Has an amazing flavor combination ever come to you in a moment of revelation, that makes you stop and wonder if you can actually crave something that you aren’t sure even exists? If you have had this experience, you know what I am talking about!

Right before we left for our trip to New England, I got an amazing craving for a Pumpkin Milkshake. I love milkshakes, I love pumpkin and I have an obsession for delicious dairy treats. So I got on this pumpkin milkshake kick. However, I wasn’t even sure if they existed. I had never had one, or seen one to my recollection – which amazed me! I am sure they exist somewhere, but they should be everywhere!!!

I was leaving for New England in just a few days, and wasn’t prepared to go out to the grocery store and get the ingredients to satisfy my craving. I bought myself a Pumpkin Spice Frappucino, in vain, it wasn’t quite IT.

Flash forward: I bought several extra cans of organic pumpkin at the store right before Thanksgiving. I am famous for roasting actual pumpkins, but I love the stuff so much, it is convenient to have it in a can to add to whatever suits my fancy! So last night I remembered my desire for a Pumpkin Milkshake. I had just recently purchased egg nog as well, for Egg Nog Lattes (check out Alice’s recipe ) and I thought that would be the perfect combination for my NOGshake!

These Pumpkin Nogshakes are delicious. Even more decadent would be adding a bit of booze – maybe baileys, maybe rum, perhaps a little whiskey. I will leave that to you and your discretion. But have yourself a Pumpkin Nogshake and be of good cheer!

Pumpkin NOGshakes

(1 – 6 oz. serving)

INGREDIENTS:

2 oz. egg nog

¼ cup of vanilla bean ice cream

¼ cup of plain pumpkin puree

dash of both cinnamon and nutmeg

optional: ½ jigger of booze of your choice

METHOD:

Stick it all in a blender, or use an immersion blender to mix throughly. Pour into a glass and enjoy!

How good does that sound? Unfortunately I did not serve these items together, but I wish I had! They would have been perfect together. I have been meaning to post the cake recipe for over a month now. I made it for my cousin Michelle’s birthday. She is a well known chocoholic, and so I knew I wanted to make a super chocolate birthday cake for her to celebrate! Sweets for the sweet!

The recipe was based on one from Peanut Butter and Julie’s Blog (thanks Julie!).

The recipe calls for melting chocolate in hot strong coffee! What a revelation! This was a perfect way to really up the ante and flavor profile of the cake. I used nothing below 75% cacao chocolate and I substituted extra virgin coconut oil and blood orange salt to add to the underlying flavor as well . I made a 9-inch round cake and layered the cake with leftover cream cheese icing that I had frozen when I made too much for the wedding cake and then topped it with crushed hazelnuts. It was totally a success! I am not much of a chocolate lover, but I really loved this cake. I reduced the amount of sugar from 3 CUPS to 3/4’s of a cup – resulting in a deep chocolate flavor without an overly sweet taste.

As for the ice cream, I mentioned in my last post that I have switched over almost exclusively to goats milk. My friend Judy at No Fear Entertaining told me a long time ago that she had made an awesome chocolate pudding using goats milk, so it inspired me to try goats milk in my desserts. Normally when making ice cream, I don’t put eggs in the base as a shortcut and time saver. But this time I decided I really wanted a creamy custard, so I used both goats milk and cream, as well as eggs. I added a bit of crushed cardamom pods while the vanilla bean was steeping in the milk/cream. It added a really rice flavor and I think enhanced the vanilla flavor of the ice cream. The consistency was good, but it was very rich. I think next time, I will skip the cream and just go with the eggs and goats milk.

Recipes below the cut…

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We recently received another box from a FromTheFarm.com producer. This time it was a dozen beautiful ripe peaches. When I opened the box the sunny aroma immediately hit my nose. I knew these peaches were ripe and so we decided to get to work.

