Strawberry Basil Sorbet

Rating: ****
Nickname: You Say BAY-sil, and I say BAA-sil....

I don't usually go for sorbet myself, but this recipe from Scoopalicious looked very intriguing. So Cheryl and I made a batch to take to Cathy's 4th of July picnic.

It's one of those flavors that keeps you paying attention. You can't just go on autopilot, "Yep, I'm eatin' strawberry, yep.... whoa! Basil!" So it's kind of fun in that way.

The one thing I'd add to the recipe is that it's probably worth straining out any remaining basil leaves before you freeze it. At least, my immersion blender couldn't really catch them all, so instead they clumped up in the ice cream maker and had to be picked out later.

Pear Rosemary

Rating: ***
Nickname: Rose and Mary make a great pair

This was one of Cheryl's ideas. It's actually a neat combination, though I'd adjust the proportions next time. Turns out you taste the rosemary much less after it's been frozen. The pear flavor could also have been stronger. So here's the recipe we made, with my guesses at appropriate adjustments.

Peel and chop:
2 pears (make this 3)
Mash together with:
1/4 c. sugar (could perhaps be less)
Cover and let sit in refrigerator.

Heat to nearly boiling:
2 c. cream
1 c. milk
1 t. chopped dried rosemary (try doubling this)
Turn off heat and let steep for 10 minutes or so.

Whisk together:
2 eggs
3/4 c. sugar

Remove the rosemary from the milk with a strainer, and discard.
Combine everything.
(If you like pear chunks, leave as-is. Or you could try pureeing it in a blender to smooth it out.)
Churn and freeze in the ice cream machine.

Strawberry Brownie

Rating: ****

I made this ice cream for Dad's birthday. He had requested strawberry, but he also likes things with chocolate in them, like mint chip and moose tracks, so I thought this would be a fun combo.

The strawberry part is straight out of Ben & Jerry's, page 54. Then Cheryl made some brownies and I put pieces in shortly before the ice cream was done. I ought to have measured how much I used, but I think it was only around the amount of two generously-sized brownies. I tried to use mostly edge pieces, though, since they were a bit more solid and less likely to break into crumbs. It's still worth using fairly big chunks, though. :-)

Coconut Ginger

Rating: ****
Nickname: "Flying Down to Rio"

For the coconut base, I decided to take Ben & Jerry's sweet cream base #1 and then roughly substitute coconut milk for the cream. ("Roughly," because a 14-oz can of coconut milk is about 1 2/3 cups, and then I just used milk to finish off the necessary 3 cups of "dairy.")

In contrast, I noticed later that B&J actually have a coconut recipe in the book, but they make the whole sweet cream base plus the coconut milk. I assume that'd make it a bit less strongly coconuty and less sweet. But I like how this version turned out.

The coconut flakes add texture, but aren't necessary for flavor. For ginger, we used uncrystalized Buderim ginger, diced up tiny. (If they're too big, they're too chewy.)

Here's the recipe:

2 eggs
3/4 c. sugar
1 14-oz can of coconut milk
1 1/3 c. milk
1/4 c. coconut flakes
1/4 c. (generous) diced ginger

Whisk the first four ingredients together and put in the ice cream maker. Add the last two towards the end, when it's thickening up.

[About the nickname: "Flying Down to Rio" was the first Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers film, so it had ginger in it, and I assume there are coconuts grown in Rio de Janeiro. Best I could do on this one, anyway. :-) ]

Persimmon and Pepper

Rating: ***
Nickname: "Persimmon to Drool"

This recipe from Epicurious uses crushed black pepper, boiled up in some sugar water. Along with a bunch of fresh persimmons, there's only about a cup of actual cream. I was worried it would turn out a bit icy, but it's actually okay. It has a slightly more gooey-fruity texture to it than regular ice cream, though. I think the peppery bits are kind of fun, but they can be a bit strong if you get too much at once.

We made this recipe mostly as written, but with an extra 1/4 c. of sugar because it didn't seem very sweet, and an extra persimmon just for the heck of it. Most fruit recipes I've done involve mashing the fruit up with some extra sugar first, but this one didn't.

Anyway, it was good, though I'm also tempted to just do a regular, sweet ice cream with persimmons. Maybe with a bit of cinnamon or nutmeg or something.

Dragon Fruit

Rating: *****
Nickname: +20 Against Dragon Attacks

Cheryl and John were in Miami last week and brought back a lot of dragon fruit. I'd never seen it before, and it's neat stuff. Once you peel off the "scales," the inside looks like a hot pink kiwi, though the taste is sweet and not so acidic. I found an easy ice cream recipe for it at The Gourmet Mama, so Cheryl and I made a batch to take to our gaming group tonight.

We used 4 dragon fruits, but I think they may have been smaller than the Gourmet Mama's, since the ice cream didn't come out quite as intensely pink. (We didn't measure the actual amount once it was mashed, to compare for sure.) But it still tastes absolutely delicious. It makes me think of strawberries and cream, though that's probably because my brain doesn't really know the taste of dragon fruit well, so it latches on to the nearest approximation. The kiwi-like seeds give it little crunches, but in an enjoyable, unobtrusive way.

If you ever find yourself in possession of some dragon fruit, make this ice cream. It's awesome.

