Cooking Show: Shrimp Francese and S'mores Ice Cream

I can't be the only one who feels like this summer flew by.  Happy Fall!

We filmed an episode of the cooking show last week, and decided to feature a couple of recipes that will help ease our transition into fall before we are surrounded by pumpkin spice EVERYTHING.

Not that pumpkin spice is a bad thing, it's just that I usually spend the entire month of September in denial...and lemon-infused Shrimp Francese over linguine and S'mores ice cream loaded with toasted marshmallows and graham crackers are high-octane fuel for denial!

My friends, Kerry and Kelly, assisted me.  We were in agreement that the following recipes are keepers!

Shrimp Francese with Spinach over Linguine

Incredibly fresh-tasting thanks to the lemony sauce.  Absolutely delicious if I do say so myself!

The camera crew and Kerry, Kelly and I devoured every last bite, leaving just a tiny bit of room for dessert.

S'mores Ice Cream

Seriously, if you have an ice cream maker and you love to make homemade ice cream, you have to give this a whirl!

It only takes two minutes to toast the marshmallows in your oven, and they are the key to this amazing concoction.  Can you tell by looking at this picture how perfect they are?  Crunchy-toasty on the outside, still soft and chewy on the inside.

Yes, we devoured every last bit of this as well!

(Click on the highlighted titles to be taken to printable recipes)

Cooking Show: Copycat Recipes!

We whipped up a few copycat recipes on our most recent episode of the cooking show.

We started with an attempt at The Cheesecake Factory's Georgia Peach. 

What's not to love about a frozen, slushy peach concoction swirled with raspberry puree?

We then moved onto Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana.

I've been making this soup for 20+ years.  It's soooo good.  It's so good that it makes me forget my aversion to sausage!  To be taken directly to the printable recipe, click here.

If you're not in the mood for soup, we've got a another recipe for you!  Do you like the Sonoma Chicken Salad at Whole Foods?   Stuff it into a half pita like we did, or serve it over a bed of fresh greens.

Click here for the printable recipe!

And finally...

We whipped up a batch of our own version of MacDonald's Shamrock Shake.

Okay, we whipped up more than one batch.  The blender was going non-stop until we ran out of ice cream.  They were a big hit!

Cooking Show: Summer Treats!

We filmed an episode of the cooking show last week, with a "Summer Treats" theme.

I thought it would be a good idea to prepare a few recipes that met the following requirements:

1. Refreshing on a hot day
2. Will not heat up your kitchen because you won't need your stove or oven.

I almost met the requirements with all of the recipes.

Raspberry Lemonade

Check.  Met requirements 1 and 2--refreshing and no cooking involved.  Click here for the printable recipe.

Ice Box Cheesecake with Berries

Refreshing, and no baking required!  Here's the printable recipe.

This brings us to our final recipe, the only recipe that didn't meet requirement number 2.

Toasted Almond Butter Toffee Crunch Ice Cream

(Printable Recipe)

You need the oven for four minutes to toast the almonds and the stove for six minutes to melt the toffee ingredients.

I suppose that you could make the almond toffee a day ahead of time so that all you would need to do on the day you make the ice cream is chop it up and add it in.

I can't promise, however, that the toffee won't disappear if you prepare it too far in advance.

In the words of Dan, Our Awesome Camera Man (best spoken with a lilting Irish brogue): "Forget about the ice cream!  We'll just eat toffee!" --Dan's proclamation when he sampled the toffee.

Fortunately, the recipe makes more toffee than you will need.  Plenty to mix into the ice cream, with enough left over for snacking.

Toasted Almond Butter Toffee Crunch Ice Cream

Naming this recipe Toasted Almond Butter Toffee Crunch Ice Cream may seem like overkill, but I wanted to make sure to describe all that is wonderful about it.

Toasted Almonds.

Butter Toffee.

Crunch!

Making your own ice cream takes a teensy bit more effort than opening up a carton or visiting your nearest ice cream parlor, but it's so worth the time and effort!  Especially when it's as yummy as this.

I'm also experimenting with my blog--I'm not going to post as many step-by-step photos.  You may have noticed that I haven't been posting as frequently as I used to!  The time I spend setting up the photos (and let's face it, I don't even know how to take a decent photo) and then incorporating them all into a blogpost could be time better spent writing more blogposts!  As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome (I appreciate all of your emails/comments)!