That night for dessert I made a wonderful and simple Peach and Cherry Cobbler. My version was about as easy as you can get. I sliced about 3 peaches into rounds, laid them, overlapping in a spiral in an oval baking dish. Then I halved some fresh cherries and dotted the peaches with them. Then sprinkled the top with cinnamon. My topping was simple – just mix some oatmeal, brown sugar and butter in a bowl and sprinkle on top. I baked it in the oven at 350 F for about a half an hour. Served with vanilla bean ice cream, it really hit the spot.

A few days later we decided to make Fresh Peach Ice Cream. I love ice cream and it had been a long time since I had fresh peach ice cream. So we chunked up 2 peaches and pureed them in the food processor. Then in a bowl we mixed 3 cups of whole milk, 1 cup of heavy cream, about 2/3 cup of sugar – raw and brown mixed, and vanilla together. Then stirred in the peach puree. Then we turned the ice cream machine on, and poured in the mixture – and soon we had yummy ice cream.

The rest of the peaches we enjoyed in our morning fruit salads and also stirred into vanilla yogurt, topped with cinnamon! Peaches are one of summer’s delicious treats, what do you like to do with your bounty of peaches?

In Foodie News:

Three Books and a Whisk:

My friend Elle, from Elle’s Kitchen HAS MOVED, and is running a great giveaway to promote the new movie, Julie & Julia . Her blog is featured as a “Featured Blog of the Day” on the official movie website! Way to go, Elle! And to celebrate she is giving away 2 cookbooks and a cool retro whisk! So go check it out.

America’s Next Top Cookie:

How would you like to win a gift certificate for Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee? Well Tiffany from The Cookie Blog, who was featured on FFF  last week is giving away a gift certificate (winner’s choice). She is running a cookie contest called “America’s Next Top Cookie”. All you have to do is bake a cookie and photograph it! The contest is based solely on the beauty of a cookie. Any foodies who would like to compete, can find more info at The Cookie Blog.

Our friends Chris and Erin, from The Olive Notes host a weekly community potluck dinner for all their friends, here in Saint Augustine. It is a way for all of us to get together on a regular basis. You don’t have to RSVP, just be sure to come with a dish, dessert or a drink based on a pre-determined theme. Sometimes these Tuesday night Community Dinners fall on a holiday, and today was one of those times. So of course the theme for tonight was Mexican.

I really didn’t know what to make. I hadn’t gone to the grocery store in about a week, so I started rummaging through the pantry. Originally I thought I would fall back on beans and rice. However I saw a can of coconut milk and a can of sweetened condensed milk. I had a mango in the fridge, so I thought about making a mango-coconut ice cream. That was until I pulled the mango out and realized it was still hard. However, next to it was a papaya that was very ripe.

When I pulled out the can of sweetened condensed milk, I read the back and the recipe was for flan. Lo and behold, on the ingredient list was also a can of coconut milk and a few other ingredients I had on hand. I was in the mood for ice cream so I decided to use all the same ingredients for the flan, but instead make ice cream. I cut the papaya into rounds, took the seeds of of the middles, sprinkled them with sugar and popped them under the broiler for a few minutes. Once they got caramelized, I took them out, squeezed a fresh lime over top and sprinkled the papaya liberally with cinnamon.

I made the ice cream, while the papaya was cooling, and once it was blended and still soft and creamy I scooped a big dollop of ice cream and placed it in the hole of each papaya slice. I also put a fresh mint leaf on top – and it was almost the color of the Mexican flag! Then I put it in the freezer to harden.

This was a nice cool treat to end a meal of spicy Mexican dishes! Happy Cinco de Mayo Everyone!
I am a bit late with this, but I dedicate this dish to Peter and Christey of FotoCuisine, who picked the ingredients for this month’s Royal Foodie Joust, which were the colors, Red, White and Green.

Voting closes tomorrow, so be sure to cast your vote for your favorite overall, best photo and most unique interpretation of the dish. Stay tuned to the LOQ blog to find out the winners!

