Hey there Ice Cream Club! Aren’t you awesome! You’re peachy keen, and so is a batch of sorbet I just made. It’s peach basil (again! How tedious!) and I’m doing some fun shapes for the coming week using silicone molds. I’m going to try and up my photo game for the month leading up to Hallowe’en. We’ll see how I do!
You may have seen some fun dinosaur shapes that I’ve done. It seems a little ridiculous to have to do Ice Cream or Sorbet in a shape to increase the fun factor. Aren’t they super fun already? If you’ve ever stood in front of an open freezer with a carton and a spoon, you know how little you need a dinosaur shape for that cold fix. Scarface the Peach/Pear T-Rex here is in a battle for ultimate frozen supremacy with Spike the Stegosorbet.
The Peach Pear combo is pretty good. Subtle and not too sweet. Both local. I wish you could taste them.
Scarface is gonna get a taste of Spike.
Chomp! Delicious! But of course you can’t taste what I’ve made, and you can only take my word for it, so some visual jazz is totally called for. Vanilla Ice Cream even has the catch-all for unremarkable in its name. I remember seeing a Just For Laughs Gags show years ago, a public prank show set in Montreal, and the pranksters had a free Vanilla Ice Cream giveaway at a little cart in a park. The twist? It was lard.
Soooo maybe part of what makes a fantastic sundae a fantastic sundae is a little bit of spectacle. So you know it’s dessert instead of lard and oyster sauce, or cold mashed potatoes and gravy. Gross!
I’m all for adding things to Vanilla Ice Creams, which serves as my base for most of my mixes. This week I made a batch of Cookies and Cream with chocolate bark pieces. Very decadent, and an easy hit. I made the bark by melting chocolate chips over a double boiler, then pouring it out onto a silpat and then letting it harden in the freezer. I find the texture of chocolate chips, as wonderful as they are, kinda weird in ice cream. They tend to be brittle and a bit sharp. The bigger, more toothsome pieces of bark are somehow more friendly, even when they have a bit of a point to them. Maybe it’s the intense chocolate flavour they enable. Kind of like a nice big section of a quality chocolate bar. The kind you’d use for S’mores.
Last week I wrote about my plans to make S’mores Ice Cream, and while those are still on tap, the peaches jumped to the front of the queue. While I’d love to have some sweet local fruits, the only available ones at the store I went to were from California or Washington State. Those are a bit of a risk, because they’ve been on a truck for who knows how long, and might have been picked before they could develop a proper sweetness.
Lucky me, the white peaches from Washington that I bought were nice and sweet. My roommate cut them up and macerated them for me with some sugar, lemon juice and a little Limoncello. I added some lovely local basil, pureed the whole mix, and then churned it after a bit of a chillout in the fridge. I did this same recipe recently and it was a huge hit then too. I highly recommend it.
I have a couple peaches left for another stab at Peaches and Cream Ice Cream with a vanilla base. And I do intend to make that S’mores Ice Cream. Maybe I’ll do a whole post about it. It’s amazing how much vanilla I go through. I just made an Angel Food cake because I reached the magic number of 12 egg whites (I use the yolks for the custard base in my ice creams), and I can smell the scent of baked vanilla in the air. Wonderful.
Speaking of in the air, this was also the week I finally got a bird feeder. Two, actually. One squirrel-proof seed station for the songbirds, and one Mason jar nectarpot for the hummingbirds. I set them up outside the window, and it’s been bird theatre every day since. I bet the hummingbirds would love sorbet.
There’s only so many times a hummingbird can fly up to your window and look in inquisitively before you have to put nectar out. They don’t guilt you so much as matter-of-factly point out your capacity for nectar. I got a powder. If I can make Kool-Aid, I can feed the birds.
I think that’s about it for me this week, Ice Cream Club. There’s only so much more late summer produce left before the winter, and the Ice Creams start to resemble warm things, like pumpkin spice, apple pie, and mulled cider. I’m looking forward to the last of the summer, the best of the Fall, and all the bird drama. Cheep thrills. Apparently they used to be dinosaurs.
Thanks for reading, and watch out this week. I have plans for a special October that should be chock full of goodies for the eyes and the imagination. Hopefully it’ll be fun and spooky and delicious. Like you! Have a great week Ice Cream Club. Your life matters! Black Lives Matter!
The Ice Cream Club 