So I originally made this blog with the hopes of posting often. Obviously I failed since the first and last real post is from January. So this will be my second (and hopefully much more successful) attempt at documenting what I made. Anyway...here goes nothing. I am going to try to make up for lost time by writing about two things that I have made recently.
I recently decided to use the wealth of fresh blackberries available at the store to make a blackberry buttermilk cake. This cake is an upside-down cake. Having never made one before, there was, as there always is, potential for culinary disaster. However the whole thing went quite smoothly. Because the cake was made with buttermilk, it ended up being very light and flavorful. I really liked it because it had a subtle sweetness to it. Also the cake had orange zest in it, which added a nice depth of flavor. The combination of orange and blackberry was really good. Another plus was how beautiful this cake looked. Once flipped, it was very pretty looking, especially once it was treated with an ample dusting of powdered sugar! It would be a good cake to bring to a gathering, if you wanted to impress people with your baking skills. Especially since it is so easy to make. In case you were wondering, this recipe is from Bon Appetit magazine. Here are some photos of the finished product. Unfortunately the lighting in my kitchen makes it difficult to make food look appetizing in photographs.
If you are interested in making this cake yourself, here is the recipe for Blackberry Buttermilk Cake.
The second thing that I made recently was cherry chocolate chunk ice cream. We got an ice cream maker back in October, and since then have made four different ice creams, or technically custards, because we have used eggs in every recipe. I use eggs because the recipes I made as a kid always had eggs in them. I have so many fond memories of making ice cream with my Grandpa and my family in Iowa. We always made it in the winter so that we had snow to pack the hand powered machine with. In some ways I like this method more, because you have to put so much more effort into making the ice cream, that the finished product tastes that much better. That being said, that method isn't quite as practical living in downtown Chicago. Also there is something amazing about putting the ingredients together, turning on the machine, and 30 minutes later having ice cream. I think that because the actual freezing is so much easier, I have been putting more of my efforts into making interesting or really good flavored ice cream.
Anyway the first one I made with the brand new machine was a vanilla bean ice cream. I followed a recipe in the booklet that came with the machine. The ice cream was awesome, but expensive and time consuming. The thing they leave out of the recipe is how expensive a vanilla bean is! Anyway after that we made a coffee ice cream (delicious). Then around Christmas time I decided to make my brother ice cream as a present. He loves chocolate ice cream, so that's what I was going to make. Only I was going to make the most intense chocolate ice cream ever. Success!! I used so many different kinds of chocolate in the base, as well as chunks of dark and milk chocolate. The result was an uber-decadent ice cream that actually tasted more like frozen chocolate mousse (in a good way). So that brings us to my most recent ice cream endeavor.
Last weekend I went to the farmers market on Saturday. One of the most popular items being sold were cherries. I bought some thinking I would either eat them as they were, or find some other use for them. When I got them home I soon realized that the batch I had weren't that sweet. So me and Brian decided that the best decision would be to make them into an ice cream. We decided that the cherries might be better if they were macerated with sugar and water on the stove. I think this would have worked really well, except that we didn't give them enough time. Anyway we ended up making a vanilla custard (plain old extract not vanilla bean) then adding the "macerated" cherries and some chocolate chunks while the base was freezing. The end result was pretty good, although the flavor of the cherries didn't really persist throughout the entire ice cream.
So that is what I have made recently. Until next time.
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