Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

To complement our breakfast pizza / flatbread pizza extravaganza, I made some dark chocolate ice cream (also because I'm obsessed with my ice cream maker). This recipe was from my new page-turner, Ice Cream: 52 Easy Recipes For Year-Round Frozen Treats by Sally Sampson.

whisking the cream!

We don't have a mesh strainer, so, "creative" me decided to use our sifter. The mesh strainer is on my to buy list.

I may or may not have licked the bowl. For breakfast.

And my lovely ice cream maker is doing all the work!

Ahhhh! Yummmy!

Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate

3 large egg yolks, at room temperature

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch kosher salt

I'm a fan!! Is there a "like" button for this?

Pizza for dinner!

Becca and I decided to make dinner together one night, since she's ALWAYS eating out due to work. She was craving bacon and cheese, and I like bacon and cheese....so we found a recipe for breakfast pizza and flatbread pizza.

Eggs! Bacon! FOR DINNER!

The flatbread pizza!!
And...the masterpiece...breakfast pizza...

Becca founds this recipe on Smitten Kitchen. We made some modifications...i.e. we left out the parsley and the shallots, and the crust we bought pre-made at Whole Foods. Also, we only put 2 eggs on the pizza instead of 3.

The Flatbread recipe came from here. Here, the major modification we made was instead of goat cheese, we used this cheese that looked like halumi cheese, but was called "bread cheese" or something like that. Now, this was an AMAZING modification. The cheese melted really well. It was YUM TOWN. We threw some artichokes on top as well. I'm not a major artichokey fan, and it was pretty good.

Minor note: we had the oven at 425 degrees for the flatbread pizza. It NEEDS to be at 500 degrees or else the egg won't cook properly. And then you have to cook it for longer. And then the cheese looks weird. But it was still mmmm mmmm good.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Lavina was hosting a dinner with some friends, and asked me to bring dessert. Naturally – it’s my favorite thing to make/eat/lick the bowl. I was thinking of making cupcakes…but cupcakes are so 2009.

I decided to make vanilla ice cream with bittersweet chocolate sauce. The recipe is from Recipe of the Week Ice Cream: 52 Easy Recipes for Year-Round Frozen Treats by Sally Sampson. Yes, I bought a cook book that has an ice cream recipe for every week of the year. Something wrong with that?

Ice Cream Recipe:

1 ½ cups whole milk

½ cup white sugar

One 4-inch vanilla bean, split and and scraped

1 ½ cups heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch kosher salt

Chocolate Sauce:

¼ unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup heavy cream

1 to 2 tablespoons white sugar (I opted for 2 of course)

Tahitian Vanilla Bean. Once you go pure vanilla bean, you can't go back (to extract). While it smells delicious, it tastes weird by itself (yes, I tried it, are you really that surprised?)

The contestants:

Saucy....

Remember that Bryer's commercial with the 6 year olds reading the ingredients in the ice cream? This reminded me of that for some reason.

I could add more pictures of my red ice cream maker, but figure you can also refer to prior posts.

Despite the fact that no eggs were in the recipe, this ice cream turned out airy, fluffy and DELICIOUS. For some reason, the sauce was not as thick as I had expected, but it was still yummy. Well, what isn’t tasty when there is a cup of heavy cream in it?

Note: If you are going to lick your ice cream maker bowl clean, make sure it is not frozen, or else your tongue will get stuck to it.

Mac n Cheese

Lavina sent me an article today about the best Mac N Cheese in New York. Naturally this set off a food craving. I considered going to s'mac...but then thought, "maybe I can make it 'healthier' if I do it at home!" since I have been eating like crap all week.

Then I scoured recipes in my last hour at the office...trying to find something creamy and cheesey and ooey and gooey. My weakness...well ONE of my weaknesses is ooey gooey stringy yummy cheese. Like pizza...or mac n cheese! Some days I crave chicken parm sandwiches from toasties. Other days I crave chipotle carnitas tacos. Today was a mac n cheese day.

I finally settled on a recipe that seemed easy enough. It also seemed as though I could avoid the mishap that occurred last time I made mac n cheese (um...let's just say the smoke alarm went off...). Ta-Da!

When I am first trying recipes out, I follow them to the T. Woo whole-wheat elbow macaroni!

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Breadcrumbs with sage...I recently discovered that sage "fried" in melted butter is amazing. A.MAH.ZING. (especially with scallops, but that is a story for another day)

I almost feel as I was on Giada at Home and I had neutral painted nails with the California sun shining in the background (mas-car-pon-aye). God.Bless.Mascarpone. Creamy mascarpone. So versatile too. I can make a savory pasta sauce...or a sweet dessert (mascarpone with berries!). Yeah yeah, it's not the 'healthiest' thing out there, I'm sure it causes cancer, blah blah blah...but it is.so.decadent.

See that whole foods parmesan cheese in the back? First of all, it smelled AMAZING. And so fresh. YUM YUM YUM. I might eat the rest of it straight out of the container. When I was little, my mom used to make Halibut with that cheese and my sister would steal some and munch away. Now, our puppy steals cheese that falls on the floor. How time flies.

Mascarpone + Fresh Parmesan = Heaven. HEAVEN. My heart is racing. (or maybe my arteries are clogged. I'm not sure)

Ooey gooey hommity nommity. If this doesn't inspire you to make mac n cheese tonight then, well, you are dead to me. DEAD.

This was the best mac n cheese recipe I've tried so far. It was just the right amount of salty, and the cheese was very creamy. Mascarpone saved the day. Definitely keeping this one around. Maybe one day I'll throw bacon or proscuitto into it!

Champy Sorbey!

For my first attempt in ice-cream making, I made champagne sorbet. The recipe was adapted from this.

My pretty yellow lemons!

The mixture before I added champagne:

I had a bag of clementines as well, so, I added one of those in too! The more the merrier!

When life gives you lemons, you make...champagne sorbet?

Alternatively, if life gives you lemons, you just drink champagne? Raise your hand if you LOVE the sound of a bottle o bubb popping!

My shiny red ice cream maker! I think I would like it more if it were fuchsia and glittery, and maybe had some feathers on it...but that's a project for another day.

Voila!

The finished product was just a tad bit slushy. Almost like a Mimosa Slushie (hmm...next idea...)

Lesson learned: I will add champagne (or any type of alcohol) towards the END of the freezing process, and not at the beginning. This obviously impedes freezing.

Otherwise, the flavor of this recipe was amazing! I had some 4 days later and it was as champagne-y as EVER!

Yet another food blog...this time it is MINE all MINE

Apart from everything and anything pink, the other hobbies I have include eating, food, cooking, food, talking about food, thinking about food, dreaming about food (especially when I'm on the treadmill) and photography.

I decided to start this blog to capture my kitchen adventures (or mishaps as is often the case) all while making the most of my SLR. Because who doesn't love pictures of scintillating food?