Raspberry Sorbet and Guest Reviewer

Raspberry. I remember it as the last flavor of three to be eaten out of our box of Welch's popsicles while growing up. Strawberry and grape usually bested raspberry in the popsicle popularity context. This was not the case in the household of my cousin C who requested this flavor of raspberry sorbet. Apparently, grape was the last one picked for the team in their house. If I had known that was the case, we should have bought popsicles together and traded flavors on the way home.

For some reason, I thought making sorbet would be cheaper than making ice cream. Fresh raspberries are surprisingly expensive and frozen ones are not that much cheaper. I guess it all depends on which fruit you are using. Still, its a fairly quick and easy dessert provided that you have the ice cream maker.

My coworker today mentioned that she liked sorbet more than ice cream so maybe I will make this one for the office next week. I still want to make a mango sorbet, but I don't think mangoes are in season right now. I think the texture would be really nice in a mango sorbet since its flesh is naturally smooth and silky.

I'll admit I was a little lazy with this post. I didn't take that many photos while making the sorbet this time around. Its kind of a distraction while I'm making things in the kitchen. And I still couldn't get the exposure and white balance right on that last photo. It would be nice to have a macro lens. And a better monitor. And better props (shopping for bowls and spoons).

Here's what C had to say about the sorbet:

"i had been craving raspberry sorbet after having the delicious treat at a restaurant in vegas. this sorbet definitely lived up to the fresh and cool taste i had remembered. the first spoonful melted it in my mouth and i quickly devoured the rest of my serving. it was smooth but still had the slight icy texture of sorbet. the raspberry flavor did not disappoint, it was sweet with a kick of tart at the end. it was a quick and easy recipe with a delicious outcome, good enough to rival any restaurant in vegas."

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Raspberry Sorbet
improvised by icecreameyedoc

4 cups frozen raspberries (or fresh)
1 cup water
3/4 to 1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Directions:
1. Bring raspberries, water and sugar to a boil. Boil for 30 seconds to a minute then remove from heat. Allow to sit for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
2. Puree in a food processor or blender. Mix with lemon juice.
3. Chill in refrigerator until cool then freeze in ice cream maker.

Cranberry Orange Sorbet - Christmas Dessert

When I think of sorbet, I think of these little cups of lemon sorbet that we used to eat for dessert while growing up. They were probably half a cup in size with foil tops that peeled off to reveal the icy goodness. Digging my spoon into the sorbet, I can remember the gritty/icy texture reminiscent of the sensation of shoveling snow. I would eat it by evenly scraping the top of the sorbet keeping it as smooth as possible all the way down to the bottom of the cup. The combination of the citrus, sugar and ice melting in my mouth were perfect for cooling off during the hot days of summer.

Since I got my ice cream maker, I haven't really had an interest in making sorbet. To me it just seems like frozen juice. It lacks the richness and luxuriousness of ice cream in flavor and texture. I only considered it because I made coffee ice cream with brownies (again) for dessert on Christmas eve and wanted something a little lighter after all the heavy eating we've been doing during the holidays. I figured cranberry sorbet would be perfect since cranberries are very Christmasy.  Making sorbet is a little easier than making ice cream since you don't have to worry about scrambling the custard or burning the milk. There aren't really any steps that you can totally ruin the dessert. The instructions call for boiling the base so that makes it pretty worry free. It was also funny to hear the cranberries popping (they're hollow) as they boiled. Well, they didn't really pop. It was more like bursting and hissing but it made me think of popcorn popping. Also, fresh cranberries are extremely tart. I tried one out of curiosity and my face puckered up like in the cartoons. The dried cranberries I've had aren't as tart as the fresh ones.

Everyone enjoyed the sorbet and we were able to finish it off in one night which made me happy because I try not to make another ice cream until the last one I made is all gone. The cranberry flavor stands out without being too tart. The sugar balances the tartness of the cranberry and the orange juice adds a citrus note in the background. I can count on this as a fool proof recipe that can be thrown together fairly quickly with reliable results.

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Cranberry Orange Sorbet
adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

Ingredients
1.5 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen
1 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
Grated zest of 1 orange
1.5 cups freshly squeezed orange juice (5 or 6 oranges)
1-2 teaspoons Grand Marnier or Cointreau (optional, i omitted these)

Directions
1. Heat water, sugar, cranberries and orange zest until boiling. Boil for 1 minute, remove from heat and cover for 30 minutes.
2. Puree mixture in a blender or food processor and strain through a mesh.
3. Stir in orange juice and liquer.
4. Chill in refrigerator until cool and freeze in ice cream maker.

