Peach Ice-Cream

What do you do in hot weather, with a punnet of peaches that need to be eaten right now? A whole punnet being too many to eat, I made peach ice cream.
The recipe starts from my trusty cornstarch base. I usually make it with cream, but this time it was just milk (as I didn't have any cream in the fridge). Made the base a bit thicker than usual (slightly higher proportion of cornstarch to liquid), to allow for the fact that the peaches would thin it again slightly. It wasn't quite frozen when we had some, but I think the texture will turn out somewhere between ice-cream and sorbet. I don't think it was peachy enough, but Duncan said it was fine. If I try this again, I'll possibly add another peach, and maybe a few raspberries.

Peach Ice-Cream
300ml + 50ml milk
1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 tbsp cornflour
1 tsp vanilla
Dash lime juice
2 peaches, peeled and pureed
1 peach, peeled and chopped small

Put the 300ml milk and sugar in a saucepan. Heat gently until it begins to steam.
Meanwhile, mix the cornstarch with the remaining 50 ml milk.
Once the mixture in the pan is steaming, add the milk/cornflour mixture.
Cook, stirring, until it starts to thicken.
Reduce heat to low and stir for about 5 minutes until thick.
Stir in vanilla.
Remove from the heat (I pour into a jug, for easier handling later) and leave to cool slightly.
Add the lime juice to the peach puree, then add this to the base. Mix thoroughly, then add the chopped peaches.
From here, follow your preferred freezing method - I transfer to my ice-cream maker, churn until mostly frozen, then transfer to a freezer box and freeze until set.

Three Chimneys: Baked Stuffed Apples

Well, it's December so I start thinking about Christmas. This recipe needed mincemeat, so I bought a jar and made this and a batch of mince pies. Both were delicious. The recipe wanted the apples to be baked with sherry. Didn't have any, so I used dark rum instead.

Three Chimneys: The Famous Hot Marmalade Pudding

Had some home-made bread left over, and a jar of my dad's marmalade in the fridge. So hot marmalade pudding happened. Unfortunately, I used a too-big bowl to steam it in, so it was lopsided when I turned it out, but it still tasted wonderful. I'll be making this again, with my own marmalade (if that turns out!).

Three Chimneys: Pears Poached in Green Ginger Wine

Served with a hot chocolate sauce. Required the purchase of a bottle of green ginger wine. After poaching and eating the pears, I wondered what to do with the leftover liquid. Put it back in the pan and simmered it down until very syrupy, then bottled it. Makes a good hot drink, diluted with some hot water.

Three Chimneys: Autumn Pudding

This didn't quite work out. I think there were a number of reasons
- I didn't use enough syrup in the pudding
- The bread was thick sliced
- There was too much bread for the amount of fruit I could fit in the ramekins I used

Still, it tasted good. I'll have to try these again.

Three Chimneys: Plums in Spiced Port Wine

Back to desserts this week, and something very simple - poached fruit. First prepare the poaching liquid. In this case, some ruby port, a little sugar, and some spices. Quite an interesting combination: cinnamon stick, bay leaf, cloves, juniper berries and cardamom. Bring to the boil, add halved plums and simmer until the plums are soft.
The plums sounded good, but they really need to go with something. One of the suggestions in the book was to serve with cinnamon ice cream. Well, if cinnamon would be good, how about adding chocolate and making a cinnamon chocolate ice-cream? So, out with my basic ice-cream recipe, and start playing.
The basic recipe is one I came across last year - it's the one I also used here. The good thing about this one is that it only needs a few ingredients, and doesn't involve making a custard using any eggs - so no fear of scrambling anything.
So, when heating the milk and cream at the start, I added a cinnamon stick to try to get some of that flavour infused in. I also added some very finely chopped chocolate which I wanted to melt in. When mixing up the cornstarch with the rest of the milk, I also added a tablespoon or so of cocoa powder. I didn't add the vanilla, thinking that it would either not go with or overpower the cinnamon. Once the mixture had thickened, I added a tablespoon or so of dark rum, partly for flavouring and partly because I'm sure I read somewhere that adding alcohol to ice-cream stops it getting too rock-hard in the freezer.
Well, I don't think I added enough alcohol to my mix, because the ice-cream did get very firm. But how did it taste? Not quite enough of all the flavours, but still very nice. And it went very well with the plums.

