Labor Day is a bittersweet moment – it’s a sign that summer is winding down and instead of summer firsts (“the first swim of the summer! The first BBQ!”) everything becomes the last. The weather is still warm and the summer produce is still abundant, but the days are decidedly shorter, and there’s a chill in the air in the evenings. It’s actually a beautiful time of year, but the prospect of having to wait 8 long months until the season returns is saddening. So we soak up the last warm days, storing memories of sunshine, salty water, and grill smoke to get us through the cold dark ones we know are ahead.

Grilling is one of summer’s great pleasures, and it’s how people all over the country will be closing out the season. Together with La Crema, I’ve put together an indulgent, Greek-American inspired cookout for you this Labor Day. We’ve got lamb burgers, we’ve got Greek-style sweet potato fries, we’ve got gooey roasted tomato and feta dip, and we’ve got baklava ice cream sandwiches. You’re going to be full and happy after this one.

The appetizers set the tone for any party, and this is a casual, friendly feast, so our first course is a Roasted Tomato and Feta Dip, the kind of thing that’s a little messy and requires you to reach over your friends to dip into one big bowl. I didn’t want this roasted tomato feta dip to be fresh – I wanted it to be indulgent, spreadable, and addictive. So I whipped some cream cheese and high quality feta together, and spread it on top of the cherry tomatoes before popping the whole thing in the oven. The end result was hot gooey cheese hiding sweet and garlicky roasted tomatoes underneath. This dip would pair equally well with La Crema’s Monterey Pinot Gris or Monterey Chardonnay, although I have a slight preference for the chardonnay – buttery chardonnay and creamy cheese is one of those combos I just can’t resist. (Find the dip recipe on the La Crema blog , here!)

For the main event, burgers and fries, because there’s no greater crowd-pleaser on a languid summer night. A solid burger with crispy, steak-cut fries is one of my all-time favorite meals – it’s tied with spaghetti bolognese as my answer to the “last meal” question – but it’s a combo that is strangely underrepresented on this blog. So here’s one small step towards remedying that. The burger is simple – just ground lamb, salt, pepper, and a pinch of cumin, so that all the wonderful, gamey lamb flavor comes through. It’s topped with a creamy lemon-garlic aioli and a few delicate slices of red onion, sliced as thinly as you possibly can. The fries are thick-cut wedges of sweet potato, tossed with oregano and olive oil before getting roasted to crispy perfection, then finished with the “Greek-style” treatment – a shower of grated cheese, lemon juice, and fresh parsley. Both the burgers and the fries pair beautifully with a bottle of La Crema Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, which has just enough earthiness to complement the grilled lamb. It’s a lovely wine, pleasantly tart and light-bodied enough to feel right at home at an end of summer, outdoor gathering. (Find the lamb burger recipe here and the sweet potato fries recipe here.)

And for the grand finale, Baklava Ice Cream Sandwiches. Admittedly, us Bostonians will eat ice cream even on the coldest day of the year, so ice cream isn’t exactly seasonal. But I would argue that ice cream sandwiches and popsicles and other frozen treats that you eat on the porch so that all the sticky drips running down your arms can be rinsed down with a hose, are very seasonal. So for a last summer hurrah, fancy ice cream sandwiches, with smooth pistachio gelato sandwiched between two skinny layers of homemade baklava. The flaky crunch of the baklava, sticky with rosewater-perfumed syrup, makes a delicious wrapper for the sweet and mildy nutty gelato.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by La Crema. All opinions are honest and my own.

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Baklava Ice Cream Sandwiches

Baklava recipe adapted from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food and Serious Eats. Makes 8-10 ice cream sandwiches.

• 2 c. sugar
• 1 c. water
• 2 cardamom pods
• 1 1/2 tsp rosewater, divided
• 1 1/2 c. shelled pistachios
• 1/2 c. blanched sliced almonds
• 2 TBS powdered sugar
• 1 stick + 2 TBS butter
• 3/4 lb. phyllo dough, defrosted for 8 hours in the fridge
• 1 pint pistachio ice cream

1. To make the syrup: combine sugar, water and cardamom pods in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer and simmer until sugar is dissolved and syrup is thick, about 3-4 minutes. Remove cardamom pods from syrup and discard. Stir 1 teaspoon of the rosewater into the hot syrup. Let syrup cool to room temperature, then chill in the fridge until cold.
2. To make the pastry: preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the shelled pistachios, sliced almonds, powdered sugar, and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of rosewater in a food processor. Pulse until the nuts are very finely chopped. Set nuts aside. Melt the butter in the microwave and keep warm. Remove the phyllo from it’s packaging and cover with a sheet of plastic wrap followed by a damp paper towel, to keep it from drying out. Brush a cookie sheet with melted butter than place one sheet of the phyllo dough on top, letting any extra dough push up over the sides. Brush generously with butter, then top with another sheet of phyllo. Repeat until you have used 6 sheets of phyllo. Spread the ground nuts evenly on top of the phyllo, then continue the phyllo-butter layers to use 4 more sheets of phyllo. Brush the top sheet generously with butter. Place any extra phyllo dough in a sealable plastic bag and place in the freezer. Use a sharp knife to cut the baklava into rectangles, being sure to press through all the layers of the phyllo to make a clean cut.
3. Bake the baklava for 30 minutes, until golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and pour the cold syrup over the hot baklava, particularly along the cut edges. You can use anywhere from half to all the syrup, depending on how sweet you want your baklava to be. Let baklava cool completely.
4. Remove ice cream from freezer and let soften just enough so that it is spreadable. Spread a thick layer of ice cream on top of one of the baklava squares, then quickly top with another baklava square, pressing down gently to adhere. Immediately place in a plastic tupperware or wrap with plastic wrap and place in the freezer. Repeat until you have used all the ice cream. Let ice cream sandwiches freeze for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight. Just before serving, you can use a paring knife to trim the edges of the ice cream into a neater square. Serve immediately.

The post Greek-Style Cookout: Baklava Ice Cream Sandwiches appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

This month marks the one year anniversary of buying and moving into our house. It’s a little hard to believe it’s already been a year! We had grand plans for the house when we bought it (we still do) but we’ve progressed a little slower (OK significantly slower) than we planned. Our major accomplishment is that we’re halfway through renovating our basement, and really, that’s mostly thanks to Carl (thank you Carl!!!) and to Trevor’s dedicated trench digging. And Trevor has painstakingly renovated the guest room – it’s almost done and is going to look gorgeous with the new orange couch we bought. But even though the to-do list for the house is miles long, I love living in it the way it is. Because it’s ours!

