coconut icecream

Ice cream is usually made using eggs, and I have been known to make it that way (see champagne ice cream). But the problem with this is I use at a minimum twice the amount of ingredients. This would be because I get very easily distracted. So whilst I’m meant to be carefully stirring the egg mixture of a pot of simmering water I’m off getting distracted by glitter and unicorns or life. This means that if I’m not stirring the eggs at the right moment they over cook and turn into scrambled eggs. Now it may be just me but this is not really a desirable ingredient in ice cream.

So my go to everyday vanilla ice cream recipe is one that may not be as rich as others but it requires no eggs or stirring of ingredients of any kind over heat. I just chuck them in my mixer whisk to a bit frothy then pour in ice cream maker, which churns away for 20 mins and gives me ice cream (well it does after I freeze churned mixture for a few hours).

Anyway I got possessed by the need to make and eat coconut ice cream. After examine a few recipes on the internet I just decided to adapt my standard recipe and threw in some shredded coconut. Topped with melted dark chocolate it was rather like a frozen bounty bar.

Coconut Ice Cream

1 cup chilled cream
1 cup of chilled coconut cream
1 cup chilled milk
3/4 cup sugar
small handful of shredded coconut (optional)

In mixer with whisk attachment whisk together cream, coconut cream, milk and sugar. You want to whisk till the sugar has dissolved and its kinda frothy on op top. Pour into ice cream maker, churn. When it nearly done add in shredded coconut. Then pour into container freezer for a few hours till full frozen. If you don’t have an ice cream maker that ok, whisk it up then pop in freezer then whisk every 20 mins for a about 2 hours and it should get to the consistency of soft serve ice cream at which point add in shredded coconut stir and freeze.

I drizzled over some dark chocolate melted in the microwave and it set pretty quickly (a la homemade ice magic)

Part of the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop – Licence to Chill Hosted by the Kitchen Crusader

Cherry and Vanilla Jam

My kids adore strawberry picking and lucky for me I’m rather fond of it too. The strawberries are so warm and sweet and delicious when freshly picked. So I found myself venturing out with the kids strawberry picking one fine sunny day after Christmas. We picked just under 4 kilograms of strawberries which I’m quite sure if I let them my kids would have eaten them all in one go.

(stay with me we’re getting to the cherry part soon)

Now to get to the strawberry picking it requires one to drive up the freeway and along narrow winding roads in the hills which surround our fair city. Husband normally performs this duty but he was working so it feel to me the nervous hill driver to get us there. And of course I did. Now flushed with success of driving up into the hills I thought why waste it by just strawberry picking lets go cherry picking (plus kids had never seen a cherry tree before). So armed with directions and instructions from a friend we set out to find us a pick your own cherry farm. A few stops for map consultation and playground playing we found a lovely little place. There were row after row of different varieties of cherries all perfectly ripe. The kids were and I picked over 2.5 kilograms of delicious cherries.

Now although my husband loves them and I’ve recently rediscovered them I wasn’t sure we could eat that many. So I hit my recipe books trying to find something to cook with them. I found lots of baking recipes, the problem was we were hit with an insane heat wave and there was no way the oven was going on. Ummm what was I going to do with these cherries. So I put out the call if anyone had made cherry jam, did some googling got some advice and set out to make me some jam.

I used just over 300 g pitted cherries and 275g jam sugar because some recipes said to use 3/4 the amount of sugar then amount of cherries but then some didn’t so I kinda reduced the sugar by a bit.

Cherry and Vanilla Jam (makes 1 250ml jar)
325g pitted cherries
275g jam sugar (the sugar with the pectin in it, if you don’t have this you could use normal sugar and ad din some pectin)
1 vanilla bean
squeeze of lemon juice

Roughly chop the cherries

Put in pan with sugar and vanilla bean. Mix and begin to bring to boil, when it was just on the verge of boiling I mashed the mixture with a potato masher to break down the fruit a bit more not essential if you prefer your jam chunkier.

Once boiling simmer for 10 minutes or until spoonful of jam forms a skin or thickens when placed on cold plate.