Three Chimneys: Whisky and Lemon Syllabub

I've never made syllabub. My mum makes it at Christmas, and I usually have at least part of one (no matter what other desserts there are). She makes the more classic (I think) one, using sweet white wine. So I was looking forward to trying this.
It's actually a pretty simple thing to make: another whisk-it-all-together dish. What I wasn't expecting was how quickly things would happen. Double cream (not the thick.extra thick stuff, which you wouldn't use for this) starts out fairly runny. But as soon as I added the whisky and lemon juice, it started to thicken. I didn't even have to use my whisk for this - it came together quite nicely just whipping with a fork.
So, how was it? I wouldn't want to eat a large amount of this on its own. But very nice combined with the strawberries, and I can see it coming out again.

Three Chimneys: Gooseberry Meringue Tart

Think lemon meringue pie, but green. Crumbly pastry underneath, thinly golden crised meringue on top, soft gooseberry curd mixing into just cooked meringue in the middle.
This was the second attempt at making and using a sweet shortcrust pastry, and while it worked out, I'm still not that happy with it. More practice needed, I think. It's a shame gooseberries have such a short season.

Three Chimneys: Groset Fool

Back to desserts for this one, and something nice and simple after last week's kitchen panic (although it did taste good). Groset is just a Scots dialect word for gooseberry, so this week I was making gooseberry fool. Stew some gooseberries with a little sugar and elderflower cordial until soft. Purée them, then pass through a sieve. Whip cream, with a little more elderflower cordial, until stiff-ish. Fold in gooseberry puree to taste. Spoon into glasses. I had some puree left over, so I layered it with the fool in the glasses.

Three Chimneys: Cranachan

Left it until quite late to decide what I was going to make this week. In the end, I went for one of the simplest things possible: cranachan. How simple? Toast some oatmeal and leave to cool. Take double cream. Add whisky and honey. Whisk until as firm as you want it. Fold in most of the oatmeal. Pile into glasses with raspberries. Sprinkle remaining oatmeal on top.
The one major ingredient purchase this required for me? Whisky. The local supermarket has a limited selection. I think I took quite a while to make my decision. Yes, it has the one that really should be used for this (and the other whisky-using recipes in the book) - Talisker. But it's expensive (well, relatively). Can I justify buying it? There's half bottles there of other whiskies that are probably just as good. Yes, but they're not Skye whiskies. And back and forth I went. Yes, I did buy the Talisker. How could I not?

Three Chimneys: Rhubarb Crumble Tart

I thought I'd start with a Sunday dessert that didn't look too daunting, the Rhubarb Crumble Tart. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You start off with a sweet shortcrust pastry case, fill it with some cooked rhubarb, cover it with crumble topping, and bake.
Right. Portion sizes? There's only two of us. If I make the full tart, we're going to be eating it for ages. So I'll make two small ones.
First step in the recipe: line the tart time with sweet shortcrust pastry and bake blind. Ok....sweet shortcrust pastry? Don't want to buy it. No recipe for it in this book. So turn to the bookshelf, and come up with a recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini. Scale it down appropriately, and it's just what I need.
While the lined tart tins are chilling before their first baking, do the rhubarb. Freshly pulled, from the crowns in the back garden. Well they were here anyway, so i may as well use them. The rhubarb is sliced and baked with some orange juice, light brown sugar, and a couple of pieces of ginger. I'm a bit worried that there's too much sugar going in, but follow the recipe anyway.
With the rhubarb out of the oven, the tart cases go in. While these are baking, I make the crumble topping. I don't think my butter is as chilled as it should be, or else my hands are quite warm, but things don't quite rub together to the texture of sand as they should - the butter gets very sift and sticks together in some large bits, with some smaller sandy bits. So I go ahead and add the sugar, nuts and oats in, and rub it all together as best I can. It looks a bit more like very fine gravel than coarse sand, but I think it'll do the job. It goes back in the fridge until I'm ready for it.
The tart cases have come out of the oven and been left to cool for a bit before final assembly. A bit of the crumble topping gets sprinkled over the bases, just enough to cover them. Next, the rhubarb is divided between the cases. Finally, the rhubarb is covered with more of the crumble topping. Then it's back into the oven for a final baking.
The verdict? A success. I needn't have worried about the amount of sugar in the rhubarb, it wasn't too sweet (but it wasn't quite as sharp as I sometimes like it). The pastry worked well, and I'll be using that crumble topping again.

