Where the heck did Carly go?

I’ll give you a couple of hints.

I was in London for ten days at the end of April.

And like on every good vacation, I had ice cream.

There’s nothing else in this picture to act as a comparison, so it might not look like as much ice cream as it is. But that is a ginormous bowl of ice cream. Ginormous is the technical term for measuring bowls of ice cream.

This was at the Fortnum & Mason Parlor, where everything was ice cream (except for the things that weren’t, like my amazingly delicious chicken ceasar melt sandwich). But really, everything was ice cream. Case in point, this coffee drink my friend ordered:

And lest you think it’s only the frou-frou drinks with whipped cream that come with tiny cones, here’s a picture of her espresso:

Other ice cream-related vacationing includes the half-time concessions at One Man, Two Guvnors and Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour at the Warner Bros. Harry Potter Studio Tour.

But mostly, it was freezing in London so I drank a lot of tea.

I’ll take ‘Unnecessary Kitchen Gadgets’ for $500, Alex.

I own a donut maker. When I tell people this, my follow up is that it makes cake donuts, not fried ones. Picture a waffle iron, only instead of the waffle shape, there’s a lot of little donut shapes.

Despite this being exactly the type of ridiculous thing I’d buy for myself, I actually got it in a holiday white elephant exchange at my office. This means around the holidays, it was on sale for about $20.

It comes with a booklet of donut recipes. I’ve made the plain ones with both vanilla and chocolate icing, and around Halloween, when I was stuck home from Hurricane Sandy, I made three batches of Apple Cinnamon donuts.

My most recent donut foray was Olive Oil with Dark Chocolate Glaze and Sea Salt.

The donut maker is easy to use, if kind of messy. And the novelty of homemade donuts never fails to wow a crowd.

The Transitive Properties of Peanut Butter and Mint

One of my friends mentioned that his ideal ice cream would be chocolate with peanut butter and mint, but I wasn’t convinced.

I know that if A=B and A=C then B=C.

But I wasn’t so sure it would work for ice cream. Just because chocolate goes with peanut butter, and chocolate goes with mint doesn’t mean that peanut butter would go with mint.

When said friend invited me over to watch Argo in their building’s private screening room, I figured it was a good time to test the ice cream theory. (And a word of off-topic advice: make friends with people who have private screening rooms in their apartment buildings. it’s amazing.)

The chocolate ice cream is the same recipe as the one I used for Exploding Chocolate Surprise. I had forgotten just how chocolatey it was. If I remembered, I would have toned it down. I thought it was too chocolatey.

For what it’s worth, I was overruled by everyone else at the movie.

For the chips, I used a little more than a half a cup of peanut butter chips and a little less then a half a cup of mint chips. And then since I had them, I threw in some chocolate chips for good measure. I had originally planned to use a half of cup of each, but after pouring out a half a cup of each, I tasted them together and felt that the mint totally overpowered the peanut butter. Even with my unscientific adjustments, I still felt the mint was too strong.

Again for what it’s worth, I was overruled by everyone else at the movie.  At least I have the Academy behind me when I saw that Argo was awesome.

Late Breaking News: Dough Rises

I made pretzels.

I followed this recipe here. And even though intellectually I know that bread rises, it was a shock. It was such a shock I had to make a second batch to take pictures, because I forgot the first time.

 

Ingredients! And before:

After:

In progress:

 

 

When I told my mom about them, she asked for my recipe, because pretzels are difficult and take a lot of steps. I don’t know if I’d agree about the first part, but yes, there’s a lot of steps. They each were boiled on 15 seconds per side before going in the oven. That’s a lot of one-mississipis.

  

The one change I made from the original recipe was to bake them on aluminum foil instead of parchment paper. The ones I baked on parchment paper stuck to the paper, and I had to cut the bottoms off. I should have known better. I bake everything on aluminum foil. It’s magic. Nothing sticks to it.

I also made the beer cheese recipe at the same link to go with the pretzels. It was incredible. If you have a day to kill, I highly recommend them both.

All the Raspberry Everything

Sometimes, you find yourself purchasing a nice, expensive, one-size-fits-all bottle of raspberry lambic to make raspberry cheesecake brownies. Except the ‘one-size-fits-all’ is a lie, because your recipe calls for 4 tablespoons (1/4 of a cup) and the bottle is 750 ml (3.17 cups). And you spent a lot of money on it, so you are going to make ALL the raspberry desserts, like raspberry lambic sorbet and raspberry lambic ice cream, and then you’re freezer is too full for any more so you’re SOL, but at least now you’ve used 2 cups of it.