Bottle in sterilised jar.

Enjoy

Champagne Ice Cream

I love champagne, there I’ve said it.

Maybe it’s clichéd, lady in her mid 30’s loving champagne, but it’s quite hard to find a bad champagne. Don’t get me wrong there are some average ones out there, but hardly any I’d class as bad. Plus it’s so celebratory drinking it. Perfect for so many occasions, catching up with friends, tick, enjoying pre dinner drinks, tick, Christmas day drinks, tick.

Last year before Christmas I became obsessed with the idea of making champagne ice cream. I had it in my head would go well with Christmas pudding. So after a fair few attempts (some ending in scrambled eggs) I made a good batch, taste tested it on my work colleagues, then made some for Christmas day, where I served it up with the Christmas pudding and……..

It went amazingly well with Christmas pudding.

There’s just one thing about the champagne ice cream, it requires 1/2 cup of champagne, this leaves an awful lot of a bottle left over. I’m sure like me you don’t want to waste it, so enjoy the rest of the champagne whilst the ice cream is chilling.

Champagne Ice Cream – adapted from Gourmet Traveller

1/12 cups cream

1/2 cup champagne (like most things related to cooking and wine, don’t use anything too cheap and nasty)

4 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

Combine cream and champagne in a sauce pan and just being to boil.

Meanwhile whisk egg yolks and sugar in bowl sitting over simmering water, whisk until pale and creamy.

Add eggs and sugar mixture to cream and champagne mixture. Whisk to combine. Heat over a medium heat, stirring with spoon, unlit thickened and coating back of spoon. Be careful with this as if you take it too far, it will scramble the eggs in the mixture.

one thickened put into bowl (not glass or ceramic) and put bowl into cold water and stir for a couple of minutes (you want to cool it down and prevent further cooking).

Once mixture is no longer hot, pop into fridge until cold. then churn in ice cream maker, if you don’t have an ice cream maker, that’s ok just beat it with beater, op in freezer 30 min, then beat again, repeat 3-4 times. Freeze until fully frozen.

Serve with Christmas pudding, Enjoy.

Part of the Sweet Adventure Blog Hop Sweets For Santa Hosted by the Hungry Australian

375 ml (1½ cups)	pouring cream
125 ml (½ cup)	Champagne
4	egg yolks
110 gm (½ cup)	caster sugar

Sundays with Joy – Zucchini Cream Cheese Pound Cake

I’m what one might call an enthusiastic gardener. I have grand plans about growing stuff and plant out, lots of things, but I don’t quite have a green thumb so not everything grows. My vegetable garden attempts are pretty much the same. I often plant out a variety of stuff and some of it grows.

We’ve got 2 smallish veggie garden beds in our garden.

One was larger but as you can see in the background we put in a chicken coup and run. We recently chicken sat a friends chickens while she was on holiday, it went well so we’ll be getting out own. so in front of the chicken run is pretty hot in summer so I’m thinking of planting chillies/capsicum.

At the moment the other garden bed is a mixture of a parsley/kale forest some pea seedlings , which are in a bit late but the kids really wanted to grow them and some tomato seedlings which unlike the peas are probably in too early, as well  garlic in amongst it all. We’ve just fenced this off form our puppy so I’m a bit excited at what we can plant up the fencing wire in summer, probably cucumbers and beans but I’m keen to try melons as well. I suspect we might try to squeeze some corn in there as well as the good ole Zucchinis. I plant them every year and they always grow. At first they seem a bit slow to fruit then suddenly it’s all day of the triffords and they are just going berserk growing massive zucchinis in what seems like a day. This of course gives you a zucchini glut and there is only so much you can give away and put into savoury dishes.

This week the Sundays with Joy Facebook group made Zucchini Cream Cheese Pound Cake which will be perfect for using up the massive glut of zucchini’s.

It was really similar to a carrot cake and I was tempted to put walnuts in it and probably will next time. I iced it with Joy’s brown sugar cream cheese icing which improved on the already yummy cake.

recipe from Joy the Baker cookbook