The last time I moved, from the sunny Davis Square house I shared with three roommates, to the little Inman Square apartment Trevor and I moved into, the place that will always be our first apartment, I wrote this post, about all the things I would miss and all the things I was looking forward to. This time, I didn’t have the time to indulge in that kind of thinking before we moved, but now that things are calmer and our new house is starting to feel like ours, I find myself thinking about it more – what I miss, what I love.

There’s so much that I love about our new house. One of the biggest things is the light – every room in our house is filled with sun, and we know at any given time of day the best spot to curl up in the sun for a minute or two. The sun is also the key to the second thing I love – having our own garden, which is thriving. We don’t have tons of space but we are making the most of it: in the front we’ve replaced hedges with a hodge podge of flowers – foxgloves and heather and poppies and whatever else tickled our fancy at the nursery. After much deliberation on varieties, we planted an apple tree this spring, and regularly talk about the wealth of apples we’ll have in oh, say, five years. And along the side of the house are the herbs and veggies and fruit bushes, planted neatly in raised beds that get 10 hours of sun a day this time of year. Almost every night you can find Trevor and I out “walking the grounds,” checking each plant’s progress and then sitting on our stoop to discuss. I love that.

I’m surprised how much I like living in a neighborhood. “Neighborhood” wasn’t particularly high on our list when we were house shopping – we were coming from a series of city apartments where neighbors weren’t really a concept that had much impact on our lives. We never even met any of our neighbors in Cambridge. So we were really lucky to end up moving into a place where neighbor is a word with meaning – people who will take in your trash barrels and check on your house while you’re away, who chat across fences when you both happen to be out. Families with kids that spend all day playing outside. It’s great. And when it’s nice, I like to take long evening walks around the nearby streets, looking at houses and gardens and just enjoying the fact that there’s little traffic and lots of fresh air. In Cambridge I only walked places when I had a destination or an errand – here I walk just to walk.

There’s more. I love having my own office. It might sound materialistic of me, but one of my favorite things is sitting at my gorgeous new desk, with a homemade latte in my favorite mug, snuggled up in my extremely soft jersey robe, catching up on emails and blogging with the early morning sun falling softly through the window. It’s “me-time” at it’s finest. I love that the entire house is filled with gorgeous wooden floors, deeper in color than most. I love that we can change whatever we want about the house. And I like the new routines we’re building, like the Friday morning dates we have at Tamper cafe, one of only two remotely trendy/interesting eating establishments within walking distance.

The list of things that I miss is shorter. I miss being able to walk 30 steps around the corner and find myself in one of best local grocery stores/butchers in the city, the kind of place where you can find pork belly and black pudding and fava beans without having to give it a second thought. Ditto for being able to walk across the street and choose from a selection of trendy bars and restaurants. I miss having a house cleaner – something we could afford when we had fewer rooms and no renovation costs. And I miss being a little closer to our friends, although honestly, we’ve been just as social as before – having easy access to the highway means an Uber home from downtown is only $20 and 15 minutes, which is very doable a few times a month. And I honestly can’t think of anything else I miss. Nothing about the house itself. Just walkability and a handful of individual establishments.

We have a friend who is currently studying for his Master of Wine examination, who knows vast amounts more about wine than I could ever hope to. We have another, mutual, friend who recently brought a bottle of champagne to a soccer game to celebrate a finals win (they lost), only to find upon popping the cork that the champagne had gone flat. Upon discussing this event our wine-y friend told us – “Never save champagne. Open it up on a Tuesday night just because.” We are guilty of holding on to two bottles of fancy champagne that I know have been improperly stored. So we heeded his advice and opened one, just because, and also to celebrate our home-ownership anniversary. We drank half and the rest we poured over this gorgeous Rhubarb Campari Sorbet, which we slupred while watching Game of Thrones (now #champagneofthrones).

A few things to note. One, yes, it might seem wasteful to pour Veuve Cliquot over sorbet. I say, whatever floats your boat. Two, yes, the sorbet in some of these photographs is not at all set – it was almost Game of Thrones time and I couldn’t wait any longer. I need a blast chiller. Three, because of the aforementioned not-set sorbet, I photographed these again the next night. And yes, I opened another bottle of prosecco. Only this time, it was a $10 bottle of La Marca that’s been in our fridge for 2 1/2 years, so, about time. Which brings me to the main point of this paragraph – the prosecco was actually a much better match for the sorbet. It is significantly sweeter and blends better with the sweet and tangy sorbet. So, in conclusion, open your fancy champagne on a Sunday night just because. But if you’re going to pour it over sorbet, open the $10 prosecco instead. Or open both and live it up.

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Rhubarb Campari Sorbet

Makes 1 1/2 pints (3 cups). A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipe.

• 1 lb. rhubarb, roughly chopped into segments (about 4 cups chopped)
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 c. sugar
• 3 TBS campari

1. Add rhubarb, water, and sugar to a large saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer until the rhubarb is very soft and almost falling apart, about 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat and transfer to a blender. Blend on high until the mixture is a very smooth puree. Always use caution when blending hot liquids! Pour the blended mixture through a fine mesh strainer, using a spatula to press the mixture through the strainer into a large bowl. Stir the campari into the strained rhubarb puree until evenly combined. Chill the mixture until very cold.
2. Churn the chilled rhubarb puree in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Once churned, you may need to let the sorbet sit in the freezer for another 1-3 hours before it is firm enough to scoop.

The post The New Place // Rhubarb Campari Sorbet with Prosecco appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

We have a fridge! A fridge with a freezer! Which means: it’s high time for the summer’s first batch of homemade ice cream. Beyond high time, if we’re being truthful, as it’s been more than a year since I made a batch of ice cream. And the last batch was a really good one, too, so it didn’t last more than a week. Plus, I consider having enough time to make at least one batch of homemade ice cream per summer to be an essential indicator of sanity.

This particular ice cream is one that I’ve been mulling over for more than 2 years. It’s loosely based on this incredible Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream, which is still the best ice cream I’ve ever made. Adding cultured dairy products, like sour cream or cheese, to the ice cream base ensures that it is extra thick and sets up really nicely when frozen, which can be a problem with homemade ice creams. Using sour cream or goat cheese also adds a delicious tang to offset the sweetness of the ice cream.