Lemon Ice Cream & Blueberry Sauce

You know those kitchen gadgets that you get, thinking you'll use but which end up just taking up space? I've had two of those. The bread maker, which did get used a few times but ended up acting as a shelf, got passed on to Duncan's mum. Who uses it a lot. The other gadget is, of course, an ice-cream maker. This was given to me by my brother for Christmas a year or so ago. I made one batch of ice cream from the recipes that came with it, then the bowl got put into storage in the freezer, the motor went into a cupboard, and I never used it again.

Well, until now. I don't remember which blog I got the link from, but this recipe for Cornstarch Ice Cream from the New York Times seemed like a good reason to get the machine out.

I pretty much followed the basic recipe, making the honey-jam variation, but using lemon curd in place of the jam. To be honest, this was so good that I would have been quite happy to pour the hot custard straight into a bowl and eat it. But I had to make do with sharing the scraping of the pan and jug with Duncan, after the bulk of it had gone into the machine to freeze.

The machine makes a very soft ice-cream, so one it had done its work, the ice-cream was transferred to a tub and into the freezer to firm up some more. And I started trying to think of what to put with it. I had some blueberries left in the fridge (from last week's non-blogged blueberry muffins), so made a warm blueberry sauce to spoon over.

And yes, I do have a number of other variations of this recipe I'd like to try. But maybe I should finish the tub of this that's still in the freezer first.

Recipes:

Lemon Ice Cream
1 carton double cream (284ml size) made up to 475ml with whole milk
Pinch salt
60g caster sugar
60ml honey
100ml whole milk
3 tablespoons cornflour/cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup (80ml, I didn't weigh it) lemon curd

Mix cream/milk mixture, salt, sugar and honey in a pan. Heat until it begins to steam.
Meanwhile, mix remaining milk with the cornflour until smooth.
Once the mixture in the pan is steaming, add the milk/cornflour mixture.
Cook, stirring, until it starts to thicken.
reduce heat to low and stir for about 5 minutes until thick.
Stir in vanilla.
Remove from heat and leave to cool slightly. When still slightly warm, stir in lemon curd.
When cold, transfer to an ice-cream machine and follow manufacturer's instructions.


Blueberry Sauce
100g blueberries
5g caster sugar
2 teaspoons water

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Cover and cook over a low heat until the blueberries have burst and you have a thick sauce.

Rhubarb Jelly

No baking this week. There's only room for a certain amount of 'junk food', and we've still got two chocolate eggs to get through. There's also some of the last two batches of cookies (the banana oatmeal raisin and carrot cake ones) in the freezer. for reference, both seem to freeze fairly well. Defrost for an hour or so at room temperature. They may benefit from a short time in a lowish oven, but I haven't tried that.
So, I didn't bake, but I still wanted to make something. So what should I do instead? Our garden contains three clumps of rhubarb. Two are pretty small, but the third is producing quite a lot. So obviously something with that. Some kind of dessert, but something fairly light. I still have some gelatine in my cupboard from the first time I ever tried to use it. That attempt was a success, so why not try again? Rhubarb jelly it was. I went looking for recipes as a starting point, and settled on this one from BBC Good Food. I left out the alcohol, as I don't have any, and reduced the amount of sugar. I have a bottle of rosehip syrup in the cupboard, and thought that might go quite well, so a teaspoon of that made its way in. I don't think it really came through in the finished jelly, but I'd have to make another batch without it in order to find out. Which I just might do.