Coffee Ice Cream with Brownies

It seems like I'm the only one that doesn't drink coffee at the office. I just never really got into it. Most people pick it up during college needing something for those long nights up late studying or writing papers. I usually just went to sleep and woke up early to finish studying. And now that I don't drink soda anymore, anytime I drink anything with caffeine, I have a hard time going to sleep whether its coffee, tea or caffeinated soda. For example, right now after having a taste of the coffee ice cream I just made. I can feel it quicken my heart rate and it makes me feel restless. Those are the hardships of making ice cream.

The past few times I've made coffee ice cream, I put oreo chunks mixed into the ice cream with good results. This gave a nice hint of chocolate to the ice cream as well as a bit of crunchiness. It simulated putting ground coffee into the ice cream without overdoing the coffee flavor. I just used pieces of an oreo pie crust because I thought the crust was one big chunk of oreo but it was actually just ground up oreo held in a pie tin. This didn't hold up too well when churned and it ended up disintegrating and dispersing evenly throughout the ice cream. This was okay, but not exactly what I hoped for. That's what I get for being lazy. I only got the pie crust in the first place because I was trying to avoid having to separate all the cookies by hand and I didn't want to buy a whole pack of oreos and have to eat all the leftovers that I didn't use for the ice cream. Next time I'll use real oreos and roughly crush up the cookies to add to the ice cream. So, that's the lesson of the day. There's no shortcuts to success, you just gotta do what you gotta do.

At the request of my brother, I put brownies in this batch. I figured since it's a popular topping in all the frozen yogurt places these days it must be a good combination. However, this doesn't really give the same contrast in texture as oreos. While chopping up the brownies, I thought the "more done" edge pieces would give a little more crunch so I added some to the pile of middle pieces I chopped up. The end result was pretty good but I think I'll try crushed oreo cookies next time which will be soon because I have to use up the rest of the coffee before it gets too stale.

The coffee flavor is a bit strong for my taste, but then again I'm not the biggest coffee fan so anything will probably taste too strong for my taste buds. My taste testers (coffee lovers) have said that it tastes good though so this will be one I keep in my ice cream arsenal. I used Italian Roast whole coffee beans by a widely known Seattle based coffee shop for this one. Another recipe in my top 5. Next I'll try a sorbet. Something with cranberry for Christmas. I also want to make cornflake cookies. Maybe I'll try the cereal milk ice cream I've been meaning to try too.

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Coffee Ice Cream with Brownies
adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

Ingredients
1.5 cups heavy cream
1.5 cups whole milk
1.5 cups coffee beans
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
5 egg yolks
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp finely ground coffee (i left this out)
1 cup chopped brownie bits

Directions
1. Heat milk, 1/2 cup of cream, sugar, salt and coffee beans until just before boiling (when steam starts to come off the mixture). Remove from heat and steep for 1 hour (or less if you want it less strong).
2. Reheat bean and milk mixture and add to yolks while whisking to make a custard. Heat custard until thickened stirring constantly.
3. Strain out beans and add mixture to remaining 1 cup of heavy cream squeezing out as much liquid as possible from beans. Chill in ice bath until cool. Add vanilla.
4. Chill in refrigerator until cold and churn in ice cream machine.
5. After churning, alternate layering ice cream with brownies into storage container.

Almond Cookie Ice Cream

As I was asking around the office for ice cream flavor suggestions, my coworker mentioned that she had an ice cream with almond cookies in New York. Since I love almond flavored anything, I thought this would be a great flavor to try next. For those unfamiliar with almond cookies, they are a popular Chinese snack/dessert that is similar to a shortbread cookie but has almond flavoring. They are crisp and buttery, a perfect mix-in or topping for ice cream. I was lucky to find some in my local supermarket but they only had one brand. Asian supermarkets probably have a larger selection. The good ones can be found in Chinese bakeries but I'm not going all the way to Chinatown just to get some cookies.

I've made this ice cream twice before starting my blog and was able to fine tune it for this third batch. The first time I made it, I found a few recipes online for almond flavored ice cream and many of them call for almond paste to make the base. As it turns out this ice cream tasted good, but the texture was very gritty due to the bits of ground up almond in the paste. Some people may like this different texture for a change, but I prefer a smooth ice cream base especially if I'm going to add something crunchy to it. I love to eat food with contrasting textures.