Since I knew that I wanted to try a recipe similar to the original that used goat cheese in place of the sour cream, we get an abundance of blackberries from our bushes every year, and blackberries and goat cheese and red wine are a great combination on a cheese platter, I decided that those three elements were the basis for what was sure to be a delicious dessert. The ice cream base would be a sweet goat cheese custard with a hint of vanilla, and the blackberries and red wine would enter the picture via a sweet and jammy swirl of fruit sauce. I added a splash of balsamic to the blackberry-red wine component for a little extra depth. The result was everything I imagined, and just as good as the strawberry sour cream version. It’s a good thing I made this 2 days before leaving for a week, or it would already be gone.

I also wanted to use this celebration of our new freezer to take a minute to share the first pictures (and progress!) of our new house. When we knew we were buying the house I had grand plans of becoming a design blogger and documenting all the cool DIY updates we did to the house. But, considering that I seem to be barely managing to find the time to be a food blogger, I suppose I should probably stick with what I know for now. So here’s the summary version, at least as far as the kitchen is concerned…

We started with a kitchen that is basically a blank slate: linoleum floors, cheap cabinets that have seen better days, yellow walls, ancient appliances, and plenty of space. Since the day we moved in we have 1) replaced the dishwasher and fridge with modern, stainless steel versions; 2) removed some of the counters and cabinets and replaced them with these sweet industrial DIY pipe shelves; 3) added a temporary kitchen island and stools; 4) refinished one of the walls and repainted it to a dolphiny gray; 5) added an awkwardly bulky washer and dryer that we can’t wait to move to the basement. We’re also in the process of continuing to replace the upper cabinets with shelves to match the pipe shelving, replacing the disposal, and swapping out the kitchen sink and faucet. Where we are now is certainly not our dream kitchen, but we are at least getting to the point where it feels usable and friendly – good enough until we’ve saved up enough to remodel for real. And good enough to make delicious ice cream!

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Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Blackberry Red Wine Swirl

Inspired by the NYTimes. Makes about 1 1/2 quarts.

• 7 egg yolks
• 1 1/3 c. sugar, divided
• 1 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 c. whole milk
• 8 oz. goat cheese
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 12 oz. fresh blackberries
• 1/3 c. red wine
• 2 TBS balsamic vinegar

1. Beat the egg yolks with 1/2 cup of the sugar in a heatproof bowl until smooth. Set aside. Place the heavy cream and whole milk in a medium saucepan and whisk in 1/2 cup of sugar. Whisking regularly, heat the cream mixture over medium heat just until bubbles begin to appear around the sides of the pan. Remove the cream from the heat.
2. Slowly drizzle the hot cream into the egg yolks, whisking the egg yolks vigorously as you do so. Once you’ve poured most of the cream into the egg yolks, pour the mixture back into the pan and return to the heat. Whisking constantly, heat the egg yolks until the mixture has thickened into a custard thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, which should take from 5-10 minutes. Remove from the heat.
3. Crumble the goat cheese into a large bowl. Strain the custard through a fine-mesh strainer into the bowl (to remove any bits of scrambled egg). Whisk the mixture until the goat cheese has fully melted into the custard. Stir in the vanilla. Let cool to room temperature, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap so that the plastic wrap touches the surface of the custard and refrigerate until cold, at least 3 hours.
4. In a medium saucepan, combine the blackberries, the remaining 1/3 c. sugar, the red wine, and the balsamic vinegar. Heat over medium heat, stirring frequently to prevent the bottom from burning, until thickened and bubbly, about 15 minutes. Mash the blackberries with the back of a wooden spoon so that the mixture has a jam like consistency. Refrigerate the mixture until cold.
5. To make the ice cream, churn the goat cheese custard in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Scrape half of the ice cream into a storage container in an even layer. Top with half of the blackberry mixture, then drag a knife through the two layers to create a swirl. Repeat with another layer of custard and another layer of blackberries. Freeze until solid, at least 2 hours.

The post Kitchen Update // Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Blackberry Red Wine Swirl appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

You guys know that I’m in Colombia all the time for work. I’ve been at least once a month so far this year, if not twice. The food in Colombia is amazing, but because I’m on the road so frequently I’ve had to scale back on how much I let myself indulge when I’m gone, even if it means missing out on arepas, empanadas, patacones, and all the other delicious treats. There’s only one thing that I can’t resist having at least once per trip: Limonada de Coco. It definitely falls into the indulgence category, but it’s too good to pass up.

Limonada de Coco is basically a coconut and limeade smoothie. It’s incredibly simple to make – all you need is fresh lime juice, coconut milk, sugar, ice, and a good blender – but the end result is one of the most heavenly, refreshing, craveable hot-weather drinks I’ve ever tried. I usually describe it to friends or coworkers that I’m convincing to order one as “like drinking key lime pie.” Cold and frothy and rich, with just a touch of sweetness and lime, it’s perfection. And too easy not to try at home this summer. I don’t think a splash of rum would be amiss in this, but try it without first – I think its simplicity and purity is part of its charm. But once you’ve given it a chance unadulterated, let me know how the rum thing goes.

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Colombian Limonada de Coco

One of my favorite treats in Colombia – a super-refreshing, icy cold coconut and lime smoothie.

Recipe sourced via My Colombian Recipes and Smitten Kitchen.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 3-4

Ingredients

• 1 can of full-fat coconut milk, unshaken
• 1/3 c. freshly squeezed lime juice (from about 3 limes)
• 4 TBS sugar
• 1 1/2 c. ice cubes

Instructions

1. Open the can of coconut milk and, if it has separated, use a spoon to scoop the heavier coconut cream off the top and into a blender. Then pour about half of the thinner coconut water into the blender. Reserve the rest of the coconut milk for another use. If the can has not separated enough such that you can scoop out the cream, just stir it up and use 2/3 of the can.
2. Add the lime juice, sugar, and ice to the blender. Blend on high until very smooth. Taste and adjust the amount of lime juice or sugar to your liking. Serve cold.

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Two weeks ago, Trevor and I got back from a gorgeous week spent in the US Virgin Islands. Since then, it has done nothing but snow in Boston. Snow on snow on snow. Record-breaking snow. Headed into the 5th snow day of the past two weeks tomorrow, I thought perhaps we all could take a moment and indulge in some pictures of white sandy beaches and aquamarine water. And when we’re done hating New England/February/cold/precipitation, let’s make an over-the-top tropical cocktail and pretend we’re all on an island together.