Today's Playlist

• "Basket Case"...Green Day
• "Don't Make Me Wait"...Locksley
• "Dead!"...My Chemical Romance
• "Chelsea Dagger"...The Fratellis
• "Hey There Delilah"...Plain White T's
• "Death Letter"...The White Stripes
• "Always Where I Need To Be"...The Kooks
• "Short Skirt/Long Jacket"...Cake

Toasted Almond Butter Toffee Crunch Ice Cream (Approx. 1 Quart)

Printable Recipe

Toffee ingredients: 

• 1 stick butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup slivered almonds

Ice Cream ingredients:

• 2 cups whole milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• pinch salt
• 4 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract

Gather your ingredients.  Along with your ice cream maker, you will also need two bowls for an ice bath and a thermometer.

You can see that I took the photo after I had made the almond toffee.  Here's a quick rundown of how to make the toffee:

Place the slivered almonds (in a single layer) onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Place the baking sheet into your unheated oven, and then set the temperature to 350 degrees.

By the time your oven reaches 350 degrees, the almonds should be just beginning to toast.  I took this photo after the almonds reached my desired temperature; you can see that they are just barely brown around the edges, which is exactly how you want them to be!

While the almonds are toasting, prepare the butter toffee.  Don't roll your eyes and tell me that you can't multitask! It only takes five minutes, and if by chance your oven reaches 350 degrees before you're done, simply remove your baking sheet from the oven while you're stirring your toffee.

To prepare the toffee:  melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  As soon as the butter is melted, stir in the brown sugar.

Stir continuously until it begins to boil.  Continue to stir for an additional 4 to 5 minutes while it boils, until it becomes sort of spongy and pulls from the side of the saucepan and sort of holds itself together.  

Here is a video of what you can expect it to look like.  After 4 minutes, the mixture was holding together and reached the spongy, pulling-away-from-the-pan stage.

(And now that I am posting this video, I am realizing how ironic it is that I am trying to streamline my step-by-step photos yet here I am actually posting a cooking video for the first time.  Even though it's only nine seconds long, leave it to me to complicate things when I'm trying to simplify.)

Remove your toffee from the heat and immediately pour it over your toasted almonds.  Allow it to cool as you prepare your ice cream.

Set up your ice bath now: you will need a large bowl, half-filled with ice cubes.  Pour water into the bowl so the ice cubes are covered.  Place a smaller bowl into the larger bowl so that it is sitting in the ice water.

Heat the whole milk in a small sauce pan over low/medium heat until it reaches 175 degrees.  Do not let it boil!  Once it reaches the desired temperature, stir in the sugar and the pinch of salt.  Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Temper the egg yolks:  Stir about 1/3 cup of the heated milk into your lightly beaten egg yolks, then stir the tempered egg yolks into the saucepan.  Return the heat to low/medium and stir continuously until the temperature reaches 160 to 175 degrees.  The mixture will thicken (thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Remove the thickened mixture from the heat and pour it into the small bowl set in the ice bath.  Stir to dissipate the heat.  When the mixture has cooled slightly, whisk in the heavy cream and the almond extract.

Refrigerate the cream mixture until completely cooled (about 1 hour).  After the mixture has cooled, freeze in your ice cream maker according to your manufacturer's directions.

While the ice cream churns, chop your toffee.

Break your large piece of toffee in half.  Did I tell you that you will have twice as much toffee as you will actually need?

No need to thank me for giving you a toffee recipe that makes enough to allow for the snacking you will do as you're chopping it to add to your ice cream.

Chop half of your prepared toffee into pieces about 1/4- to 1/2-inch in size.  You want them to be substantial enough to know that there is toffee in that ice cream, not teeny crumbs!

Add the chopped toffee into your ice cream maker during the last 30 seconds or so before it finishes churning.  Or you could stir them in manually.

When the ice cream has finished churning, you can either eat the soft ice cream immediately or transfer it into a freezer container to harden in your freezer.

Enjoy.

Peppermint Ice Cream

One of my kids (who shall remain nameless) is absolutely crazy about ice cream. Her friends are also obsessed with ice cream and it seems that they can't get together without ending up at an ice cream shop (oops, I said HER.  So now you know that Sean is not the child I am talking about).

My daughter's favorite ice cream flavor is peppermint.  Yesterday, I had time to make a batch of ice cream.  There was no doubt which flavor I would make!

Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Happy 4th of July!

This card was sent to me by my blogging friend, Pam, of Virginia Retro.  Pam's collection of vintage tablecloths leaves me speechless:

Do you find yourself at a loss for words at the sight of these endless stacks?  What if I told you that every time she showcases one of her tablecloths, she coordinates the table setting to match?  I can't imagine how organized you have to be to have so many different sets of plates, glasses, napkins, candlesticks, serving pieces, silverware....my head is spinning just thinking about cataloging it all!