And if you’re wondering the difference, sorbet is non-dairy, ice cream is made with milk and cream.

Raspberry Lambic Ice Cream
(If you’re super-observant you’ll notice it’s the same as the Blue Moon ice cream, only with Raspberry Lambic instead of Blue Moon.)

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup raspberry lambic
2/3 cup sugar
3 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1 tbsp + 1 tsp corn starch
1/8 tsp salt

1. Mix together corn starch and 2 tbsp on the milk in a little bowl. Set aside.
2. Whisk together cream cheese and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
3. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine lambic, heavy cream, milk, sugar, and corn syrup. Bring to a boil for about 4 minutes.
4. Remove from heat and mix in the corn starch-milk mixture.
5. Return to heat, and bring to a boil for about 1 minute while stirring.
6. Whisk hot mixture into cream cheese. Make sure cream cheese is completely incorporated.
7. Cool. (I usually do this in the fridge overnight.)
8. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.
9. Eat!

The Boozy Baker Cookbook

I got The Boozy Baker Cookbook from my brother for the holidays and promptly set off to make ALL the boozy baked goods.

I started with Old Fashioned Snickerdoodles, and then made Raspberry Cheesecake Brownies, with raspberry lambic, for my mom for her birthday.

The cookies were amazing and easy, but one batch made was a zillion cookies, and my tiny studio-apartment oven only cooked one tiny tray of a dozen at a time, so it was quite the undertaking. The Raspberry Cheesecake Brownies were delicious but did not take my substituting an 8-inch square pan for the 9-inch square well, and looked not as pretty as they should have.

But the real star so far are the Oak Bars, which are blondies with chardonnay.

These were so good I’ve made them twice. You should make them too.

1 ¼ cups of flour
1 cup of light brown sugar
1 stick of butter
1 tsp of baking powder
1/8 tsp of salt
1 egg
¼ cup chardonnay
¾ cup butterscotch chips
½ cup toasted cashews

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl.
3. In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy, about 3 minutes.
4. Beat in egg.
5. Beat in chardonnay.
6. Beat in dry ingredients.
7. Mix in butterscotch chips and cashews
8. Bake about 25 minutes in greased 8×8 pyrex.
9. Eat!

There are a lot more recipes in here I’d like to make, but I don’t have a particularly well-stocked bar. Even if I did, a lot of the recipes call for specific dessert-y liquors. I tackled the recipes with bourbon and wine, first, and will slowly get to the ones that call for apricot schnapps, Kahlua, or creme de menthe when I feel like treating myself to them.

Raspberry Lambic Sorbet and Jobs that Don’t Exist

Do you know what would be a fun job? Getting to name nail polish colors. They are crazy. There are already colors like adore-a-ball (very pale pink), meet me at sunset (orange), and tiny wine-ey (red). And I would call this puddle of raspberry sorbet (because that’s what it really is).

Raspberry Lambic Sorbet
Recipe adapted from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home

Ingredients

1 lbs. raspberries (I used frozen, because it’s the middle of the winter, and fresh raspberries were exorbitantly expensive)
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cup raspberry lambic

Instructions
1. Combine all in ingredients in saucepan.
2. Bring to simmer, stirring/smooshing raspberries into a pulp while you go.

3. Once raspberries are more or less liquified, remove from heat and pour into a heat-proof bowl through a sieve.4. Cover with saran wrap and cool. You can do this by putting the bowl in an ice bath or refrigerating overnight or really via any other method.
5. Churn according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.
6. Transfer to container and freeze for a few hours until firm. Your sorbet will be softer than typical ice cream right out of the ice cream maker and will melt faster than your typical ice cream when removed from the freezer. So…
7. Eat it quickly.

Apartment Update and Foam Core Project Fail

The truth of this blog is that the number one post based on stats is about postcard art. I want to give the people what they want and talk more about my apartment.

But my latest project, the chalkboard fireplace, is a Monet, in the Clueless sense of the word. From this distance, everything looks great. But up close, it just didn’t work out.

The whole thing was done on two foam core boards, which was my big mistake.

I wanted it to fit exactly in the boarded up fireplace behind it. The fireplace is so big that in order to fully fit I would have needed to piece together a lot more than the two I used. Then, despite all my measuring, I cut it wrong. Finally, the warped a lot when I painted it.

