Mascarpone Ice Cream with Strawberry Balsamic Compote

How is it already July?

I somehow ended up with a pound of mascarpone in my refrigerator, and was trying to think of ways to eat it. Pasta? No. Some kind of topping for bruschetta? No. Ice cream? Well, we are in the peak of summer, so, ice cream it is!

Chocolate Ice Cream

Yay, today we have my first ice cream for Summer 2014!

Panna Cotta

Mai, Paul, and I were recreating the Balthazar Steak Au Poivre at their home, and I was on dessert duty. We wanted something light and easy to make with the ingredients we already had sitting around. Mai found this panna cotta recipe and we decided to give it a try. So easy! In fact, it makes me wonder what restaurants are doing wrong - I can't really remember when I have been impressed with panna cotta I've had for dessert when dining out. I think this recipe is a good choice for summer dinner parties because of the minimal prep time or fancy ingredients required. Bon appetit! 

Panna Cotta, recipe from David Lebovitz

Serves 4 

Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean pod
• 1 packet of powdered gelatin
• 3 tbsp. cold water 

In a saucepan, heat the heavy cream and the sugar over medium heat. Once the sugar has dissolved, remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract. If you are using a vanilla bean, scrape the pod into the mixture, along with the bean, and let it infuse for about 30 minutes in the fridge. Remove the pod and rewarm the mixture before continuing with the recipe. 

Lightly oil four ramekins with something like butter or pam. 

In a medium sized bowl, add the water and sprinkle in the gelatin and let it sit for 5-10 minutes. Add in the warm heavy cream mixture and stir until the gelatin is fully dissolved. 

Pour the mixture into the prepared ramekins. Place in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours to chill and solidify. We ate our panna cotta straight out of the ramekin, but to serve, you can run a knife along the outside of the ramekin and flip it onto a plate. Serve by itself or with a berry compote. 

Pecan Pie

My favorite part of holiday dinners are the dessert (no surprise there). My favorite pies are pumpkin pie and pecan pie. Last Thanksgiving, we strayed from these classics to make a delicious chocolate pie. This year, however, I will be celebrating Turkey day in Paris avec ma petite soeur, so we will be knee deep in macarons and croissants. Since I won't be having a brussel sprout, sweet potato, turkey feast, I will leave you with a delish pecan pie recipe. Maybe I'll make some for the plane ride over.

Kulfi

Happy Diwali! What better way to celebrate than with some kulfi!

Ricotta Ice Cream

One day, Mai & Paul visisted Di Palo's and found out that you can buy three pounds of ricotta for $12. Not the gross, tasteless kind of ricotta at Gristede's, but REAL ricotta.

Naturally, we decided to host a Ricotta Fest dinner party. By the time we got our schedules organized, it was already June. June means ICE CREAM! Okay, that's a lie. Every month means ICE CREAM, but now that it is just starting to be summer in NYC, we needed reason to celebrate.

In addition to the ice cream, we made several other dishes. Mai and Paul made meatballs with ricotta, ravioli,  crostini, and chicken marsala. Gretchen made pasta with carbonara and a delicious ricotta cheesecake with a strawberry rhubarb topping.

At Di Palo's, we picked up three of these canisters.

Back at home, we opened up our canisters. As you can see below, the ricotta was in a metal-ish canister. We tried to think of eco-friendly uses for them. I suggested that they would be great for milkshakes. Until I realized that there were holes at the bottom and along the sides. 

I also picked up some prosciuotto for us to nibble on while we were prepping.

Mai & Paul had picked up some artisinal honey at a farmer's market. We decided to whip out some cheese & crackers and top with honey. The cheese (pictured below) looks like blue cheese, but it isn't. We don't know the name of this mystery cheese, but you can find it at Fairways. This was quite possibly the best snack idea ever! I've never had honey in this form before, usually mine comes from a squeeze bottle. The honeycomb is on the bottom and you have to scrape the honey off the top. 

We devoured two boxes of crackers and the entire wedge of cheese. What? We got hungry cooking in the hot kitchen...

Mai made some homemade pasta to accompany her ricotta meatballs...

As if we did not purchase enough ricotta cheese, we purchased a pound of parmesan cheese as well. Most of it is in the photo below.

{The finished meatball product}

{Mai prepping the ricotta ravioli} 

{Delicious crostini}

{Chicken Marsala}

{Bacon wrapped dates stuffed with ricotta}

{One of our guests, Nam, made a wonderful green papaya salad}

{Ricotta cheesecake!}

Both of the ricotta ice creams were easy to whip up (strawberry basil to follow this in another post). 

