Fruit mince pie ice cream

I was starting to think my fridge and freezer would never be rid of Christmas leftovers, but by the start of this week I had managed to use everything but half a fruit cake and 6 fruit mince pies.

Inspired by K's Xmas Pudding Ice Cream from In the Mood for Noodles and figuring that mice pies are really not too dissimilar to using biscuits and a fruit mix, I turned the leftover fruit mince pies into fruit mince pie ice cream. Given that I cheated and used leftover vanilla ice cream rather than making my own ice cream base I was fully prepared for it to be a total failure in food experimentation but it worked really well.

Ingredients

• 4 cups ice cream, softened
• 1/4 cup Brandy
• 6 fruit mince pies
• 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice 

Method

1. Mix brandy into the softened ice cream
2. Chop or crumble the fruit mince pies and mix through the ice cream
3. Freeze
4. Eat
5. Realise how much better fruit mince pies are when encased in ice cream!

I'm not much of a fan of fruit mince pies but in ice cream I actually enjoyed them. Everything is better with ice cream.

Chocolate and Chambord Gelato

I've got a section of shelf in my pantry now dedicated to remnants of products that I want to use up so I can declutter my cupboards and get rid of the half packets and nearly empty bottles.

From this shelf this morning I grabbed a half block of chocolate and a nearly empty bottle of Chambord and turned it into a gelato, reducing the amount of milk from a chocolate gelato recipe and making up the volume with the Chambord.

Chocolate and Chambord Gelato

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups milk
• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt
• 2 egg yolks
• 100 grams dark chocolate
• 1 ½ cups of cream
• ½ cup of Chambord (Black Raspberry Liqueur)

Method

1. Heat the milk, cocoa, sugar and salt in a saucepan over a medium heat, stirring constantly to blend in the cocoa and dissolve the sugar. You want the milk hot but not to boil.
2. Take the milk off the heat. While stirring the milk mix, add in the eggs and mix in quickly. The milk heat will cook the yolk and you want it all mixed in as quickly as possible.
3. Add the chocolate to the mix and mix in as it melts.
4. Leave the chocolate custard mix to cool to room temperature. Avoid the temptation to put the mix in the fridge to cool as if the chocolate cools too quickly you will get grainy icecream.
5. When the chocolate mix is cooled, whip the cream in a separate bowl till it forms soft peaks.
6. Add the Chambord to the cream and fold through.
7. Fold the cream mix through the cooled chocolate mix.
8. Transfer to a freezer container and freeze, or if you have an ice cream maker, follow it’s instructions.

This ice-cream freezes soft and is very rich and chocolately with the flavour from the Chambord coming through nicely. If you want a stronger liqueur flavour in the ice-cream you could add an extra 1/4 cup of Chambord to the mix. Any more than that however and you will risk the ice-cream not freezing.

Rich lemon ice cream (or what to do with yolks left over from pavlova)

When Victoria is in the middle of one of our hottest starts to a year on record, could I really have made anything other than ice-cream for my first post of 2012?

This is an incredibly rich ice-cream recipe that my mother has been making for years, initially as way of using up egg yolks left over from one of the giant 8 egg pavlovas she would make for family barbeques. Later on this ice-cream was the most requested dessert dish from visiting friends and family, so the pavlovas ended up being made as a way of using up leftover egg whites.

The recipe comes from one of the books in mum’s collection of oddly specific cookbooks – Woman’s Day All Colour Book of Cooking for Your Freezer, published in 1978. Some of the other gems in this recipe book include frozen sardine and tomato sauce sandwiches, some kind of nasty looking grey lump thing wrapped in incredibly shiny bacon and "tacky gingerbread". I found a total of 2 vegetarian dishes through the whole book, each involving cabbage and jam...

I'd like to tell you what that yellow frozen cake covered in either grapes or olives is meant to be, but the cake only exists on the cover, no recipe in the book seems to match up...

The book does have good ice-cream recipes though. Unfortunately the book is a little sketchy on method, so the method I have provided is the way my mum has always made this ice-cream and not how the book tells it.

Rich Lemon Ice Cream.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups caster sugar
• 8 egg yolks
• 1 1/4 cups cream
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice

Method

1. Heat oven to 150 degrees.
2. Line an oven tray with foil and spread the sugar out over the foil.
3. Place the sugar in the oven to heat the sugar. You will need to check the sugar regularly and shake the pan to ensure the sugar doesn't burn. With my oven it took around 5 minutes till I was happy the sugar was heated through.
4. Place egg yolks in an electric mixed bowl with the beaters running at low speed.
5. With the beaters still running, carefully pour the sugar into the mixer while it is still as hot as possible. The sugar is going to cook your yolks for your custard.
6. Once the sugar is all in the bowl, increase the speed to high and beat till the mix is pale and thick.
7. In a separate bowl beat the cream till it has thickened and forms soft peaks.
8. Mix the lemon juice and the egg mix into the cream.
9. Pour into a 1.25 litre container and freeze (or use an ice-cream maker to freeze if you have one).

This ice-cream is very rich and is best served in small portions or as a compliment to a larger dessert. With so many egg yolks the ice-cream always comes out a beautiful golden yellow colour. The ice-cream freezes very soft, so there is no need to leave it on the bench to soften before serving.

We have also in the past used this ice cream base for different flavours and have found that it is too rich a base for anything other than tart citrus. Orange and lime have worked ok, but lemon has always worked the best.

Hope you had a great new years and a fantastic year in 2012!

Strawberry And Star Anise Sorbet (raw/vegan)

I'm so far behind with my posts of late, it's rather embarrassing... Till this evening, anytime I sit down to write up a post, my work phone rings. I've still had time to cook, just not anything complex. Thankfully this evening has been a little quieter and I hope I will now be able to start catching up with a few quick, short posts.

Earlier in the week I made a batch of strawberry sorbet. The flavours of star anise and strawberry go together really well and I just love the smell of star anise so jump at any opportunity to use it. I've also found myself making more raw food of late, so rather than make a sorbet with a boiled sugar syrup to infuse the star anise quickly, I left the star anise to sit in lime juice for a few hours to infuse the flavour.

Star anise - it smells awesome and looks cool too

Strawberry and Star Anise sorbet:
This made about half a litre of sorbet.
Ingredients

• 3 punnets of strawberries (750grams)
• 2 limes
• 3 star anise
• 1/3 cup of agave (double this if you prefer a sweeter sorbet, I prefer mine a little tart)

Method

1. Zest and juice the limes, setting the zest aside for later.
2. Crush the star anise a little bit and add to the lime juice. Leave this to sit covered for a few hours to infuse. I left mine for 4 hours. If you do not want to wait, gently heat the juice a little to reduce the infusing time.
3. Remove the star anise from the lime juice. 
4. Place strawberries, lime juice, zest and agave into a blender and puree. 

If you have an icecream maker, follow the makers instructions to churn your sorbet.
If like me you don't have one, you can get great textured sorbet by doing the following:

• Pour the mix into a baking tray and place it in the freezer.
• When mix is nearly frozen, scrape it back into the blender and blend till smooth. Pour the mix back into the tray and return it to the freezer. 
• Repeat this process 2-3 times then scape the mix into a storage container and return to the freezer for a couple of hours before eating.

Yum!