Usually we will cook a meal and dessert together which we don't get the pleasure of doing very often due to two little boys that demand our attention. Last night this was the plan, but then my husband and James made the most delicious pizza for dinner, so my husband and I decided we would eat that with the boys and then just make a dessert together instead of a whole meal. We figure we will save the rib eye and all the other sides we had considered for another night instead...although my husband did have to cook up the rib eye (which we sampled, and it was finger licking good!) since it had been set to room temperature to make cooking easier.
For the dessert, I had chosen a homemade ice cream to try out. I took a couple ideas along with my own thoughts and merged them into a wonderful creation. I knew I wanted to start with a chocolate base...just because my husband and I love chocolate so much. Forty Cakes had a wonderful Chocolate Ice Cream recipe I choose to try out for the base, and I am glad I did. The consistency is wonderful, and the flavor is perfect. This might become my go-to chocolate ice cream base for the future. I wanted to add mix-ins to our ice cream, and I wanted to do something a little different than just throwing in some candy chunks. While perusing the internet, I ran across Pixelated Crumb and was so taken in by the beautiful pictures that I took some time to pour over the recipes, and I stumbled upon Raspberry Swirl and Brownie Ice Cream. Can you say incredibly delicious looking?! In all honesty, I found this recipe before the chocolate ice cream one mentioned above.
I ran with the idea, but using some of my own creativity. I switched the base to chocolate which I already told you. I did use the brownie and swirl idea from this site though. The brownies were incredibly rich, fudgy and perfect...for eating in general, but especially in the ice cream. I ended up making a 9x13 pan instead of 8x8 because my 8x8 was occupied. I just decreased the baking time and watched/tested the brownies carefully. They only needed to bake for twenty minutes altogether. Now onto the swirl component. Instead of doing a raspberry swirl, I decided to try for a strawberry swirl instead. I bought some fresh, organic strawberries (they were on sale the same price as the regular strawberries), cut them up, added a little sugar and a splash of pure vanilla extract (I didn't like the idea of using vodka, and vanilla extract has some alcohol to help with the fruit not completely freezing...or at least that was my thinking). I let the strawberries rest in the sugar and vanilla for a little while and then I pulsed them in my food processor. The small chopped up chunks of brownies went into the freezer, and the strawberry puree went into the fridge while we focused on the chocolate custard ice cream base.
Once the ice cream base was complete and cooled in the ice bath, it was poured into the ice cream machine and set churning. As that process ended, we mixed the brownie chunks in right away and then layered ice cream with spoonfuls of the strawberry puree, swirled it around with a knife a little bit and set it in the freezer to harden up. Granted when we ate the ice cream last night, it hadn't had enough time to set up completely, but even so, it tasted so wonderful. I think chocolate, strawberries and brownies ended up being a winning combination.
**A picture of the ice cream after getting the brownies and strawberry puree mixed throughout and before getting put into the freezer to harden.
**A scoop of ice cream ready to be eaten...you can clearly see the strawberry swirl, but the brownies are not super noticeable in the picture. They sure tasted good though! Perhaps next time we may add more brownie chunks than we did...my husband seemed to think it needed more, but it might have been the scoop he ended up getting because mine had a decent load of brownies throughout.
Don't those pictures make you want to run out and either buy or make your own ice cream?
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