Hey there Ice Cream Club! Has it been a week? I feel like I spent the last seven days with my head inside a fruit stand. Last Sunday, I loaded up on local treefruit, courtesy of a generous new friend. With ten or more pounds each of apples, pears and plums, my work was cut out for me. Naturally that wasn’t enough, so I added some local peaches to the mix too. Last week I talked about doing a peach-basil sorbet, after hearing about a peach-basil popsicle served as a course at a friend’s wedding many years ago. So I had to do something special to match my vivid imagination’s rendition of a wedding feast popsicle.
If you were to corner me with wedding preparations, and force me to pick a theme, I’d probably float dinosaurs. I’m pretty sure Vera Wang makes a dress with a set of backplates like a Stegosaurus or a lovely sail like a Dimetrodon. The wedding song could be T-Rex’s immortal ‘Bang a Gong.’ And the above popsicles would fit right in, between courses of Buffalo-style Pterodon wings, and gigantic omelettes.
The sorbet is made of peaches that were macerated overnight in some sugar, lemon juice and some limoncello, with fresh basil leaves blended in. My roommates have been very enthusiastic about it, especially the bits of peach skin that survived the puree. They also give it some really nice flecks of dark red colour. I ate the dinosaur pop and it was amazing. For the record, 4 peaches were a perfect amount for a batch of sorbet.
As far as the apples, pears and plums were concerned, it was a process. I started with the plums, most of which were simple halved, pitted and frozen immediately. I kept some aside and roasted them slowly in the oven with some sugar and lemon juice. The plums are of the Damson variety, which means they are small, firm and have a very bittertart greenish yellow flesh. They’re not great for eating from hand, but when they’re roasted, turn deep red and release their sugars. I wish I had saved the roasted plums as is and just eaten them on yogurt or something, but instead I made a crisp. It was just okay. Too much crisp part overwhelming the fruit. I do like the idea of plum crisp as an ice cream flavour though, and plan to make it soon.
The pears got two treatments. First, the less-ripe ones were cut up and cored, and I tried drying them in the oven. I did it on parchment lined baking sheets, which was probably wrong. I wouldn’t do it again without a proper drying rack. I think they were in there for something like 22 hours, with a break while I slept. I had the oven on the lowest setting, at 170C. They got sort of dried. Most were just like you’d buy at the store, but some were still pretty moist.
This is a picture of some of the pear cores. The more-ripe pears were cut up and cooked with brown sugar and yet more lemon juice. Once pureed, they became a delicious pear butter. You could also call them baby food, but that’s going to be a happy baby. I decided to take some of the pear butter and pear it with the dried pears, and added both to a vanilla ice cream base. I called it Pear Pair. I haven’t had it yet, but I’m excited to see how a dried fruit piece does in the ice cream. Raisins do okay, but aren’t very exciting. I’ve tried pears in the past and struggled with the water content, so this should solve that problem.
Speaking of problems, the other time I did make pear ice cream, it wasn’t just the watery pears that were an issue. As much as I practice Food Safety, sometimes a mistake happens, and there are consequences. In this case, I’m pretty sure I was cutting butter either with a knife that had just cut garlic, or on a cutting board where garlic had just been cut. I use butter for a lot of things. I then used some of that butter to make a caramel sauce to go with my pears. There was a nasty flavour in the ice cream that nobody went back to for a second bite, so I can only assume it was garlic. I’ve been extra careful since.
I don’t have much to say about the apples, other than I made a batch of apple butter. I plan to use that in ice cream, either with caramel or with vanilla sandwich cookies. I’ve done pie crust and it’s okay, but vanilla cookies play the part with a sugary kick that makes friends. My roommates are much more into apples than me, so they have dibs on the harvest. With any luck, we’ll be able to get another pick in before the weather changes completely.
I still have some of the Ruby Chocolate from Purdy’s left, and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to get it into ice cream. While melting it into the custard base makes for great flavour, it falls down on the pink colour, even using 4x 50g bars. So I decided to try and chop some up and add it to a mix. I used more peaches, treated the same way as above, and separated from their macerating liquid. I call the resulting ice cream Pink and Peach.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the combo worked so well. Despite the added sugar, the peaches weren’t sweet enough to carry the team. The chocolate went to fragments too easily when I cut it up, and they weren’t large enough to deliver a big bold flavour. Also, the bits seemed extra waxy when frozen, making for a kinda weird texture. Overall, it’s okay at best. I wouldn’t try it again, even with super-sweet peaches. Here’s a pic of the vanilla base, churning away.
The remaining peaches and peach liquid have already been pureed with my remaining pear butter, and will get sorbet’d tomorrow morning. I had a taste and this one’s really impressive. The peach flavour starts the party, and the pear finishes. 2 each of large peaches and pears would be a good start for a recipe.
Looking ahead, I also have a batch of Corn Ice Cream in progress. I’ve done this before, to great success. I trim the niblets from a fresh cob, then drop them and their liquid into milk, then blend it and let it sit for a day or so in the fridge. I’ll strain the corny bits out before I turn the milk into custard, but the flavour will stick around. I’ve done Candy Corn with toffee bits, but I think this time will be Caramel Corn with a nice caramel ribbon throughout. A terrific side effect of using corn is that you get some of the starch as well, which makes the ice cream just a little smoother and silkier. I wouldn’t add corn starch powder to ice cream otherwise without doing a lot of testing, but I know some people do.
While I haven’t made any ice cream business progress since last week, I did some other fun food stuff. I made pickles out of actual cucumbers, like a boss. I’ve been putting black peppercorns in my pickles, and it’s amazing. They soften and give a wonderful little pepper pop to your sandwiches.
I also roasted a whole chicken, which isn’t that remarkable, except that it was my first time brining the bird beforehand. I just let it sit overnight in a saltwater bath, then roasted it slow for 8 hours on low heat. The brine helped a lot. The skin was crispier than I’m used to, and the meat was more flavourful, even as I got deep into the bird. In the late stages of roasting, I added some small potatoes to get all tasty in the drippings. They were.
All this fresh fruit and such have got me in production mode, and I don’t expect it to slow down much. I expect to make another 3-4 batches of ice cream this coming week, and have lots to write about next time. I hope you have some ice cream in your upcoming week, too. If you’re eating some as you read this, I applaud you!
Once again, thanks for reading and for your enthusiasm about ice cream! While the end of summer is in sight, ice cream persists into the cooler seasons. It’s just so good. And so are you! Cool and sweet! I don’t know who you are, reader, but I do know that you matter. Make sure you share the love, express yourself, be kind to your fellow humans, and get out and vote! Your life matters! Black Lives Matter! We’re all in this together!
The Ice Cream Club 