I've never made ice cream with a ricotta base, and this was the perfect time to experiment. I searched far and wide for a recipe and finally picked the one below.

Don't be afraid of this recipe - there is no custard base - so you don't have to worry about scrambled eggs instead of a perfectly fluffy, creamy ice cream. As in, this may be my all time favorite. Huge disclaimer: Apparently, this ice cream loses texture after an overnight freeze. You should probably finish the whole thing the night you make it (and that really shouldn't be that hard). I'm not sure why the texture goes from creamy to chalky, maybe because I didn't strain the ricotta.

Also note: as the weather gets hotter, don't try to churn ice cream in a sauna-ish temperature room. Your precious ice cream mixture will not freeze properly in the canister, and will be milkshake like afterwards. This is what happened to poor little strawberry basil. 

Basically all I did was blend all the ingredients together in Mai & Paul's vitamix!

Below is the only photo I got of the ice cream.  I was so busy eating and mingling!

Ricotta Ice Cream, recipe adapted from food52

Makes 1 Quart

Ingredients

• 1 2/3 cup quality ricotta 
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Pistachios (optional)

Blend everything until the salt in a blender until smooth. Then add the heavy cream and blend until just combined. 

Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker - I let mine run for about 40 minutes. I also tried really, really hard not to lick the bowl. During the last 5 minutes of the churning process, you can add your mix in's if you desire (i.e.pistachios, etc). 

Transfer your ice cream to an air tight container and let it harden ("bloom" ?) in the freezer for a few hours. I made mine in the afternoon - around 3pm - and served it around 8:30pm - and it was perfection! You could grill up some peaches, drizzle them with honey, and serve with the ice cream as well. Peaches aren't quite in season yet, or else I would have done that as well. 

Hot Chocolate and S'mores

While waiting for my sister to come home, I was flipping through our Joy the Baker cookbook. After drooling, ooh-ing and aah-ing over all the photos, I decided I wanted to make hot chocolate from the Joy the Baker cookbook once she got back, while we watched our DVR'ed episodes of Gossip Girl. Well, Joy the Baker, thanks for making such a delish hot chocolate recipe, I can never go back to Swiss Miss!

Salted Caramel Pie

This one is a winner!

For Dessert Fest 2012, I was in a salted caramel mood. I wanted to make a pie, and after browsing around a bit, I found this salted caramel pie. Ice cream, check. Cookies, check. Pie? Next up!

Almond Date Truffles

It is that time of year again! Time for Dessert Fest 2012! 6 chefs, 5 types of ice cream, 17 types of dessert. So much sugar. This is quite possibly my favorite event of the year!

Here are some highlights from this year:

{Dessert Fest Eve, baking away}

{Taste testing ice cream} 

{Assembling pumpkin trifle}

{Paul making some caramelized bacon}

The Dessert Fest team has decided to make this year's fete a fundraiser for Hurricane Sandy relief, given that our community is still being impacted by the storm. We are supporting the Salvation Army with its relief efforts, and if you would like to make a difference, please click on our giving page here.

My Kind of Brownie

I have been reading about something named a "Slutty Brownie" for quite some time, but haven't really felt the need to bake it. Sanjay, I know what you are thinking already.

I started reading a fun blog named The Londoner, and she had a post about said brownies. Since this is my last weekend in New York until Halloween (weddings, engagement parties, Oktoberfest, a few west coast visits, etc etc), I decided to bake these indulgent treats and lounge on my couch all night.

This One Is For You, Ariel

Last summer, I had an ingenious idea to throw a Princess Ice Cream Party. Only, I ended up traveling for most of the summer, so I wasn't really around to throw said party. Anyways, one of the ice cream flavors I was going to make was salted caramel, for Ariel (get it: salt = ocean = mermaids). Other flavors included earl grey for Kate (now The Duchess, but forever a Princess in my mind), green apple sorbet for Snow White, Pumpkin for Cinderella, and Lavender for Belle.

Fast forward to last week, when I needed to take some pictures for my photo project. I also wanted to try some Salted Caramel Ice Cream, because I was in the mood for something different.

So, Ariel, this one is for you and, I guess, Prince Eric, my favorite Disney prince. Try and share it.