Where We Stayed

I booked this trip on a whim back in August, when I happened to see a great deal on flights to St. Thomas. It was originally booked as a Thursday night to Monday morning sort of trip, so we decided that the easiest thing to do would be to stay on St. Thomas and wander over to St. John for the day if we wanted. Of course, between numerous airline schedule changes and the blizzard, we actually ended up being away for a full week – not exactly the weekend getaway I planned, but I can’t say I mind the extra downtime too much. We booked a villa at Pavilions and Pools through AirBnB (the listing is here, if you’re interested – we would recommend it and it’s certainly a better deal than most hotels!). It was a great spot – a private plunge pool, a big private deck, a comfortable and bright bedroom and sitting room, an outdoor-ish shower, and a small kitchen. The privacy and extra space were great, as was spending each afternoon lying on the pool floaties with a glass of cold chardonnay and a book. We were able to walk to both Sapphire and Lindquist beaches, and the team at Pavilions provided us with snorkel gear and beach towels. The roads in St. Thomas are windy and hilly with no sidewalk or shoulder, so even the 1/2 mile walk into Red Hook was out of the question, but we could easily flag down the $1 open-air safari taxis at the entrance to the villa complex for a 3 minute ride into town. We chose not to rent a car and are glad – we didn’t want to spend all our time driving and the adventure of driving on those crazy roads (and on the left!) was not high on our list – but if we had wanted to explore more of the island we would have spent a fortune on taxis (taxis charge per person and rates are not really standard). As it was, we were happy with our two beaches, the dining options in Red Hook, and the easy ferry to St. John.

What We Did

This trip was booked with the explicit purpose of not doing much, so I had to continually remind myself that it was OK to do just that. Trevor had a miserable sinus infection for most of the trip, but he let me drag him around a little bit anyways. Sapphire Beach was the easiest option – just a short walk down a dirt road from Pavilions and Pools. It is gorgeous, but a bit crowded with cruise traffic. Lindquist was a semi-treacherous 5 minute walk down the busy road, and charged a $2 per person fee, but was much quieter and longer, and the lack of amenities gave it more of that remote, desert-island feel (this may have been enhanced by the commercial they were shooting of white horses running along the beach). We snorkeled at both beaches and it was really awesome – I don’t think I’ve been snorkeling since I was 8 or 9 and it really is so cool. We must have seen over 30 different types of fish, and the reef at Lindquist was intact with purple fans and brain coral and many other formations. I probably spent 10 minutes floating and watching a huge school of “Dorie fish” (I mostly only know about tropical fish because of Finding Nemo, sorry) nibble at the coral.

On our second day we took the ferry from Red Hook over to St. John, about a 20 minute ride. Cruz Bay seemed like a much cuter town than Red Hook, although we didn’t walk around and explore at all. Instead, we hit the trails of the USVI National Park – starting right behind the visitor center in Cruz Bay, we took the Lind Trail down to Honeymoon Beach and then connected back to the Caneel Hill Trail, which took us up and over two major hills and down to Caneel Bay Resort. I had thought there was a separate beach at Caneel Bay, but the public beach access signs led us probably another mile back to Honeymoon Beach, so we ended up just hiking back to Cruz Bay instead of taking a taxi from Caneel Bay as planned. If I did it again, I would do a loop, starting on Caneel Hill to begin with and then taking Lind Trail back from the beach on the way back. Caneel Hill is not the most popular trail in the park, but it was convenient that we did not have to take a cab to a trailhead and back again, and it was a challenging and well-maintained trail with great views of the islands from the top of Caneel Hill. On our last afternoon we took a safari into Charlotte Amalie, the major town on St. Thomas – since it was Sunday, I knew that some places would be closed, but literally, everything in the whole town was closed! All the shops, restaurants, bars… it didn’t seem like a town that I would love spending time in (just a bit touristy and shopping-oriented), but if you do go, definitely don’t go on Sunday.

What We Ate

The USVI are not really reknowned for their culinary offerings, and overall we found the food on the island a bit boring and overpriced. Of course, we’re spoiled by the wealth of interesting and affordable restaurants all over Cambridge and Boston, so we have high standards. That said, a few places we ate at are worth mentioning here. Off The Grid, a BBQ food truck located at the top of the hill down to Sapphire Beach was a great stop – they had delicious ribs, pulled pork, wings, sausages, and brisket all sizzling away on a big outdoor grill, plus a sweet and tangy “painkiller” BBQ sauce made with rum and pineapple juice, and good veggie sides like grilled sweet potatoes and rice and beans. They served beer and sangria and we enjoyed our meal at their picnic tables, looking out over the islands.

Our one fancy dinner was at Caribbean Fish Market, one of the few restaurants on the islands that is open on Sundays. The ambiance was nice – it’s part of a resort complex but right on the beach, and we ate outside with live piano music. My chicken was actually quite good, somewhat surprising at a fish restaurant – it was stuffed with bacon and spinach and served with a mango chutney and sweet plantains – but Trevor’s tuna was very bland, certainly not worth $38. I’m not sure where I’d come down on the restaurant in the end – although it seemed overpriced, it was on par with every other nice restaurant on the island, and I think the same is probably true for the food quality. In Red Hook itself we only really partook in liquid dining, but we did have quite a fun time at Melt killing time before dinner. The bar has a younger vibe, and we loved that they have games available – a table behind us was playing Connect 4, there was skee ball and some sort-of skinny air hockey, and Trevor and I spent a solid hour playing Texas Hold ‘Em. The sandwiches there looked good – we were tempted to call off our nice dinner and stick with grilled cheese and tater tots, but we didn’t in the end. Next time. It’s worth mentioning that we were there in the late afternoon so it was a quiet crowd – I’m not sure what it would be like later at night, but likely a lot livelier and less conducive to board games.

This Cocktail

Neither Trevor nor I actually had any froofy tropical drinks while we were away – we mostly drank $4 rum and cokes served in plastic cups, and I don’t recall there being any drink umbrellas (something to improve upon during our next vacation, surely). But rum and coke in a plastic cup doesn’t exactly have that “transport me out of the snow and onto the beach” effect, so I’ve come up with something a lot more exciting. I’m calling it Piña Sunrise, as it’s somewhere between a piña colada and a tequila sunrise. It has three layers – a grenadine and pineapple layer, a pineapple and pineapple layer, and a coconut sorbet layer. Each layer is laced with rum and coconut rum, and it’s all frothy and cold and sweet and exactly the sort of thing you should drink on the beach. I special-ordered drink umbrellas to top it off, just to complete the vibe. So drink up! Winter will be over soon.

