Carob

Rating: *****
Nickname: The Mother-in-Rule's Favorite

Last summer I was commissioned by Cheryl's mother to make her a carob ice cream. Well, now the in-rules (they aren't technically my in-laws) are visiting again, so the time has come!

Turns out there is a peculiar dearth of straight-up carob ice cream recipes. The only one I found was a vegan version from Altered Plates. I didn't particularly want to do a vegan one, since I want to get a clear experience of what carob ice cream is like, without being distracted by substituting dairy stuff, etc. So I backwards-converted the Mimicreme, almond milk, and agave, and came up with the following.

Bring to just boiling:
2 c. cream
6 T carob powder
1 c. sugar
pinch salt
Cut heat and melt in:
1 c. carob chips
Whisk in:
1 1/4 c. milk
1 t vanilla
Blend smooth with immersion (or regular) blender.
Chill in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight.
Churn and freeze in the ice cream machine.

I've never particularly been a fan of carob, but I must say I was surprised at how good this turned out. Linda enjoyed it as well, and apparently it lived up to the memories of the carob ice cream she used to get in college. Success!

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.

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!

Tapioca

Rating: ***
Follow regular tapioca recipe, except no egg whites, and more sugar (3/4 cup instead of 1/2).
This is best fresh out of the ice cream maker. Once it's fully frozen the pearls get kind of hard and less pleasant to eat. And there's a really weird cognitive dissonance eating tapioca in ice cream form, which is kind of distracting.

Brown Sugar Sour Cream

Rating: ****
Recipe from Desert Candy.
I used a tad less sour cream, because that's what I had.
Would add more brown sugar next time.

After I made this, I was informed that dipping strawberries in sour cream and brown sugar is a popular dessert, though I'd never heard of it. So it might be fun to make an ice cream like this that includes strawberries as well.