Pear-Caramel

Rating: *****

This flavor is from The Perfect Scoop, via Herbivoracious (where you can get the recipe). I used Bartlett pears from the Palo Alto Farmers Market, four of them instead of three, since they were pretty small. The "caramel" part comes in when you melt all the sugar and cook the chopped-up pear in it for a while, which is pretty fun.

I tend to think of pears as tasting good but not being particularly powerful, so this ice cream surprised me with how strong the flavor was. Very impressive. I also like how it retains some of the pear texture, even though there are no actual pear pieces left in it. (The "puree" setting on my blender got rid of all those, so I skipped the step in the recipe about pressing it all through a strainer.)

As a complement to the ice cream, I made plain oatmeal cookies -- no raisins, chocolate chips, or anything. That made an excellent pear-ing, if you'll excuse the pun (or even if you won't).

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.

Lychee

Rating: ****
Nickname: A Remedy of Lychees

This is a flavor that's been on my "to-try" list for a while now, though I can't remember what the original inspiration was. Mountain View Market on Castro St. carries canned lychees, though, so I finally got some of those and made this recipe from ma'ona. It's pretty good, though I think I actually prefer the straight ice cream part, since the fruit is kind of chewy, even when diced up small. Also, once it's fully frozen, the ice cream is kind of flaky, and harder to scoop out. I'm thinking that might be because there's less dairy and so much of the lychee syrup in it. But still, if you like lychees, it's pretty tasty, and that's the main thing.

[Note: I hear "lychee" pronounced different ways, but I like to say "lee-chee," for better punning with "leeches."]

Duo: White Chocolate + Strawberry

Rating: ****

I made these two ice creams for Cathy's birthday party yesterday. The white chocolate recipe was from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, and used 12 oz. of white chocolate, and no other sugar. The strawberry was straight out of Ben & Jerry's, and used strawberries from the Santa Cruz farmers market.

I thought the white chocolate was a bit odd. Mom said I could have used a better quality white chocolate, so that might have been it (but I was just using up some that she had bought, so hmph). The strawberry tasted excellent, though we had considerable freezing problems. The ice cream maker had been back in the freezer overnight, but still somehow hadn't gotten fully frozen. We kept putting it back in the freezer, ice cream and all, and re-churning it at intervals, but it never got beyond thick slush before it was time to eat it.

Luckily, this turned out quite well anyway. We served it all up as scoops of white chocolate ice cream, with a sloshy dollops of strawberry covering it. Yum!

Blueberry

Rating: ****
Ben & Jerry's recipe, pg. 59
Blueberry and cream flavors seem kind of separate
Maybe should have juiced the berries more for mixing in the initial juice with cream
(even though we then pureed the berries in the blender).

Key Lime

Rating: *****
Here's the About.com recipe I used.
1.5c cream
6 egg yolks
15oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2c key lime juice (8-10 med. limes)
simmer cream, then beat into egg yolks
stir over low heat to thicken
cool, then stir in condensed milk and lime juice

Didn't have key limes, so used regular (8 "large").
Didn't seem limey enough at first, but was good once frozen.
Condensed milk comes in 14 oz cans, so I added 1/4 cup more cream.
Also crumbled in 3 graham crackers at end of machine cycle (this is a must!!!)

Strawberries with Chocolate Swirls

Rating: ****
Ben & Jerry's Sweet Cream base (pg. 28) + 2t. vanilla
Strawberries as in strawberry recipe (pg. 54): 1 pint (chop small, no mashing) + 1/2 lemon juice + 1/3 c. sugar, sit in fridge for an hour.
Chocolate sauce: 2/3 c. semi-sweet choc chips, + 1/4 c. milk (should have been cream)
Start the basic ice cream in the ice cream maker.
Add strawberries at end, no juice, no mashing.
Pour out ice cream into container, mixing in chocolate sauce and strawberry juice as you go.
Ended up kind of melty, but maybe because weather was so hot when we made it.
Also, looks kind of messy. Good in concept, but not very presentable.
Next time, try just making thin layers of ice cream and sauce, without really mixing much. There are probably some tricks to doing this.

Blueberry Lemon

Rating: **
Miriam's request, during a visit.
Lemon base: 2 T. butter, 2 eggs, 1/2 c. sugar, 1/2 c. fresh lemon juice
Thicken by simmering in double boiler for 15 min.
Cool a few minutes then mix in 1 c. each milk and cream, 1 t. lemon extract
Refrigerate till cool.
Mash up 2 c. blueberries, mix into base.
Optional: grate lemon zest into mix while churning.
NOTES: the plan was 1/2 cup sugar in both lemon and blueberry parts, then changed to 1 c. in lemon only, but accidentally only did 1/2 c.
Next time do the full cup, probably all in lemon, or split.
Used soy milk and cream, might be creamier if used real stuff, or all cream (as in orig. recipe).
All these things probably would have helped the rating.

Nectarine

Rating: ****
Follow a basic strawberry recipe (e.g. Ben & Jerry's, page 54) but swap in nectarines.
Mash them up with sugar and lemon juice, let sit for a couple hours.
Can leave skins on, but they'll catch in the machine, so clear it out periodically.