The second time around I wanted to find a recipe that would result in a smooth ice cream so I found a few recipes online that only use almond extract for the flavoring and no actual almonds or almond paste. I based this version on a basic vanilla ice cream recipe substituting some of the vanilla extract for almond extract. This time the ice cream was nice and smooth while still tasting very almondy. The cookie gets a little soft (but not soggy) while sitting in the ice cream but still gives a good crunch. For those who prefer more crunch, I would recommend reserving some almond cookie as a topping.

This one makes into my top five of ice creams that I've made so far. It might be number one or number two right now on a very short list. I find it strange that I like almond flavored desserts because I don't particularly like almonds themselves. Almond extract is so much concentrated than the flavor you get in actual almonds that I don't even think of almonds when I'm eating something almond flavored. I just get an intensely sweet flavor and think about other almond flavored desserts I've had like almond tofu (think almond flavored jello) and almond milk tea. This will be one I come back to again.

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Almond Cookie Ice Cream Recipe

Improvised by icecreameyedoc

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup sugar

5 egg yolks

pinch of salt

1 cup chopped almond cookies

1 tsp almond extract

Directions

1. Heat milk, 1 cup of cream, sugar and salt in a pot and bring to almost boiling. Remove from heat.

2. Whisk milk mixture into egg yolks.

3. Heat custard (stirring constnatly) until thickened then add to remaining cup of heavy cream. Chill in ice bath until cool.

4. Add 1 tsp almond extract and stir.

5. Refrigerate for a few hours and churn in ice cream maker.

6. While removing ice cream from machine and placing in storage container, add chopped almond cookies in layers between ice cream.

Hazelnut Ice Cream Recipe - Meet My Friend Filbert

Considering what a pain it was to find these hazelnuts, they better make for some awesome ice cream. For some reason, my local supermarket doesn't have whole hazelnuts. I guess they're not as common as I thought or I have too much faith in the modern supermarket to have all ingredients I need. I was finally able to find them at the third store I checked. I wasn't even sure what they looked like in their whole form so I had to walk around the store looking at the labels on all of the bins. At $6.99 per pound, this isn't going to be cheap ice cream. Strangely they also go by the name "filberts" and you can get them shelled or unshelled. When I hear the word "filbert," I think of it as a British butler's name. Filbert = Philip + Albert?

To be honest, I don't know if I've ever had hazelnut ice cream before. I've maybe had a spoonful of someone else's here and there but I don't recall what it tastes like. I imagine something roasted, nutty and chocolatey so it sounds pretty good on my imaginary tongue in my head. The ingredients call for chocolate, specifically milk chocolate with at least 30% cocoa solids. I always end up grabbing dark chocolate (~60% cacao) but maybe that wasn't a good idea in this case since it may overpower the hazelnut flavor.

The preparation went without a hitch for the most part. After toasting the hazelnuts in the oven, I tried to remove the paper skins by rubbing them in a towel as recommended but it didn't work that well. I don't know if I didn't toast the nuts long enough (11min at 350 degrees) or they weren't fresh but the paper was just stuck to the nuts and not much came off. I just processed them with the paper on and proceeded with the recipe without much problem. Good thing I had that food processor lying around that I bought a few months ago to make cheesecake. And good thing I figured out how to use it, but only after fiddling with the lid for about 15 minutes and almost returning it because I thought it was broken. That was a case of RTFM.

I think the final result was a bit too chocolatey due to the dark chocolate. When I tasted the hazelnut steeped milk, it tasted nice and nutty but I didn't get enough of the hazelnut taste after adding it to the chocolate mixture.  It did taste slightly different from the regular chocolate ice cream I made last time but chocolate was the dominant flavor. The texture was nice and smooth and very silky. I need to make some ice cream without any chocolate next time or this recipe by Giada De Laurentiis. I'll have to revisit this recipe with milk chocolate instead. I was going to bring this batch to the office but I feel it didn't live up to my expectations so I will just share it with the family instead.


Hazelnut Ice Cream (Gianduja Gelato) Recipe
adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop
Ingredients
1.5 cups hazelnuts, toasted
1cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
4 oz milk chocolate, finely chopped
5 large egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Abbreviated instructions:
1. Toast the hazelnuts on a baking sheet at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature and then rub in a dry, clean kitchen towel to remove the papery skins. (Did not work for me.) Chop fine in a food processor.
2. Warm milk, 1 cup of cream, sugar and salt. Remove from heat and add chopped hazelnuts and steep for 1 hour.
3. Heat 1 cup of cream until just before boiling. Add to chopped chocolate in another bowl. Mix until blended.
4. Strain hazelnut infused milk into another saucepan squeezing as much milk out as possible. Heat milk and add to egg yolks to make custard. Cook until thickened.
5. Add custard to milk and chocolate mixture and cool in refrigerator for 6-8 hours. Churn in ice cream maker per manufacture instructions.

Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe and Copyright Infringement

I had to do a little research to make sure it was okay to post recipes and not be in violation of copyright laws. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon a an article written by the very author whose recipe I wanted to post. Here is an article by David Lebovitz regarding the issue: Recipe Attribution

In summary, it is okay to post a list of ingredients in a recipe. Regarding the directions for preparing the dish, it would be plagiarism and unethical if the steps were posted verbatim so it is recommended that the instructions be written in one's own words. I'm not planning on claiming anyone else's recipe as my own so this is the format I plan to follow in the future as long as I don't receive any complaints.

The following is the recipe for the Chocolate Ice Cream I made in my previous post:

Chocolate Ice Cream adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop

Ingredients

2 cups (500ml) heavy cream

3 tablespoons (21g) unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder

5 oz. (140g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup (250ml) whole milk

3/4 cup (150g) sugar

Pinch of salt

5 large egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Abbreviated instructions

1. Warm 1 cup of heavy cream while whisking in cocoa powder until well blended. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 seconds while whisking then remove from heat and add chopped chocolate and mix until smooth. Add remaining 1 cup of cream. Place chocolate mixture in separate bowl.

2. Heat milk sugar and salt in same pan to almost boiling. Temper eggs with milk and heat mixture while stirring constantly until it forms a thick custard. It should coat the back of a spoon. Try not to curdle it.

3. Add custard to chocolate mixture using a strainer if necessary. Add vanilla and mix. Cool in refrigerator and churn in ice cream maker per manufacturer's instructions.

Chocolate Ice Cream

When we were younger, I remember my brother liked fudgsicles. However, I was never a big fan of chocolate ice cream. There's something too plain or boring about it. It lacks punch. Or it's too similar to milk chocolate when I much prefer dark chocolate. Or maybe I just haven't had the right chocolate ice cream yet. This was an opportunity to have my mind changed.

This is actually my second attempt at chocolate ice cream. The first one I made tasted good (very dark chocolatey) but was hard as a rock and a pain to scoop. It must have been Phildadelphia style (eggless/non-custard). I forget which recipe I used but I found it on the internet somewhere or combined two recipes which probably wasn't a good idea. I was hoping the eggs in this version would smooth out the texture and soften the consistency white still being chocolatey.

David Lebovitz's opening line in the entry for this chocolate ice cream recipe (found in his book "The Perfect Scoop") is what sold me on trying chocolate ice cream again. He says "My search for the ultimate chocolate ice cream ended the day I opened my ice cream maker and took a taste of this version." Quite convincing, sir.

This ice cream is fairly easy to make. It just has the added step of melting chocolate into the heavy cream before heating the milk and making the custard. The recipe doesn't specify what percentage cacao to use so I used 72% since I like my chocolate dark. This time around I tempered the eggs without a problem but was too hasty in reheating the custard and ended up with one or two curdled egg bits here and there which I strained out. I've been trying to speed up the process of making the base/custard by heating things faster (while still scraping and stirring of course) because when I started out a few months ago I would heat everything super slowly. It was fine since I never curdled the milk or eggs but it just took forever. This time I was pushing it to see how thick it could get before it started to curdle. I took it slightly too far but not as bad as some I've ruined in the past. In the future, I should turn down the heat when I see the steam start to come off the mixture. I've also tried going by temperature (recommended ~170 degress F) but it seems like I have to let it keep going to get it to thicken because it still seems to thin if i pull the heat at that temperature. After freezing I haven't really noticed a difference in texture either way but maybe I haven't done it right enough times.

As it turns out, this chocolate ice cream isn't half bad. It's smoother and silkier than the one I made last time while still tasting chocolatey. But I still feel like it needs something else mixed in to make me want to eat it. I guess I'm not a pure chocolate ice cream lover. I need some nuts or toffee or oreo or something else to make it more interesting. That's why there are toppings I guess. This one goes in the pile that I would only make by request, not because I'm having a craving for it. Maybe I'll try the Philadelphia style chocolate ice cream from his book in the future but only after I make a few other ones I've been meaning to try.

Hazulnut ice cream was originally the next flavor I wanted to make but the local supermarket failed to have any hazelnuts. They had prepackaged chopped hazelnuts which I guess would have worked but I'd rather have whole hazelnuts and chop them up myself. I didn't want to drive around so I ended up making chocolate ice cream since I already had all the ingredients for it.

Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe Here