Recipe (makes 2):
250 grams rhubarb, sliced
200 millilitres water
35 grams caster sugar (40g if not using the syrup)
1 teaspoon rosehip syrup (optional)
2 sheets leaf gelatin (enough to set 300ml liquid)

Soak gelatine in water while rhubarb is cooking.
Put rhubarb, sugar and water in a pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. The rhubarb should completely disintegrate.
Remove from the heat.
Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into a jug, gently pressing on the solids to extract most of the juice. You can either discard the solids left in the sieve, or put a couple of teaspoonfuls into the bottom of the jelly glasses and discard the rest. Taste and see.
Pour the liquid back into the pan. Add the rosehip syrup and the gelatine to the pan and stir until the gelatine is fully dissolved.
Pour the jelly into glasses and chill until set.

Choca Mocha Mousse

Another dessert recipe this week, from the same magazine as the last one (OK, it's the Weight Watchers magazine). Yes, I made a few changes to it - artificial sweeteners are one of the things I absolutely will not use, and this recipe called for them. So of course I replaced that ingredient with good old sugar.
One of the other things used in this recipe is something I've never used before, so I was a little worried about it - gelatine. For some reason, I have the idea that it's a tricky thing to work with, and if you don't get it exactly right things are going to turn out inedible. Well, I followed the instructions and things worked out just fine. In fact, it looked just like the picture. This was reassuring - when I was pouring the mousse into the glasses, it was quite worrying to see that some of it was nicely foamy, but that there was a good quantity of liquid too. Pouring the liquid in, it settled to the bottom, with the 'foam' sitting on top. I really didn't think it was going to set, but it did, in two distinct and complementary layers - a denser mousse on the bottom, with a lighter one on the top. Very nice, and one to make again. I'm tempted to try variations, but there's that fear of it all going so wrong...

Recipe:
3 grams leaf gelatin (2 sheets)
40 grams dark chocolate (I use Green & Black's)
75 millilitres strong black coffee
25 millilitres skim milk
2 egg whites
2 teaspoons caster sugar

Cut the gelatine into strips and soak in cold water for 10 minutes to soften.
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
In a small pan, heat together the coffee and milk. Do not allow to boil.
Squeeze the excess water from the gelatine. Add to the hot coffee and stir to dissolve.
Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add the sugar and whisk to combine.
Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate.
Drizzle the coffee into the mixture, and fold in gently, keeping as much volume as possible.
Divide between two 150ml glasses or ramekins.
Cover and chill for about 2 hours until set.

Rhubarb & Custard

I was supposed to be too busy with work this weekend to do much baking. Luckily, two weeks ago I started a small experiment for just this kind of situation. When I made the last batch of chocolate chip cookies, I froze half of them unbaked. So today, it was time to see how they would bake.
Rather than waste the whole batch, I thought it best to try just a few. The unfrozen batch were originally baked at 175C, but with these being frozen, I figured a lower temperature might be better - to allow the dough to thaw all the way through before the outside baked. So the oven was preheated to 160C, and the cookies went in for a few minutes longer than they would have done unfrozen - 15 minutes rather than the original 12. The result? Well, they didn't spread as much as the unfrozen batch, but I still ended up with 4 perfectly yummy cookies. With another 5 still in the freezer for later.
What's this got to do with Rhubarb & Custard? Well nothing much, except that while I knew I wouldn't have time for actual baking today, I didn't want to do absolutely nothing. In a magazine, I'd seen a recipe for a baked custard. Since it didn't look like it would take too long, I though I'd try it. And with some stewed rhubarb (with just enough sugar to sweeten it, but not so much that it takes away all the sharpness), it was exactly the comforting dessert I needed. I'm pretty sure I'll be making this again. It seems like it would lend itself to variation too - different flavourings in the custard, maybe something baked into the custard. Or even a simple brulee topping.

Recipe:
200 millilitres skim milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 160C
Put the milk in a pan and heat gently until fairly warm. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg, sugar and vanilla extract in a jug.
When the milk is warm, pour it slowly into the mixture in the jug, whisking as you do so.
Put 2 150ml capacity ramekins into a roasting tray or other deep sided baking tray. Divide the custard between the two ramekins.
Pour hot water into the tray, to come about half way up the side of the ramekins.
Put the tray into the oven and bake for 40 minutes, until the custard is set but still with a slight wobble.
Serve with some stewed rhubarb on top.