Flavor #67 - Blueberry Oatmeal Ice Cream Sandwiches

The past three weeks have been absolutely action packed and I will address all of the grizzly details in another post. As I has mentioned in the past, as I have been moving through this challenge, I have been given some great suggestions from a number of friends. When Maura first told me about blueberry oatmeal I was a little curious as I had never seen oatmeal as an add-in for ice cream before. I checked out the place she recommended, saw the flavor description and gave the flavor a spin. Except, I screwed it up. So I tried again, altering the oatmeal to outside of the ice cream as a cookie instead.

1 1/2 Cups of Heavy Cream

1 1/2 Cups of Milk

3/4 Cup of Sugar

4 Eggs Yolks

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla

1 Pinch of Salt

1 Cup of Pureed Blueberries

24 Blueberry Oatmeal Cookies

Lots of blueberry goodness. The cookies are chewy and the ice cream is exceptionally sweet with the added sugar from the berries, almost to the point where I may scale back the sugar content the next time around as it took the ice cream several extra hours to harden in the freezer.  Another worthy suggestion!

Enjoy!

A Mid-October Update

It has been two weeks since my last entry - by far the longest I have gone without producing a new flavor since I started this challenge. Rest assured, I am not slacking. The machine has been churning as I have been working on a few things.

Nice pie. Just not mine.

I made my first ice cream pie last week. Although there is no photo evidence, the 9" coffee ice cream (with a new recipe) and Oreo crust was gone in a single serving at a recent family dinner. I have also gone back to tweak a few earlier recipes while also discovering that a recipe I had for Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream was perhaps the most foul thing I have ever developed - ever!

I have also been looking into what it would take to open my own store. Although, the initial reaction from the people I have been working with has been positive, there is still a whole lot of work that needs to happen on my part to make this a reality. I thank all the folks who have taken meetings, answered my emails and offered assistance and encouragement.

I have a lot of work a head of me.

More flavors to come.

Flavor #66 - Ricanellas Ice Cream

I know, I know, what the heck is Ricanellas and how did it get here? As I have been looking at various flavors and different ice cream shops around the country, I found this great shop in San Francisco, Bi-Rite Creamery. As I have been on this challenge the past few months, friends from around the country have let me know their favorite flavors and their favorite places to go for a scoop. I have been going through different books and sites and found Bi-Rite initially through their book earlier this summer while buying my popsicle maker at Williams-Sonoma.

I didn't buy the book initially as I was already dropping a bundle on the new gear, but then came across Bi-Rite again while looking at ice cream sandwiches and again while looking at small batch shops. Having never been there, it is hard for me to give them a resounding recommendation. However, everything they do is pretty much how I have envisioned running an ice cream business for the past decade. Good natural products with a line around the block, and Ricanellas is one of their top flavors.

I know there are lots of flavor enthusiasts who love to go to extremes to develop a new flavor. I prefer to stick with the simple classics. This flavor jumped out at me as one that combines some simple flavors with an added twist of another desert classic - rice pudding. As far as I can tell, this is a take on Mexican Horchata as well as a popular Mexican Cinnamon cookie. After paying tribute to Canada earlier, this will be the first of a few recipes I plan on presenting from our neighbors to the south.

20+ Blanched Almonds
1/2 Cup Long Grain Rice
1 Cinnamon Stick
1 1/2 Cups of Heavy Cream

1 1/2 Cups of Milk
1/2 Cup Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon of Ground Cinnamon
1 Pinch of Salt
5 Egg Yolks
1-2 Snickerdoodle Cookies

I made the cookies a few days earlier and had to fight the boys off to save a few for this recipe. Although the recipe has simple ingredients,  there are more than a few steps to get to the final product.

• If you do not have blanched almonds, boil some water and pour the water over the almonds in a small bowl. Leave the water there for about a minute before rinsing the almonds in cold water. This will make peeling the skin off the almonds very easy.
• Take the almonds, rice and cinnamon stick and place them in a sauce pan on medium heat, stirring occasionally for a few minutes until you can begin to smell the nuts and the cinnamon.
• Add the milk and cream and allow the mixture to steam. Do not let the mix boil.
• Remove the mix from the heat once the steaming begins and let the mix sit for 30 minutes to allow the flavors to steep while stirring occasionally.
• Strain all the solids out of the mixture. Be prepared to see the rice almost cook up!
• After placing the solid free mix back in a clean sauce pan, add the sugar, salt and ground cinnamon over medium heat, stirring occasionally to allow the sugar to dissolve. 
• In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolk together.
• Once the mix begins to steam again, take the mix off the heat and add slowly to the egg yolks to keep the eggs from cooking.
• Once the eggs are suitably mixed in, add the mix back into the sauce pan and heat until the mix coats the spoon, again, stirring consistently to keep the eggs from cooking.
• Cool the mix for a few hours and toss it in the machine.
• Chop the cookies and add them to the mix as it is transferred to the freezing container.

There is an interesting cinnamon rice pudding flavor here that is made even better with the snickerdoodle. Unlike other flavors with cookies in the mix, the snickerdoodles add a chewy quality that is very unique. I still don't know about the name Ricanellas but I am glad I found it.