(*still to come – the last of Italy – Rome)

Caramelized Papaya with Flan Ice Cream

INGREDIENTS:

1 can of coconut lite milk
1 can (from coconut milk) of whole organic milk
1 can sweetened condensed milk
3 large organic eggs
1 tsp Tahitian vanilla extract
1 large papaya cut in rounds and de-seeded
sprinkling of sugar
juice of 1 lime
dusting of cinnamon
fresh mint leaves for garnish

METHOD:
Peel papaya and cut the papaya into rounds, take the seeds of of the middles, sprinkle rounds with sugar and pop them under the broiler for a few minutes. Once they get caramelized, take them out, squeeze a fresh lime over top and sprinkle the papaya liberally with cinnamon.

While the papaya is cooling, make the ice cream. In a large bowl blend 3 milks, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Pour into ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Once the ice cream is blended and getting frozen, yet still soft and creamy scoop a big dollop of ice cream and place it in the hole of each papaya slice. Garnish with a fresh mint leaf and serve.

Gosh, it feels like forever since I actually posted a recipe on this blog! The scary thing is that I have A LOT of them to post! With the New Foodie Blogroll launch over, I have accumulated a lot of recipes and photos of dishes I have been preparing this summer, that I haven’t had time to post (and scarily enough, posts I had written right before the wedding, that I still have to post Bad, bad, blogger!).

DISCLAIMER: So be forewarned that some of the upcoming posts aren’t going to be seasonal for most of my lovely readers. I see that there are Autumnal posts all over the blogosphere, and although the weather is a little less humid here, we are still very much in the throes of summertime, here in Florida! (OH HOW I MISS THE FALL!!!)

We are going to be heading to New England for our annual trip in October and my goal is to post all my backlog before then. So that when I come back, I have all fresh material!

So before this gets too out of date, here are the lovely ice cream recipes for you that I promised over a week ago! *blush*

Here are the next two installments of the Ice Cream Diaries…

Lemon-Ricotta Ice Cream

I had some leftover ricotta cheese in the fridge and I had seen Laurie from Dalla Mia Cucina make a Ricotta and Rum Gelato and I thought – there you go! That’s what I want to do with my leftover ricotta! I had about a cup left, so I decided to fill in the rest with whole milk and Greek yogurt.

A while back I had made some lemon-ricotta muffins that I found on Rosa’s Yum Yums that were awesome so I decided that I wanted to make lemon-ricotta ice cream. Also I have been trying to find a solution to the super hard ice cream texture that most of our ice cream has (to the point that we have to take it out of the freezer 40 minutes before we want to eat it!!!), and since I know vodka doesn’t freeze, I put a nice shot of vanilla vodka into the mix. Just for texture purposes! It worked really well! So now I know the trick to making softer ice cream!

Click through for recipe and for the Mango-Organe Sorbetto….AND the MEME!
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I have really so enjoyed my ice cream maker since we got it back in March as an early wedding present from my mom. Ice cream is a big passion of mine, it is something we eat almost everyday, in small amounts (sometimes!) and I find that it has been a really fun and creative outlet for me! But…we have been making so much ice cream since we got the maker, that I literally have a backlog of recipes to share with you all. So consider the next few days, the ice cream chronicles, as I share with your our creations!

I am always looking out for new and great recipes for ice cream, gelato (although you can’t really make true gelato without the proper equipment), sorbetto and slushies. I hoard little bits of this and that away in the freezer for future ice cream endeavors, especially from Daring Bakers Challenges.

This is the inspiration for today’s two recipes!

