Earth Shakin' Ice Cream!

Well I drafted this blog a long time ago and you're going to know how behind I am on this with the next sentence. The day after I made the ice cream, an unexpected thing happened, an earthquake in DC!  I made ice cream for a buddy at work for his birthday. Just as a few of us were sitting down in the kitchen to eat it - the earthquake shook us all up! We just sat there stunned for a sec. The metro goes right below our building and sometimes I can feel that. I wondered just for a sec, did the metro trains collide? Then someone yelled at us to get into the door frames. That was the end of it and we all evacuated the building. My friends took the ice cream with them. I think that must be a pretty good compliment to my ice cream, if your friends take it with them when the evacuate a building.

Alright back to the oh so old blog.

I have purchased an ice cream ball, like this one. And I have to say it's fantastic. I did the inaugural "churn" a couple months back at a friend's BBQ. It was a great thing to do sitting around the table, drinking beers, taking a turn at shaking it while the food was grilling. By the time the food was ready, we had ice cream! That time, I did just vanilla ice cream. This time I made up my own recipe :)

Cookies and Cream Homemade Ice Cream
1 quart of heavy whipping cream
1 cup sugar
1 tbls vanilla
oreo cookies
1 cup of rock salt or kosher salt
1 bag of ice (or at least 8 trays)

Put the ice and salt in the ball part of the container. Pour the sugar and whipping cream together into the inside cylinder part while stirring. Add the tbls of vanilla. You can stop there if you want and just make vanilla ice cream. I put some oreos in a bag and took a hammer to them!

Then dumped the crumbs into the cylinder. Close the lid and get your work out! I had my two room mates help me cause it is a lot of shaking. Easy to put the ingredients together but it takes some muscles to make. The box says it takes a half an hour but I think it takes at least an hour.

before I started the shaking! really is cookies and cream

Periodically, you'll need to open the lid and scrape down the sides. The ice cream will form around the sides. I recommend you take the ice cream from the sides out and place in a container and put in the freezer. This will help the rest of the cream form into ice cream.

after about 30 minutes

I added more oreos, stirred it up a bit and continued to shake it up! You may also need to drain out some of the water and add more ice and salt.

look at all that ice cream!

I'm always amazed at the end that it actually does taste like ice cream. It's hard to believe that all you need is cream, sugar, ice, salt and a bit of shakin. It's even better than store bought ice cream, it's so creamy and nothing artificial. Yum!!

My Sunday Night Doodles

The other day I felt like doodling. Here's some owls.

On My Summer Vacation

Remember when teachers used to have you write a journal entry on what you did on your summer vacation? Well, that's how I feel writing this blog. I went home for a week and helped my mom design a new dress. I perfected the skill of making "yo-yos"! This is my real first craft blog to give authenticity to the "sweaters" part of the name.

How to make a Yo-Yo
Cut out a circle of fabric. Any size will do. I used a ring of masking tape as a stencil.
Thread a need, double strand.
With the wrong side face up, turn the edge in a quarter of a inch and start stitching the side. You should stitch it loosely close to the edge of the circle.

Keep turning the fabric in on the sides and stitch the needle so that you're stitching the extra folds in (it will fold in on itself because it's a circle)

When you've gone all the way around, pull the thread through and make it ruffle together. The yo-yo will fold into itself and be half the size that you started out with.

see the little blue piece of fabric in the middle

I suggest cutting another small piece of cloth and put it inside the yo-yo for an added bit of color. The smallest yo-yos don't need this because the fabric will tighten together in the middle but all other yo-yos will have a bit of a gap that is best to cover the inside of the yo-yo as it's the wrong side of the fabric. Then do the final closure and tack the ruffles down on the back with the leftover thread.

yes the pictures were taken on a beach towel, I was being crafty at the beach. It was my summer vacay!

Then we sewed them on her dress

Christmas in Summer Salad

This is my new favorite lunch sidedish. I got the idea from a buffet item at Whole Foods. I call it Christmas in Summer Salad!

It's really fast to make. All it is:

• orzo
• kale
• red pepper
• italian seasoning (like this)
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• salt 
• black pepper
• garlic cloves

I start by cutting the kale up in really small pieces. Then I steam the kale for a few minutes. After the kale is done, I use the same boiling water to cook the orzo. While the orzo is cooking, I dice the red pepper. I also pour some olive oil in a bowl and add a splash of balsamic vinegar. I love my Italian seasoning grinder! I use it on almost everything. I grind a generous amount in the oil. Then add some salt and grind some black pepper. Then I press one or two garlic cloves and add it to the oil. After the orzo is done, I rise it and let it sit a bit. Then I stir all the ingredients together.

I feel so British - Lemon Curd Tarts

I made lemon curd tarts! I always think of the UK when I hear "lemon curd." Maybe because the first time I remember hearing about it was from some British backpacker in Australia. She was going on and on how lemon curd is just the best with pancakes. And I think they way she was describing pancakes they were more like crepes than pancakes. Silly Brits. Anyways, I made some lovely tarts from my new book that simply called, tarts by Sarah Banbery.

I baked the tart shells blind. Then made the lemon curd. It was very easy, just butter, eggs, sugar and lemon juice. The pie crust was terrible to make. I don't recommend that recipe or I didn't add the correct amount of water. It was so hard to roll out and keep together. The little tart tins were helpful because I could just mold the crust into them. Then fill with the curd, top with fresh blueberries - delicious!

baked blind

with the curd!

