Monday, April 17, 2006

Recipe: Date

250g dates
450ml milk
300ml cream
3 egg yolks
~1/2 cup sugar

Chop the dates and add them to the milk in a sauce pan. Heat the milk, and pour into egg yolks and sugar. Put the whole mess back into the saucepan and stir until you get your custard. Puree the mixture in a blender, then pour through a sieve to remove any chunks. Add the cream and chill, then stick it in the ice cream machine.

Remarks: Well, I kind of stuffed this one up a bit by trying to do a fancy caramel swirl. The caramel sauce was too warm and melted the ice cream, whilst forming itself into a massive chewy lump. So I wouldn't recommend doing that. The date ice cream itself was very tasty however. The blended up bits of date skin gave it a slightly grainy texture, but this could probably be avoided by using a finer sieve.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Recipe: Apple Pie Ice Cream!?!?

As American as baseball, Mom, and extraordinary rendition

1kg Apples (about 6)
450ml Cream
100g sugar
3 egg yolks
1tsp mixed spice
~100g Digestive biscuits

Peel, core and chop your apples. Put them in a saucepan with half the sugar and cook until soft. Blend them into a puree. Heat the cream in a saucepan along with the spices, then mix into the egg yolks and sugar and heat until your creme anglaise forms. Once this and the apple has cooled, mix them together and refrigerate for a while, then whack it in the ice cream machine. Once it's finished, fold in the crumbled biscuits for that pie crust taste.

Remarks: One of the better ice creams I've eaten. Can't think of anything I'd do differently next time, quite frankly....

Monday, April 03, 2006

Vote for your top 5!!

Dear friends of The Mitch's Ice Cream Sunday,

Ice Cream Sunday (both the event and the weblog) will be going on an extended hiatus in a couple of months time as I'm heading off overseas for a while. That's the bad news. The good news is that in the last few weeks leading up to my departure I'll be re-visiting some of Ice Cream Sunday's greatest hits. But I need my faithful patrons to tell me what the best flavours are. So here's what you're gonna do:

  1. Re-aquaint yourself with the list of past flavours using this blog.
  2. Rank your top 5 flavours by assigning your favorite ice cream 5 points, your second favorite 4 points, and so on. If you've ever watched the Eurovision Song Contest you know how this scoring system works. Feel free to translate your votes into French to really give it that Eurovision feel ('chocolat et pistache...deux points').
  3. Post a comment attached to this entry with your votes in it.

At the end of this month (or just when everyone's voted) I'll tally up the numbers and during Ice Cream Sunday in May you'll be treated to the three flavours that scored highest.

Terms and Conditions

  • Voting is only open to those people who have attended at least five (5) officially sanctioned sessions of The Mitch's Ice Cream Sunday.
  • Only flavours produced between 01/09/2005 and 01/04/2006 can be voted for (i.e. anything after Cheesecake is not eligible).
  • Voting closes at 11:59:59pm on 30/04/2005
  • In the event of a tie, the deadlock will be broken by an SMS poll using a shortlist made up of the two or more flavours that finished with equal points. If this still fails to produce a clear winner, I'll just flip a coin...
  • The Mitch's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
  • Okay, that's it. Get voting!

    Recipe: Beer!

    250ml milk
    300 ml cream
    3 egg yolks
    1/3 cup white sugar
    3 tbsp brown sugar
    1 cup Guinness
    1 tsp vanillla essence

    Heat up your milk, and meanwhile beat together the eggs, white sugar and vanilla. Add them together in the usual manner and make custard. Leave that to cool and then bring your beer to the boil in another saucepan with the brown sugar. Let it simmer for 10 minutes or so until it's reduced in volume a bit. Let it cool down. Once the beer mixture and custard are both back to room temperature, mix them together and add the cream. Put the mix in the fridge for a few hours, then freeze it in the ice cream maker.

    Remarks: Not too bad at all. The Guiness flavour is very subtle, and I'm still undecided as to whether this is a good or bad thing. First impressions of the taste invoke vanilla, but with subtle undertones of something else. The majority of the beer flavour is concentrated in a slightly bitter aftertaste, which I quite liked, but wouldn't want to make any more intense. Overall a damn good ice cream. Put your pre-conceptions to one side and try it, people!