Piña Sunrise Cocktail

Serves 2.

• 1 scoop coconut sorbet
• 1/4 c. whole milk
• 3 ice cubes
• 3 oz. coconut rum, divided
• 1.5 oz. white rum
• 3/4 c. frozen pineapple cubes
• 3/4 c. pineapple juice
• 1/2 tsp grenadine plus a dash for glasses

1. Add the coconut sorbet, milk, ice cubes, and 1.5 oz (one shot) of the coconut rum to a blender, and blend until smooth. Pour into a container and set aside.
2. Add the remaining 1.5 oz of coconut rum and 1.5 oz of white rum to the blender along with the pineapple cubes and pineapple juice. Blend on high until smooth. Pour half the mixture into a container and set aside. Add the grenadine to the mixture still in the blender and pulse a few times to mix.
3. Place a dash of grenadine in the bottom of two glasses. Divide the pink pineapple-grenadine mixture between the two glasses. Carefully pour the yellow pineapple mixture on top of the pink layer, then carefully pour the coconut sorbet mixture on top of the yellow layer. The layers may mix slightly, but you should see a gradient going from pink at the bottom to white at the top. Serve immediately (with a cocktail umbrella!)

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I’ve been trying to write this post for four years. I’m not exaggerating. For the past four years, when September rolls around, I put this post on my calendar, waiting for the raspberries at my parents’ house to ripen. And for the past four years, our raspberries, which are gorgeous and achingly sweet and juicy, have been 100% infested with raspberry fruitworms. It’s devastating. The anticipation of opening up a perfectly ripe, deep red, juicy berry, hoping beyond hope that there will be no squirmy white bugs inside, and then to have all your hopes dashed in an instant – heartbreaking. This year, I’d had enough – I was going to buy my raspberries, make this dessert, and satisfy this particular September craving.

When the weather starts to turn cooler, I begin daydreaming of Prague, although the longer I spend away from my one-time home the fainter the daydreams become. Cold, gray days in particular pull back memories tinged with longing: the long winding tram ride from my apartment to school; my daily afternoon snack of mulled wine and candied almonds, eaten with gloved fingers standing on the cobbled corners; wandering the rose gardens on top of Petrin hill, with nowhere else to be for hours; the Christmas markets in all their splendor, filled with warm light and the smell of sausages and potatoes; hiking through falling snow in the far corners of the country, feeling like we were the only people for miles and miles. I could go on and on, but really, I should just go back. I want to take Trevor there and share that city with him, relive some of my old memories and create new ones. Although I’ve traveled many places since Prague, it still holds a special place in my heart – sometimes I wonder if it’s better to have a few places you really love than to travel all over the world in search of you’re not quite sure what.

When my family came to visit me in Prague, being able to order something called “hot love” was one of my 11 year old brother’s greatest pleasures. It’s a dessert that goes by more than one name: Horká láska. Hot love. Horké maniny. Piping hot raspberries smothering a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Although it’s name may be suggestive, the dessert itself is pure, simple and completely sublime. A staple of most Czech menus, horká láska is not just a dish of ice cream with raspberry sauce, it is a dish of juicy, steaming-hot raspberries with just enough ice cream on top so that it has completely melted into the berries by the time you are 3/4 done with the dish.  The trick is all in getting the right ratio and remembering that it’s called “hot raspberries” and not “ice cream with raspberries” for a reason. I did find one traditional recipe (in Czech) that I used for guidance in recreating this classic dessert, but it’s a pretty straightforward concept that doesn’t need to be overthought. The addition of framboise and a pat of butter take the sauce up another level, but you don’t want either to overwhelm the taste of raspberries. It’s a perfect dessert for early fall, with the contrast of hot with cold and fresh with creamy satisfying both summer and fall cravings.

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Horká Láska – Hot Raspberries with Ice Cream

Serves 2.

• 12 oz. (1 1/2 cups) fresh raspberries
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1 TBS framboise or other raspberry liqueur
• 1/2 TBS salted butter
• 2 scoops vanilla ice cream

1. Add the raspberries and sugar to a small saucepan and heat over medium heat. Cook the raspberries, stirring occasionally, until they are broken down and juicy and the sauce is steaming, about 5-7 minutes. Add the framboise and salted butter, stir to combine, then remove from heat. Spoon a generous amount of raspberry sauce over each scoop of vanilla ice cream and serve immediately.

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I’ve been absolutely luxuriating in summer for the past week. Long afternoons spent sunning on the raft, hikes up and over hard rock and pine needle floors, piping hot fried fish sandwiches eaten overlooking the ocean, runs timed to coincide with brilliantly colored sunsets, early morning boat rides with thermoses of coffee to watch the harbor seals and pretend to fish, massive ice cream sundaes taking the place of lunch, reading a book on the season’s inaugural sail, and giant burgers topped with blue cheese and spicy onions and grilled to perfection. One of my new year’s resolutions was to engage more, live more, do more – or perhaps, to put it in the reverse, to spend less time doing nothing, or nothing-like things like worrying and regretting and waiting. And as nebulous as that sounds, I feel like I’ve been achieving that, especially during perfect weeks like this last one.

Celebrating the 4th as a cap to this week feels just right – I’m refreshed and energized and ready to celebrate this beautiful country and the gloriousness of summer. As I travel more and more, I’ve actually come to value being an American citizen more highly – sort of the opposite of what I expected, but this year I’m feeling especially grateful to live here in the good old US of A. Our celebration here in Maine will be small, but Trevor’s doing ribs, we’ll have some potato salad and grilled veggies, and I made a batch of sangria slushies with lots of fresh berries. Sangria slushies are an idea I’ve been sitting on for a long time, since I happened upon a company selling pre-made sangria slushie mix at an art fair in Denver a few years back. I thought it was a great idea, and have been meaning to try it at home ever since, but somehow never got around to it. I’m getting around to it now, though. The slushies are sweet and winey and ice cold, and topped with boozey fresh berries – they make an already delicious summer drink just a little more fun.

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Berry Sangria Slushies

Serves 4. Loosely based on Betty Crocker.