Monsters and Boston Cream

Well it happened again. I was enticed into baking by another beautiful blog. This time it was pastry studio. I want a pastry studio, been thinking about taking real pastry classes so I can work in a proper kitchen again.

A new experiment for me, I followed the directions to a T, well almost. I didn't have cake flour (I know terrible, I've been baking enough to justify it). I also made my own buttermilk. I didn't zest the entire orange, probably about 2 teaspoons or so. I used regular cupcake pan and a loaf pan (will explain later why). And finally, I didn't use all the corn syrup, I used half a tablespoon maybe next time I'll use less.

always good to start with a little wine

For the recipe check out this website :pastry studio:
My vanilla filling was tasty but a bit lumpy, I don't know why. Maybe I heated the milk too much? Maybe the eggs were supposed to be at room temperature for that part too?

it was a bit messy

 When I cut out the middle of the cupcakes for the filling, I had lots of cake bits as left overs. I took my kerr jars and made a couple special boston cream parfaits for my roommies.

leftover cake, cream and chocolate in a kerr jar!

Alright I'm finally getting to the monster part. My friend, Marcos, designs fun creatures. It was his birthday so I decided to replicate one of his creatures in a mini-cake.

cake creature

I used the cake that I baked in the loaf pan, and cut it into smaller pieces. Then I used cookie decorating white and red frosting and made the mouths. I rolled out orange starbursts and cut them for the tummy piece. The gren hair is made from laughy-taffy, also nuked for 10 seconds and rolled out with a rolling pin. Then cut into the design. The eyes are just dots of icing. Do you see my inspiriation?

more creatures: http://www.marcosrc.com/

Mon Petit Amour

I actually made these a while back but it was such a long process, I didn't want to blog about it. I don't think I'll ever do these again. Though, I did get some rave reviews, so I may be tempted later on when I forget how long of a process it was. I got the idea from this beautiful blog, her pictures are too enticing. Oh and the blog is called, Use Real Butter, so you can imagine it's good. But, I had to change the recipe, as always, (sigh) to fit my reality (what I actually have in my kitchen) and my hopes and dreams (the ideas I come up with)....

The recipe was written for 8500 ft and was written for, in my opinion, real bakers who measure everything. Example: 3.25 oz of eggs. I don't weigh my eggs - just say 1,2, or 3 eggs please!

So I got out my trusty french pastry book, The Roux Brothers on Patisserie. I used their recipe, "Plain Genoese Sponge Cake" for the cake part. You can use any sponge cake recipe out there, I'm sure.

You make the cake in a large 11x17 cake pan. It will be very thin but that's great for the Petit Fours. Half the cake will be the bottom layer and the other half will be cut off and placed on top. In between you'll have a lime meringue buttercream and raspberry puree. You will also dress the cake with lime syrup. I thought about skipping this step, but I think it may be the secret to success in this recipe. The cake was very moist after 2 days in the fridge, I think due in part because of the lime syrup.

Lime Meringue Buttercream
4-5 egg whites (I actually messed this up and used 4 full eggs - the recipe calls for 4 oz of eggs whites)
1 cup of sugar
2 sticks of butter, room temperature
1 tbsp lime zest
2 tbsp lime juice
Combine egg whites and sugar in a mixing bowl. Whisk constantly over a double boiler until 140F is reached. Place on mixer with whisk and whip until stiff. Turn down whip speed to 3rd and whip until cool to the touch (this takes a while – should be cooler than your hand). Change to a normal type beater and gradually add soft butter by tablespoon pieces. Once desired consistency has been reached, add lime juice and zest.

Raspberry Puree
approx 2 cups of frozen raspberries
2 tablespoons of powdered sugar (optional)

Run frozen raspberries under hot water, let them thaw. Blend them in a cuisinart. Since they are frozen, they may be a bit tart, add some powdered sugar to taste.

Lime Syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
2/3 cup lime juice
Lime zest - if you have any lime zest left over from the buttercream add it to the syrup too.

Heat water and sugar in a pot until sugar is dissolved. Bring to boil and turn off heat. Let cool. Mix in lime juice and zest.

Note: I only used 3 limes in this recipe. 2 for juice but 3 for the zest.


Poured Fondant Icing
2.25 cups of powdered sugar
1/4 cup water
1/8 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp almond extract
drop of food coloring (optional)
Combine all in double boiler except coloring. Heat until all the sugar has melted. Remove from heat and stir in food coloring.

Assemble the Petit Fours

Once the cake has cooled, cut the cake in half, so that you have 2 pieces that are approximately 8.5x11. Brush the lime syrup on the top of the bottom layer. Add all the Raspberry Puree on top of it. Then add the Lime Meringue Buttercream. I think that I messed up when I made this recipe and I used the whole egg and not the egg whites. The lime buttercream didn't stiffen like it should have. So when I put the top layer of cake on it, lots of the cream squeezed out. If this happens to you, wrap it in parchment paper and stick it in the freezer. Once frozen, you can cut the cake in squares without all the filling running out.

Note: for the top layer of cake I put the bottom face up so I ended brushing both sides of the cake with lime syrup. It was tasty, I recommend this.

When cutting the squares, make sure they are at least an inch and a half big. I tried to go smaller but they didn't look as good as they wanted to fall apart. You need a good solid base. Once assembled, you can pour the fondant over top. This was a major pain! I didn't make enough fondant (note: you may want to double the recipe) and it was a mess. I instead served most of them with just a raspberry on top (glued on with the fondant icing). I think it tasted better too, the fondant is too sugary. Good Luck!