The warping is the major problem. I don’t know if a thicker foam core would have solved the problem or not. You can’t tell from the pictures, but the fireplace is in really bad shape. What I really should have done was sand it down, spakle all the holes, and repaint the whole thing, painting the chalkboard paint right onto the wall.

The chalkboard part itself works well. I used about one and a half bottles of Martha Stewart Chalkboard Paint from the craft store, and some cheap foam brushes. I don’t remember exactly, but I think it’s three coats of paint.

I did a little bit of measuring for the arch, but free-handed the bricks, log and fire drawing using Crayola chalk.

The reason I did it this way was because I was weary of taking on a major project when I first moved in. I’m still not sure if I want to actually repaint the fireplace white. I might try black. Or some other pop of color (yellow? blue? thoughts?). Or maybe I should take a cue from Jenna Lyons’ townhouse, which I love, and paint the wall surrounding the fireplace dark grey.

I was also didn’t want to spend a lot of time making changes I’d need to undo if I moved at the end of the year. I painted in my last place, and then had to repaint back to white when I moved a year and a half later. Now that I’ve resigned my lease on this apartment for another two years, I’m definitely going to fix the fireplace.

The Delicious Whoppers: A Tale of Chocolate Malt Ice Cream

Sometimes, when I think about it, it makes me sad that such a stupid hamburger and such a great chocolate malt candy have almost the same name. Because one is delicious and the other isn’t. Or so I assume. I don’t think I’ve ever had a burger from a fast food place. Burgers are only good when they come from a restaurant or a BBQ. Why would you ever choose a fast food burger over chicken nuggets? Chicken nuggets are clearly superior. Wait, weren’t we talking about ice cream?

Malt Ice Cream with Chocolate Malt Ganache Swirl

Ingredients
Ice Cream
1 1/2 Cups Milk
1 1/2 Cups Heavy Cream
3/4 Cup Sugar
3/4 Cup Malt Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Pinch of Salt

Ganache Swirl
1 Cup minus 1 tbsp Heavy Cream
2/3 Cup Milk
3/4 Cup Malt Powder
1 Cup Chocolate Chips

(Ganache recipe is adapted from Raspberri Cupcakes, which is an Australian blog so the measurements don’t really translate to US measurements and are all approximate)

 

Ganache instructions (make the Ganache first):

1. Put milk, heavy cream, and malt powder in a saucepan and heat until it starts to boil.
2. Put chocolate chips in a large, heat-proof bowl.
3. Pour hot liquid over chocolate chips, and stir until smoothly mixed together.
4. Put sauce in a tupperware and put in fridge (probably overnight) until chilled.

Lazy person’s ice cream instructions (aka Philadelphia Style)

1. Mix all the ingredients together. Make sure you mix until all the sugar and malt powder is dissolved.
2. Freeze in your Ice Cream Maker according to the ice cream maker’s instructions.
3. As you take the ice cream out of the ice cream maker to store, alternate scoops of ice cream with layer of ganache in your container.
4. Eat!

Dreaming of Summer (Ale Ice Cream)

It has been bitterly, unbearably cold in New York this week, and I just want it to be summer again. To be honest, I have been ready for it to be summer again since October. I can’t decide if that makes this week’s Blue Moon Summer Ale Ice Cream a beautiful day-dream or a vicious tease. What I do know is that it is delicious.

I made this ice cream mainly because it’s January, and I’ve had the Blue Moon Summer Ale in my fridge since July. I live alone but don’t drink alone, so alcohol tends to linger here. Any flavor where I don’t need to go out in the cold to buy ingredients gets bumped to the top of the list.

Blue Moon Summer Ale Ice Cream

Ingredients1 3/4 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream1 cup Blue Moon Summer Ale
2/3 cup sugar
3 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1 tbsp + 1 tsp corn starch
1 orange
1/8 tsp salt

Instructions
1. Mix together corn starch and 2 tbsp on the milk in a little bowl. Set aside.
2. Whisk together cream cheese and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
3. Squeeze orange to get orange juice (I guess you can also just use orange juice, about 2 tbsp, but I had an orange and not the juice. See earlier re: using ingredients I already had).
4. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine beer, heavy cream, milk, sugar, and corn syrup. Bring to a boil for about 4 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and mix in the corn starch-milk mixture.
6. Return to heat, and bring to a boil for about 1 minute while stirring.
7. Whisk hot mixture into cream cheese. Make sure cream cheese is completely incorporated. Add the orange juice.
8. Cool. (I usually do this in the fridge overnight.)
9. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

10. Eat!