PDF).

God appetitt!

Lefse of Doom

Armagnac Chocolate Super Soft Ice Cream

My liquor collection and I have been having a stare-down. I took action. This recipe contains a lot of fat and alcohol, so it will be very scoopable. I do not bother with only using egg yolks in my gelato-style ice creams because I don’t like risking an overly-yolky taste and the egg white adds so
me nice protein to the situation.

IN DA CAWFEE

INGREDIENTS

2 large whole eggs

¼ cup brown sugar

2 cups heavy whipping cream

½ cup chocolate sauce or chocolate ganache

¼ cup Armagnac (another brandy would work OK--Armagnac is just yum!)

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (I use Medaglia D’oro) 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

Use a hand mixer to mix sugar and eggs in a medium bowl until yellow and thick, about 3 minutes. Heat heavy whipping cream in a large saucepan over medium heat until mixture bubbles just gently (not boiling).

Take about ¼ cup of the hot cream and pour into the sugar-egg mixture while beating with the hand mixer quickly. Add another ¼ cup slowly. Add another ¼ cup. Pour all back into the saucepan. Stir over medium heat until everything hits 170°. 

Stir in chocolate sauce or ganache, then espresso powder, then Armagnac and vanilla. Pour through a good sieve set over a bowl. As with other gelato style ice cream mixtures, reluctantly cover the bowl and refrigerate about 6 hours or overnight.

After six painful hours pass, stir, then throw into your ice cream maker. After the ice cream has formed in the maker, spoon into a small, shallow container with a tight lid. I like a plastic take-out box from our local Thai place. Cover and freeze until firm. 

Stir into your cup of coffee (if you’re having a rough morning--or not).

INSANITY COOKIES

I came up with this recipe in a fit of baking insanity (today). Despite the threat of garbanzo beans, you probably won't regret making these because the hazelnut and almond flavors ultimately run the show.

INGREDIENTS

Wet Bits
1/4 cup soft coconut oil 
2 cups fully cooked garbanzo beans, homemade or canned
¼  cup packed golden raisins
6 tablespoons brown sugar
¾ teaspoon liquid stevia
2 large eggs, at room temperature 
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Dry Bits
1 cup almond flour
1 cup hazelnut flour (or blanched ground hazelnuts)
1/2 cup brown rice flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon kosher salt

Just Bits
1 cup dark chocolate chips 
¼ cup roasted unsalted cashews or chopped hazelnuts

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Grind the wet bits together in a food processor until it's all completely smooth.

Put all the dry bits in a big bowl. Pour in the wet bits and stir.

Shape dough into small (that is, large marble sized) balls and put on the paper-lined pans, spacing them about ¾ inch apart. You can do a tight spacing because they’re not going to spread out. That also means they will look almost the same going in as they do coming out, so shape them to make them look attractively cookie-like now! Bake until the cookies are firm, about 20 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and slide parchment to a wire rack to cool completely.

Store cooled in the fridge or freezer. The low sugar content makes them prone to quick funkiness if you leave them on the counter top too long. 

Still Holed Up...Recipe Bonus! Zabaglione Gelato

Why not make some gelato? I mean, what else are you gonna do? I think a lot of gelato is too yolky, so I always make it with whole eggs instead. You won’t notice the difference. What you will notice in this recipe, though, is the taste of the Marsala. Whee!

INGREDIENTS

3 large eggs

1 cup white sugar

1 cup whole milk

3 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup Marsala wine

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

DIRECTIONS

Use a hand mixer to mix sugar and eggs in medium bowl until yellow and thick, about 3 minutes. Heat milk and heavy whipping cream in a large saucepan over medium heat until mixture bubbles just gently (not boiling).

Take about 1/2 cup of the hot milk-cream and pour into the sugar-egg mixture while beating with the hand mixer quickly. Add another 1/2 cup slowly. Add another 1/2 cup. Pour all back into the saucepan. Stir over medium heat until everything hits 170°. 

Measure marsala and extracts into a large bowl. Pour the custard through a good sieve set over the bowl . Stir. Put your face over the bowl to enjoy the crazy delicious scent of this dessert. Think about how Sicily is totally f*cked up but does generate some delicious foods. Reluctantly cover and refrigerate about 6 hours or overnight.

After six painful hours are over, stir the custard before throwing into your ice cream maker. This amount is just ever so slightly too much for my ice cream maker, so I freeze a little bit separately in a couple small containers and call it semifreddo. After the gelato has formed in the ice cream maker, spoon into a large, shallow container with a tight lid. Cover and freeze until firm. Note that because this has a huge amount of alcohol in it, it will remain lovely and scoopable for all eternity (or tomorrow, which is when you'll finish it).