Guest Blog Post: Mango Cheesecake

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Today, we have one of my oldest friends, Avani, guest blogging for us. Avani and I have been friends since we were approximately 10 or 11. We met at a Diwali dance practice and have basically been inseparable since. No really. We could write volumes of books about our stupid inside jokes or silly things we laugh about and we are often connected through various mediums throughout the course of every day (gchat. email. text message. scramble with friends. phone. fb wall). Our favorite story to share with others is how, when we were 22 and visiting friends in NYC, Avani got a slice of pizza at that place across from Port Authority. I ate 95% of it, yet she was the one who ended up with food poisoning the next day. We also both share a deep love for the color pink, and the Middleton sisters. These days, Avani is a journalist based out of Seattle, and loves eating food as much as I do. 

Welcome, Avani! 

Sidenote: I have had this cheesecake before, when I was little and Avani's mom would invite us over, and I probably tried to ("stealthily") consume 100 pieces then. I'd still do the same now. 

Heart Doughnuts!

This is a very belated post, oops! My sister and I wanted to try our hand at making doughnuts again. Last year, they came out okay. Nothing special. We wanted to try again, since when else can we have a boiling hot pot of oil on our stove top other than when we are at home? So we decided to add Apple Cider Doughnuts to our Christmas morning breakfast menu.

Frying things without a deep fryer is scary. I hate heating that much oil to such a high temperature, and, it takes forever to heat said oil. Maybe I will only make cake doughnuts in the future.

The doughnuts turned out to be a perfect holiday blend of cinnamon, sugar, and hearts, of course.

Cardamom Buttermilk Pie

For our Holiday Dessert Party, I wanted to make a pie, but I knew most of our guests would be pie-d out from Thanksgiving, so I nixed pumpkin and pecan pie. I saw this recipe for a cardamom pie, and buttermilk pie apparently is an "American Classic", but I've never once had it or seen it on pie menus. I also LOVE, repeat, LOVE cardamom flavored dishes, so this American Classic sounded just right for our Holiday Dessert Party.

Holiday Sugar Cookies

This year, Marya, my sister and I hosted our second annual cookie party, but this year, we decided to go big and include all kinds of dessert.  We all know I love dessert parties! Since we were holding it the day after Thanksgiving, we wanted to make it a simple process (i.e. no stress baking), and I've been dying to decorate sugar cookies, so here was my chance!

Sweet Potato Pie With Marshmallow Meringue

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, I started to research what kind of pie to make for our Thanksgiving meal.  Last year, the pumpkin pie was a winner, except that my sister doesn't really like the taste of pumpkin pie, so I had to find something new. When I saw a posting on Bon Appetit's facebook page about this pie, it looked too delicious to pass up. Each bite was a balanced mix of super-duper sweet (the meringue) AND Thanksgiving in your mouth (sweet potato mixed with cinnamon/nutmeg). HOM! 

Chocolate Molten Lava Cupcakes!!!

My baby thsister was coming home from COLLEGE! This was her first Thanksgiving holiday back from school. When I would come home from school or work, she would bring snacks to the airport so I could eat something home made on my way home in the car.  This time, since the tables had turned, I decided to bring her a snack.  I saw a cupcake cook on our dining table, and immediately found the molten lava cupcake recipe.  Yummy and portable? Done!

White Chocolate Heart Brownies

When Mai and Paul got engaged, I made a little treat to share with them.  Heart brownies!

Last time I made both white and chocolate heart brownies.

{Too many hearts!}

Mai loved them so much she asked if I could make them again for her wedding reception.  Hearts? Brownies? Done and done.

Pecan Linzer Cookies with Raspberry Filling

Mai had asked a few of us to bake a few items for her wedding reception.  My intial reaction was "Pink! Hearts! Gliltter! More hearts!" and I scoured the web for anything and everything heart shaped, glittery, and edible.  I had a feeling Martha Stewart's website might have something appropriate.  About 45 minutes of drooling through all kinds of heart-shaped treats, I found some cookies that seemed perfect! Well, by some I mean pretty much every v-day cookie recipe.  Okay but I had to narrow it down and I liked these ones best. Especially because I had just picked up some fresh jam from the farmer's market!

Lime Cardamom Yogurt

One goal for the 1st year anniversary brunch I hosted was to use Mai's new ramekins.  Mission accomplished. The second goal was to make some kind of ice cream, as that was my very first blog post.  In fact, for a good 3 months I think the only thing on my food blog might have been various ice cream recipes.

Given that most of the other dishes at brunch were heavy and filled with eggs, I wanted to serve something light to offset the food coma everyone would likely be in.