• 2 c. mixed fresh berries
• 1/2 c. fresh orange juice
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1 bottle (750ml) of red wine
• 1 c. water
• 1/2 c. brandy

1. Add the berries, orange juice, sugar, and wine to a large pitcher. Stir for a minute to dissolve the sugar, cover, and let sit at room temperature for 3-4 hours to allow the flavors to meld.
2. Strain the wine into a large glass baking pan, reserving the berries. Add the water to the wine, stir briefly, cover with plastic wrap, and place carefully in the freezer. Freeze until solid, at least 12 hours.
3. Add the brandy to the reserved berries. Cover and let soak in the fridge until ready to serve.
4. Just before serving, remove the frozen sangria from the freezer. Use a fork to scrape the top of the sangria and flake it into slush. Spoon into wine glasses, top with the brandy-marinated berries, and serve immediately. Return any extra sangria to the freezer.

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The Book: Now that we’re in the thick of ice cream season (although, who am I kidding, it’s always ice cream season in my house), it’s time for me to share the first of this summer’s crop of ice cream cookbooks – Ample Hills Creamery. Ample Hills is an ice cream shop in Brooklyn, where the owners, Brian and Jackie, churn out whimsical flavors like Breakfast Trash (Cereal Milk and Froot Loops), Drunken Thanksgiving (Pumpkin Bourbon with Molasses Cookie Bits), and  “I Want to Marry This!” (Maple with Chocolate-Covered Bacon Bark). Like the flavors, their new cookbook is playful, filled with cartoons of the three Ample Hills mascots, hand-lettered picture annotations, bright colors, and even bingo boards and instructions for drawing Walt the Cow (one of the mascots). The end result isn’t corny at all, just fun and well-integrated into the overall design. Brian and Jackie’s story is also woven into the pages of the book, and it’s an inspiring story – they took a big risk, followed their dream, and are now enjoying huge success. And their ice cream flavors are great. I love ice cream (like, really love it) and you’d be hard-pressed to find a flavor in most shops that I wasn’t excited about, but some of the inclusions in this book have me just itching to clean out the ice cream that’s already in my freezer to make room for more. There are also recipes for homemade cones, toppings (mmm whiskey butterscotch!) and mix-ins like brownies and cookie dough.

The Food: Most of the recipes in Ample Hills use a basic sweet cream ice cream recipe (called “Walt’s Dream”) as their starting point. This base is different from others I’ve used, as it includes skim milk powder, which apparently helps keep the ice cream creamy by reducing the water content you have when using regular milk, and ultimately allowing you to use a lower cream to milk ratio. I followed all the instructions, even buying the (pricey) organic cane sugar and (pricey) organic skim milk powder that it called for, but I can’t say the base turned out more creamy than others I’ve tried. Before freezing, the base was very thin, and even after churning it was pretty soupy and needed a solid 24 hours in the freezer to firm up. They do recommend using a hand crank machine, as they get colder faster, but that seems like a lot of extra work to me. Personally, I think I prefer using base recipes with more egg yolks and cooking them to the point of a custard. So, I’m not sure if I’ll use the base recipe again, but I’ll certainly be using the flavor combinations as inspiration for future batches, as they go above and beyond in an effort to cram as many delicious ingredients as possible into one flavor. Our first batch was called “PB Fluff’n’Stuff” – a mix of peanut butter ice cream, nutter butters, and fluff. I opted not to make the homemade fluff (after all, the home of fluff is right here in Somerville… so it’s local?), and oh man is it good. This stuff will not be lingering in our freezer. There’s nothing subtle or elegant about this ice cream – it’s the kind of flavor that would be the highlight of the day at a seven year old’s birthday party, hitting you over the top of the head with simple sugary sweetness,  It’s delicious, all sweetened creamy peanut butter, crunchy cookies and airy fluff. If you like peanut butter desserts, you will love it.

Recipe Shortlist: Raspberry Blonde (White Chocolate Ice Cream with Raspberry Jam and Malted Blondie Bits); Sweet as Honey (Sweet Cream with Honeycomb Candy); Monkey Bread; Daddy’s Sundae (Bourbon Ice Cream with Brownies and Salted Fudge Caramel); Salted Crack Caramel; Four More Years (Beer Ice Cream with Honeycomb Candy)

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Disclaimer: I received a review copy of Ample Hills Creamery from Stewart, Tabori & Chang, but I was not otherwise compensated and all thought and opinions are my own.

Peanut Butter and Fluff Ice Cream

Recipe from Ample Hills Creamery. Makes about 6 cups of ice cream.

• 3/4 c. organic cane sugar
• 1/2 c. skim milk powder
• 1 2/3 c. whole milk
• 1 2/3 c. heavy cream
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/2 c. natural peanut butter
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 12-oz. box of peanut butter sandwich cookies
• 3 c. marshmallow fluff (store-bought or homemade)

1. Prepare an ice bath in a large heatproof bowl. Set aside. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, milk powder, and whole milk. Whisk until smooth, making sure the skim milk powder is fully dissolved. Stir in the cream.
2. Place the saucepan over medium heat and heat the milk mixture, stirring often, until it reaches 110°F, which will take 5-10 minutes. Once it reaches this temperature, remove it from the heat.
3. Whisk the egg yolks together in a medium bowl. While whisking, slowly pour 1/2 cup of the hot milk mixture over the eggs, beating them vigorously to temper the eggs. Repeat with another 1/2 cup of hot milk, then pour the eggs back into the remaining milk mixture, still whisking to prevent any scrambling.  Return the pan to heat, and cook until it reaches 165°F and forms a thin film on a wooden spoon, about 5-10 minutes longer.
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter and vanilla, then pour the ice cream base through a wire mesh strainer into a bowl, and cool in the ice bath for 15 to 20 minutes. Chill the ice cream base in the fridge for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight, until it is completely cold.
5. Churn the ice cream according to your ice cream maker’s directions. While it is churning, break up the peanut butter cookies into bite-sized pieces. Transfer the churned ice cream to the storage container, and quickly but gently fold in the cookies and the marshmallow fluff. Don’t overmix, or the fluff may dissolve. Freeze ice cream for at least 4 hours before serving.

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The Book: It seems that at least once a year, a cookbook that is more aptly described as an encyclopedia of a particular culture and cuisine is released. Gran Cocina Latina is a good example, as is The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, and to a certain extent even Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table. These books are much more than just exciting cookbooks, they’re reference books for chefs and travelers and budding anthropologists that contain hundreds of classic recipes along with a thorough communication of the culinary culture and history of a particular region of the world. Often these books become instant classics, essential books for any cook seriously interested in learning about other cuisines. This season I have two books of this type in my review pile, and the first is about a very specific place – the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. Yucatan: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition, written by David Sterling, is the product of his decades of culinary experience living in the Yucatan while running a cooking school there.