Enjoy!

Flavor #65 - Maple Bacon Crunch

Most American will tell you that everything goes better with bacon. I love bacon too, but this leaves me with two speed bumps in this challenge. The first speed bump here is the obvious one, how to work bacon into an ice cream flavor. The second is finding bacon that fits my goal of having healthy, if not organic ingredients in my flavors. You can get organic milk and grass fed beef, even free range organic eggs, but bacon? Organic bacon exists. I have just never seen it. Although I do love the idea of free range pigs.

1 1/2 Cups of Heavy Cream

1 /12 Cups of Milk

1 Cup of Grade B Maple Syrup reduced to 3/4 of a Cup

5 Bacon Strips

3/4 Cup of Sugar

1 Tablespoon of Butter

1/2 Teaspoon of Baking Soda

1/8 of a Teaspoon of Ground Chili Pepper

The Maple Ice Cream base was simple enough. Prior to getting that mix in the machine, cook your five bacon strips, I suggest using a thick cut. Let the cooked bacon cool and dry, then chop it into bite sized chunks and spread evenly on a silicon sheet or even wax paper. Then heat the sugar over medium heat, stirring constantly to make a caramel. Once the sugar is melted, take it off the heat, adding the butter while stirring constantly. Then add the baking soda and pepper and pour the mixture over the bacon, flattening out the mixture to make a sort of bacon brittle. 

Let it cool until it is safe to touch and break it apart into little bits with a knife or a meat hammer. Mix your bacon brittle with the ice cream on the transfer to the hardening container and you will have awesome bacony goodness ready to go.  You can even save some of the bacon brittle to sprinkle over the top of a serving. Truth be told, you barely taste the bacon as it goes so well with the maple and the caramel crunch!

Enjoy!

Flavor #64 - Andrew's True North Maple

I love Canada. Beautiful country with great people. Perfect neighbors. I'd live there if it wasn't so bone chilling cold for most of the year. The one problem with Canada, as I see it, is they don't have much to offer the world when it comes to a unique cuisine. Jokes abound about donuts, beer, round bacon and Poutine. Unfair? Maybe, as it could show our common culture than it does our differences. Still, why doesn't Canada have more unique food offerings?

The Maple Leaf is the highly recognizable symbol on the national flag for our neighbors to the north. In many locations here in New England and reaching across the border in to Quebec and the Maritimes, harvesting maple syrup is a tradition that goes back to the original European settlers. Authentic maple syrup is so vastly superior to the crappy synthetic kind you find at most markets that I am shocked anyone buys anything but the original. Well, the maple leaves in my yard are beginning to change from green to hues of red and yellow, so I thought it was time to work on some Maple Ice Cream.

1 Cup of Grade B Maple Syrup reduced to 3/4 Cup

1 1/2 Cups of Heavy Cream

1 1/2 Cups of Milk

You will rarely find any recipe that will be this simple. Yes, you can add eggs if you are making a larger batch and need it to bind for a longer period. But this stuff moves so quickly around my house that adding eggs is not necessary in my small batch world. Heat the syrup to reduce the cup to 3/4, then blend in the milk and cream while it cools. Simple.

As for the name, back when I began this challenge, a number of my friends let me know their favorite flavors. Andrew is not Canadian, although he is an interesting combination of Jim Carrey and Michael J. Fox with the swagger of Greg Kinnear (who is not Canadian). He should have been a radio star but came along at a time when a great medium died. Much like the rest of us, he is stuck working for the man rather than entertaining the rest of us. This flavor is for him.

And I love Poutine and promise that I will never try to make it into an ice cream!

Enjoy!

Flavor #63 - Cinnamon Mocha Chip

I recently was given book for flavor inspiration that sparked a series of ideas for me. Cookies and Cream is the book and it certainly has me thinking.

I started making some Snickerdoodles today in preparation for another flavor I will have ready in a few days. But I also thought they would go great with some Mocha Chip. Add a little more cinnamon and we are off and running!

1 1/2 Cups of Heavy Cream

1 1/2 Cups of Milk

3/4 Cup of Sugar

1/2 Teaspoon of Vanilla

1 Pinch of Salt

2 Cups of Coffee reduced to 1/3 of a Cup

1/4 Cup of Cocoa Powder

2oz of shaved Belgian Chocolate

Reducing the coffee always takes some time as will the baking of the cookies. The key here is to allow the cookies to cool and to let the ice cream begin the hard freeze for a good hour. At that point, take a small scoop of ice cream and make your sandwich. Any earlier and the ice cream is too soft and any later and it will be too hard.

The will be more ice cream sandwiches to come. The Snickerdoodle will reappear soon!

Enjoy!

Flavor #62 - Strawberry Blackberry Sorbet

Here is another flavor that came about when it came time to clean out the fridge. Easy to make and tasty too.

1 Half Pint of Strawberries

1 Half Pint of Blackberries

1 Cup of Simple Syrup

Heat the fruit over low heat with a small amount of water until the fruit is translucent. Strain the juice and add the Simple Syrup and chill the mixture before you toss it in the machine.

I love sorbet and am consistently amazed how fast it all disappears.

Enjoy!