Fudge Buttermilk

Rating: ***1/2

I had gotten some buttermilk recently to make pancakes. Since Safeway doesn't sell buttermilk in less than a quart, I had a fair amount left over. However, I had recently found a recipe for Fudge Buttermilk ice cream in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homemade Ice Cream, so I decided to try it and find out why one might want to make ice cream with buttermilk.

Since there's 2 cups of buttermilk in the recipe, it has quite a sour taste, which makes an interesting contrast with the chocolate and the sugar. I don't think I care for the sourness as much as when I made brown sugar sour cream ice cream, but it's good, and makes you pay attention rather than just gobbling it down. I also noticed an interesting effect, which is that in the first split second of any given bite, it actually tastes rather like coffee. Then the sourness kicks in and takes over, but you can do it again on the next bite. I guess chocolate + sour ≈ coffee?

I did, however, decide at the last minute to add in a cup of mini chocolate chips, just to give the chocolate side a bit of a leg up in the deal.

Avocado Coconut

Rating: ***

This recipe started off here at AllRecipes.com, and I decided to add a little more texture and coconut with a 1/2 cup of sweetened shredded coconut. Also, we couldn't find the coconut cream that the recipe called for, so we combined 3/4 c. coconut milk and 1/3 c. coconut butter, on the assumption that the dairy conversion on this handy page would work well enough. (Another option I considered would have been to just swap coconut milk for the regular milk, and regular cream for the coconut cream.)

The end result certainly goes on the list of more "interesting" ice creams I've made. I don't think it was sweet enough, and would want to add more sugar, though Cheryl thinks it's good this way. However, it gets much better if you eat it on tortilla chips, like cold guacamole. Sounds wacky, but it works as long as your brain doesn't go on strike trying to combine concepts like that. (Mine kinda does.)

White Peach Blueberry

Rating: ****1/2
Nickname: "Sax on the Peach"

I happened to get some excellent blueberries and some pretty good white peaches from Trader Joe's the other day, so this flavor combo pretty much just sprang up, unpremeditated, when I felt like making something yesterday. The Ben & Jerry's book has the same recipe for blueberry and peach ice creams, so I just did that and split the fruit 50/50 between the two. That meant a cup of each, mashed up with lemon juice and 1/2 cup of sugar and let to sit for a while. Then the juice goes into a sweet cream base and the fruit gets added at the end of the freezing cycle.

The slight extra bit I added was a dash of cinnamon, which was an excellent idea, if I do say so myself. I'd probably even do a bit more next time.