Starting the book knowing nothing about the Yucatan, except that it looks like a nice place to go on vacation, I quickly realized I was in the hands of an expert. I was easily drawn into the narrative of this ideologically isolated peninsula, even when that narrative had nothing whatsoever to do with food. History, geography, biology – you’ll get a little bit of everything with this book. Of course, eventually it all ties back to food and cooking, and I don’t know if there was a single recipe in this book that I wasn’t interested in trying. The recipes are mostly traditional, yet still presented in a creative and intriguing way – combinations like Roasted Quail with a Puree of Squash Seeds, Chaya, and Habanero and Zucchini and Squash Blossom Stew with Tiny Corn Pancakes are representative of what people have eaten traditionally, but totally new to me. I should note that as much as the 60-page ingredient primer will help orient you to traditional ingredients, many will still be hard to find for American cooks. Beyond that, many of the recipes will be time-consuming for those not accustomed to cooking with the major base ingredients of the cuisine, as sourcing or preparing the spice mixes, flours, and fats that are traditionally used will add to the total preparation time. However, once you have a few of the key pantry items built into your repertoire, I imagine the recipes become less daunting – there’s just a bit of a learning curve.

The Food: One of the goodies we brought back with us from Ecuador was a bag full of fermented cacao beans. As part of our trip we learned about the entire chocolate making process, even roasting and grinding our own beans before making the freshest hot chocolate ever. We picked up a half pound bag of the beans for $2.50 in a little souvenir shop later in our trip, and now I’m wishing we had brought more home with us, as whole beans go for $20 a pound on Amazon. When I saw the dessert recipes calling for freshly ground cacao paste in this book, I knew we’d found a way to put our beans to good use. This Mayan Chocolate Frozen Custard is one of the most intense ice creams I’ve ever tasted. Using a whole host of traditional ingredients – Mexican crema, freshly ground cacao, cayenne pepper, and a hand-ground spice mixture called recado rojo that includes achiote, garlic, and vinegar – it has a ton of different flavors, and a somewhat gritty texture from the ground cacao beans. And preparing all the components really gave our mortar and pestle a good workout. I realize that this description might not make it sound all that appealing, but it’s a really exciting recipe that’s definitely worth stepping outside of your comfort zone for. If you can find whole cacao beans, use them – the smell of freshly roasted cacao being mashed to a paste is otherwordly – but otherwise, you can use cacao nibs or bittersweet chocolate.

Recipe Shortlist: Venison in Red Squash-Seed Sauce; Maya Succotash of New Corn and Black-Eyed Peas; Mashed Plaintain Croquettes with Pork Cracklings and Goat Cheese; Lobster Tails in Charred Chili Sauce; Guava, Marschino Cherry, and Sherry Frozen  Custard; Chicken and Potatoes Stewed in Oregano-Black Pepper Sauce; Honey-Drenched Yuca Fritters

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Disclaimer: I received a review copy of Yucatan: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition from University of Texas Press, but I was not otherwise compensated and all thought and opinions are my own.

Mayan Chocolate Frozen Custard

Recipe from Yucatan: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition. Makes about 1 1/2 quarts.

• 2 c. whole milk
• 2 TBS recado rojo (bought in a Latin grocery, or homemade)
• 2 c. creme fraiche (or heavy cream)
• 1 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. honey
• 3/8 tsp ground allspice
• 1/8 tsp cayenne powder
• 5 large egg yolks
• 8 oz. fresh chocolate paste, recipe below (or bittersweet chocolate, chopped)
• 1 TBS vanilla

1. Place the milk and the recado rojo in a blender and blend for 30 seconds. Strain the milk through a fine-mesh sieve into a heavy saucepan, discarding the solids that get caught in the strainer. Add the creme fraiche, sugar, honey, allspice, and cayenne to the milk. Heat over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture has just reached a simmer, then remove from the heat.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks until they are pale yellow and frothy. While whisking the eggs, slowly pour 1 cup of the hot milk into the eggs in a thin stream, whisking vigorously to temper the eggs. Repeat with another cup of hot milk, then pour the egg mixture back into the hot milk mixture, whisking the milk as you do so. Still whisking, return the custard to low heat and cook just until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. It will still be fluid – about the consistency of a creme anglaise.
3. Once the mixture has thickened, strain through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl, discarding any solids. Stir in the chocolate paste or bittersweet chocolate until mixture is thick and chocolate is melted. Let cool, then stir in the vanilla. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, or overnight. Once thoroughly chilled, process according to your ice cream maker’s directions.

Fresh Chocolate Paste

Makes about 8 oz.

• 1/2 lb. of whole fermented cacao beans

1. Place the beans in a dry skillet over medium heat. Roast, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and skins are cracking, about 8-10 minutes. Remove from heat. As soon as beans are cool enough to handle, peel the skins away from the beans and discard the skins. Return any peeled beans that are still brown as opposed to a deep blackish brown to the pan for a minute or two, cooking until they are all deeply browned.
2. Place peeled, roasted beans in a blender and blend until evenly ground. Transfer to a mortar and pestle in grind to a fine paste in batches.

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I hope it’s been long enough since rhubarb week that you won’t mind if I post another rhubarb recipe – because this one is really, really good. It’s from the SPQR cookbook, in which everything is fancy and inspiring and makes me want to go back to Italy, stat.

I’m going to be up front here – this is one of those recipes that you should only attempt if you really enjoy cooking. It’s complicated. It has about a billion parts. Nothing is particularly difficult (perhaps with the exception of frothing an egg over a double boiler, I mess that one up sometimes), but you’ll need patience, and someone to help with the dishes. All of the components can be made a few days in advance, so if you do one part at a time it might not seem so bad. But regardless of how you choose to make it (if you choose to make it), the result is so, so worth it. Unmolding the frozen bavarese, spooning the brilliantly colored red and orange fruits over the top, and crumbling the addictively nutty biscotti crisp over the whole thing, you’ll be impressed with yourself. And when you take a bite, you’ll be even more impressed. The flavors work wonderfully together, it’s all sweet and juicy and creamy and crumbly and completely worthy of your finest company. Those folks over at SPQR really know what they’re doing.