For the Pistachio-Cherry, I broke down and went with an egg base, something I have been avoiding. However, I had 6 leftover egg yolks in the freezer from a Daring Bakers challenge that needed using. So I decided to finally do an egg based ice cream to remember what the difference in texture is. Texture has been the most difficult thing for me to perfect in past attempts. I was really frustrated to see that there really is a difference. This ice cream was so creamy, its nuts! And this ice cream TRULY was nuts because we went a little nuts with the pistachios! But I was really struggling with the consistency issue and not using eggs. I was determined to find something that will work besides eggs, and I believe I found my answer …in BOOZE (see more on this farther down)…

Roberto loves Pistachio gelato, or ice cream. It is his absolute favorite. Second runner up, Amarena, otherwise known as black cherry. So we decided that this ice cream should incorporate these two flavors making the Ultimate Roberto Ice Cream. Unfortunately, we did overdo it with the pistachios, which means that flavor really overwhelmed the sweet cherry flavor. But it was still good, just not very cherry.

I had a lot of fun getting the cherries ready for this endeavor. I really enjoy cutting into rich red fruits, like pomegranates and cherries and watching their juices stain everything from the cutting board to my fingers. I can’t explain it, but it makes it fun. I guess it is the kid in me.

The second “leftover ice cream” was made from the cake remnants from the last DB challenge – the Hazelnut Gateau which was kind of a disaster for me. So I had a LOT of remnants. I had it stuffed in the freezer and had pretty much forgotten about it until I asked Roberto what kind of ice cream he wanted next. We had recently gotten a bottle of Bailey’s to experiment with making cocktails and so we decided to make a Bailey’s ice cream. That night, I DREAMT about adding the gateau pieces to it (this is how obsessed I am about ice cream!) and I am telling you guys, it is worth making the gateau, to put in this ice cream! I feel so validated now! Ben and Jerry’s really needs to buy this recipe from me to mass produce! LOL! The Bailey’s, since it is alcohol, doesn’t freeze so it made this ice cream so soft and scoopable and creamy!

Click through to see how we made them.
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Independence Day in the US is all about BBQs and fireworks. I guess it is a fitting way to celebrate a birthday. I mean, we all usually celebrate our personal birthdays with great food,cake and fanfare .
I think next year, on my birthday, I should ask for the fireworks, too.

But really there is no better way to celebrate a holiday or event than with delicious food. We all know that well. This weekend we were celebrating with my family. My mom and my aunt and uncle came up to Saint Augustine to celebrate the birth of the USA in the oldest town in the USA. We spent Friday afternoon sightseeing and so I decided on a simple menu, that I could do ahead of time, so that I could not only enjoy my guests, but so that we could have a delicious, but quick meal in between all of the festivities.

You know what they say though about the best intentions…

Menu:

Pork Kebabs with my special Middle Eastern inspired meat rub with cippolini, orange bell pepper and cherry tomatoes with Tzatziki

Since I don’t have a grill, and can’t grill where I live (2nd story condo in a downtown area) I did my kebabs under the broiler!

Tangy Potato Salad: loosely based on Nana’s Potato Salad but with lots of sweet Hungarian paprika and some cider vinegar thrown in

Green Beans Vinaigrette: Just green beans tossed with garlic, cilantro, sherry vinegar and extra virgin olive oil
(sorry no pics)

To Drink? White Sangria with strawberries and stone fruit (bottle of Riesling, bottle of bubbly and chopped fruits)

For Dessert? Cardamom and Pistachio Brownies from Mallika’s blog with homemade Pomegranate Sorbet (recipe to follow)

So I gave myself Thursday afternoon and evening to boil the potatoes and blanch the green beans, prep the meat with the rub, make the tzatziki, the brownies and the sorbet. No big, do it all the time. I prepped the veggies and the meat in no time, with no difficulty. Then I made the brownies. It was a bit of a challenge because I have never made brownies from scratch (oh the horrors!) before (we are not big brownie people, so that is why), plus the recipe I was following on Mallika’s blog were in metric. So I sat down to quickly do the calculations and it just wasn’t making sense – so honestly I scrapped the directions and just winged it. They turned out a little on the cake-y side, as opposed to squidgy, but we actually prefer them this way, so they were fine.