My head was spinning last week when I made this salted caramel ice cream.  I hadn't made ice cream yet this summer, I had a free afternoon, I decided to get a little fancier than usual.

I debated whether or not I should blog about this ice cream.  Not because it wasn't good.  It was incredible.  Unbelievable.  Really, REALLY good.

But it took an incredible amount of time.  In a nutshell, the ice cream I've made in the past falls into these categories:

1.  Throw all of the ingredients into the ice cream maker, let it mix for 20 to 30 minutes.  Eat it while it's soft, or freeze for later. (Easiest and quickest)

2.  Make an egg-based ice cream, which requires heating the ingredients, tempering eggs, simmering to thicken, refrigerating for a few hours to cool it before it can be mixed in the (frozen) ice cream maker for 20 to 30 minutes, freezing it to firm up. (Easy yet time consuming)

3.  Making an egg-based ice cream (see above), which also requires preparing a recipe in advance for needed ingredients (such as salted caramel) that are part of the ice cream recipe.  (Still easy, yet even more time consuming)

Care to guess which one (1, 2 or 3) this salted caramel ice cream is?

Hint: it wasn't ready to eat until the next day.

If you picked #3, pat yourself on the back.

During the cooking process (particularly when I was stirring the cream into the hot caramel and the caramel suddenly seized), I had many thoughts along the lines of "this better be worth it," "is it really worth all of this trouble?" and "I'm never making this again."

And then when I took the first bite the only thought I had was, "Wow, this was SO worth the time that I put into it!"

I wrote everything down, so that I could duplicate the recipe at some point in the future when I have a free day.  Or two.  One day to make ice cream, one day to recover.

Then I decided that I do need to blog about it, if only to remind myself how time-consuming and frustrating it was to make.

And to remind myself that it was the best ice cream that I've ever made.

I even gave Clyde a spoonful.  He ate it quite enthusiastically.  

I wouldn't read too much into that, however; he also eats ice cubes with the same enthusiasm.

Cooking Show #4!

I've been trying to put the finishing touches on my holiday decorating...

I'm really slow this year.

I swear I used to be able to get everything done in one day.

It's been three weeks since I started decorating and I haven't even wrapped one gift yet!

We filmed an episode of the cooking show last week.  What did we prepare?

(Click on any of the recipe titles to go to the post of the recipe.)

Raspberry Brownies

Yum.

Chocolate-Raspberry Truffles

It takes a few tries to get the hang of dipping these, but I promise you that they taste fabulous no matter how they look.

Champagne Sundaes with Raspberries

Homemade Lemon Ice Cream

Lately, I've been making a lot of meals that I've already blogged about.  Things that are easy to prepare in the summer heat.

Like BLT/Chicken salad .

And Barbecued Sirloin Tips and Pasta Salad .

But there have been a few minor side trips, one of which entailed pulling out the ice cream maker I haven't used in almost two years.

Hello, old friend!!

I don't know why I didn't make ice cream last summer.  I guess I was just lazy.  Because this is probably the easiest-to-use ice cream maker in existence. 

I speak from experience.  I used to have a much larger ice cream maker, that had lots of complicated parts, and then when I finally figured out how to put the thing together, operating it required lots of salt and ice cubes.  As in, surround the churning tub with layers of salt and ice cubes, and be sure to keep an eye on it because the ice will melt and you will have to add more.  It was a mess.  Clean up was not fun.

I used it quite a bit when my kids were younger and making ice cream with them was a "fun thing to do."  Moms of young children are always looking for "fun things to do" that take up lots of what seemed like endless free time.

And then the kids got older and not only was there a lot less free time, but using and cleaning the inconvenient ice cream maker was no longer fun!  At least not in our house.

This ice cream maker does not require salt or ice cubes.  There are only four parts to it: the motorized bottom, the tub, the paddle and the cover.  Well, I guess there's five if you count the extra tub that it came with.

All you do is keep one tub in the freezer at all times so that the magical filling that is sealed inside is frozen and ready to go on a moment's notice. 

The tub I used today has been sitting in my freezer (my basement freezer, where I store all the overflow that doesn't fit in my kitchen freezer) for two years.  It was beyond ready.

I don't have a playlist for you today, because the ice cream machine is so loud that after I combined the ingredients, poured them in and turned the machine on, all the music was drowned out.  Okay, I did listen to Weezer's "Buddy Holly" while I prepped the lemon and mixed it into the other three ingredients.  So consider this recipe a one-song-on-the-playlist kind of recipe.