Then it was time for the sorbet, my pièce de résistance. So I made the simple syrup in this tiny saucepan I have with a broken handle (meaning all that was there was the screw and a little piece of the handle). After it was all set, I went to pour it in a small pyrex bowl, to cool. But as I was pouring, the handle finally broke all the way off, and as this happened the pot fell onto the pyrex bowl, knocking it to the floor, shattering the bowl and spraying my freshly cleaned kitchen and newly bought kitchen carpet with super sticky gooey simple syrup. The first thing that came to my mind after, “thank goodness I miraculously avoided being burned” was: “oh crap, Roberto is going to kill me!” (he has been trying to get me to throw this pan away for ages), followed by “Damn it! I am out of sugarrrrrrrrrrrr!” also dammit, my pyrex bowl is broken and dammit I no longer have a small saucepan. Followed by “I can’t believe I have to go back to the store!”

From there it was just a downward spiral. My kitchen was covered in gooey glass, and I needed to go get more sugar. So I zipped out to the store, while Roberto kindly volunteered to do cleanup duty (thank the Universe for good and helpful husbands!).
As I was driving to the store, the light for gas came on, so I had to stop and pay a gazillion dollars for a tank of gas. Then when I finally got the the store, I stepped out of the car and dropped my cell phone onto the pavement, which then promptly fell apart. I had had it, and expletives were flying from my mouth when I look up and see a mother with her little daughter walking towards me. As I mouthed “so sorry” to her, I picked up my cell phone pieces, put it back together and braced myself for the insanity that is the day before a holiday shopping frenzy at the grocery! Luckily I made it out alive and without any problems, and back home with no other detours. I managed to finish making the sorbet before completely crashing. We ate some leftovers, drank a mojito to dull the pain and torture of earlier events, and watched a few episodes of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer on DVD. Normalcy returned and all ended well.

The next day our guests arrived and we all enjoyed a nice and relaxing weekend. I hope you all in the US enjoyed your long weekend too!
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Here is the next in the Artisan Ice Cream series. With summer in full swing, I am always more drawn towards lighter tastes and although I am pretty happy with the ice cream base I have been using, I do feel after using it several times, there is room for improvement – mostly in texture.

I love the ultra creamy texture of ice creams using eggs, but there are several reasons I want to stay clear of eggs. For one, the fat and cholesterol – most recipes call for 6 eggs, while others I have seen as many as a dozen! Another is the cost of organic eggs, which are the only eggs I am willing to put in this temple of my body. A third problem with egg based ice cream bases, the time involved in a cooked custard ice cream. Ice cream really is a part of our daily diet – so I can’t think of it as a splurge. I need an ice cream base that is the best of both worlds – creamy texture, light on the clock, waist and the wallet.

So with creamy and light at the forefront of my mind, I went out on a limb this time. I knew I had some mango, lime yogurt puree tucked away in the freezer from when we made Elle’s Mango Buffalo Wings and I wanted to incorporate that into this week’s ice cream. Since there was already yogurt in the puree, I thought adding more yogurt would be a great idea – giving the ice cream some extra tang, and a little more fat, when using a whole milk Greek style yogurt. I also wanted to try a different kind of sugar, so instead of adding pure cane sugar like I normally would, I used sweetened condensed milk. I love the flavor of sweetened condensed milk anyway, and I have seen it used as a base in a lot of custard like desserts, so I thought perhaps it would give me a bit of the creaminess I was after. To the mix, I threw in some shredded coconut to add a little texture. Not to mention I absolutely LOVE shreds of coconut in ice cream.

The verdict? It is more of a creamy consistency and much more dense than previous batches. I don’t think I have found the perfect base yet, but I am going to continue experiementing. I think I will keep experiementing with sweetened condensed milk and I know when I want tang to go for using yogurt. I think I would also add more coconut to this ice cream if I were to make it again. This is a tangy and creamy ice cream/ yogurt. If you like a sweeter version, I would add some sugar or agave.

This is my entry for the Ice Cream, You Scream Blogging Event, hosted by Nikki over at Nik Snacks

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