A few notes: one, the butter, brown sugar, and biscotti crisp is so good that you will not be able to stop eating the leftovers. Consider yourself warned. Two, I actually prefer the bavarese at fridge temperature as opposed to freezer temperature, but experiment with the degree of frozenness that you like. Three, the red wine poached rhubarb, which in the original recipe was verjus poached rhubarb, is amazing as is, and would be good on other creamy things, like your morning yogurt (I won’t judge). Four, this whole thing was supposed to have powdered olive oil on top. I tried to make it. I even ordered the special tapioca maltodextrin powder online. But it didn’t work. Honestly, I don’t think this dessert needs any more elements. It’s ready to go.

Ricotta Bavarese with Red-Wine Poached Rhubarb

Recipe adapted slightly from SPQR: Modern Italian Food and Wine. Serves 6-8.

For the bavarese:

• 2 c. drained ricotta
• 3/4 c. sour cream
• 1 sheet gelatin
• 1/4 c. orange juice
• 1 lemon (juice and zest)
• 1 c. heavy cream
• 6 TBS sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg

1. Bring a large pot of water to a simmer over medium-low heat. In a large, heatproof bowl (big enough to place over the simmering water without touching the water itself), whisk together the ricotta and the sour cream. Place the bowl over the water and whisk until the ricotta curds are broken up and the mixture is smooth. Remove the bowl and set aside.
2. Soak the gelatin in ice water until softened. Place a new bowl over the simmering water and add the orange juice and 1 TBS of the lemon juice. Squeeze out the excess water from the gelatin sheet and add it to the juices. Stir over the simmering water until dissolved, then remove from heat and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, beat the heavy cream and 4 TBS of the sugar until the cream holds medium peaks. Stir in the vanilla extract. Stir the orange juice mixture into the ricotta, then fold the ricotta into the whipped cream. Set aside.
4. In a third heatproof bowl, whisk together the egg and remaining 2 TBS of sugar. Place over the simmering water and whisk vigorously until the egg is pale yellow and frothy. Remove from the heat and turn the pot of water off.
5. Immediately fold the whipped egg into the ricotta-cream mixture. Grate lemon zest directly over the bowl and stir to combine. Pour the ricotta-cream into 8 4-oz ramekins or 8 large silicone muffin cups, cover tightly, and freeze until ready to serve.

For the rhubarb:

• 1/4 c. red wine
• 1/2 c. water
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1 TBS lemon juice
• 7 oz. rhubarb, trimmed and cut on an angle into 1/4 inch pieces (about 2 cups total)

1. In a medium saucepan, stir together red wine, water, sugar, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Once dissolved, lower heat and add the rhubarb. Poach the rhubarb for 3 minutes, just until rhubarb starts to soften. Remove the rhubarb with a slotted spoon and set aside. Return the syrup left in the pot to a boil and boil until syrupy about 7-10 minutes. Pour the syrup over the rhubarb and refrigerate until needed.

For the biscotti crumble:

• 1 c. crushed biscotti (150 grams)
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 1/2 c. melted salted butter (1 stick)

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Pulse the biscotti and the brown sugar in a food processor until mixture is finely ground. Drizzle in butter and pulse to combine. Spread thinly on the lined baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes, until mixture is firm and beginning to crisp around the edges. Let cool completely then break into chunks.

For the orange confitura:

• 1 orange
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. water

1. Bring a small pot of water to a boil over medium heat. Use a vegetable peeler to cut the peel away from the orange in long strips. Slice into thin lengths, then add to the boiling water. Blanch for two minutes, then drain and run under cold water until cool. Pat dry.
2. Bring the sugar and the water to a simmer over medium heat in a small saucepan. Add the blanched orange peel and simmer until lightly candied, about 6-8 minutes. Cool the peel in the syrup and refrigerate until needed.
3. Cut the orange away from the pith into supremes, and set aside.

To serve:

1. Unmold the bavarese into bowls (you may need to soften them for 15 seconds in the microwave for them to pop out of their bowls, a hot knife run around the edges can help too). Spoon the chilled rhubarb over the top. Place a few slices of candied orange zest, some crumbled biscotti, and a few segments of fresh orange on top. Serve immediately. You may also serve the bavarese slightly defrosted – they will still taste wonderful but won’t look as smooth.

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I think Peppermint-Stick might be my favorite flavor of ice cream. At least, it’s up there with Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and New York Super Fudge Chunk (and all the other Ben & Jerry’s flavors…). I think I partly like that it’s so girly and pink, and that it tastes like it looks – sort of simple and sweet and refreshing. This is certainly the time of year that peppermint is all the rage, but I love this ice cream regardless of the season – it actually brings up very vivid memories of standing on the lawn at the Bagaduce Lunch, eating a quickly melting waffle cone of the sweet, pink stuff and soaking up the sun. Mmm, ice cream in the summer. So good.

But ice cream in the winter is also good! Since I worked today and I’m working tomorrow, and since resolutions don’t need to start for almost another week, I thought I’d make a little treat to reward myself for working during the holidays. And since Starbucks has already proved to us that peppermint, chocolate, and coffee are an excellent combination, I decided to throw a few scoops of this on top of an espresso brownie, and then drizzle it with mocha sauce for good measure. Voila! A Peppermint-Mocha Ice Cream Sundae. Because that’s just what we all needed the day after Christmas. (Don’t worry, this year’s cleanse is coming up soon, and then this blog will be sorely lacking in sugar and heavy cream).

This sundae was pretty perfect, in my book. If you’re looking for something to do with extra candy canes and/or you’re not ready to give up all the sugary goodness of Christmastime, definitely give it a try!

P.S. It’s National Candy Cane Day! How timely!

Peppermint-Mocha Ice Cream Sundae

• 1 large scoop peppermint-stick ice cream (recipe below)
• 1 espresso brownie (recipe below)
• 1/4 c. mocha hot fudge sauce (recipe below)
• whipped cream
• crushed candy canes, for garnish

Assemble all ingredients and dig in!

Peppermint-Stick Ice Cream

Recipe from Dawn’s Recipes. Makes 1 quart.

• 1 c. whole milk
• 2 c. heavy cream
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 6 large egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp peppermint extract
• 3 drops red food coloring (optional)
• 10 candy canes (about 5 oz.), crushed into small pieces

1. Whisk together the milk, 1 c. of the heavy cream, the sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan. Place over medium-low heat and heat, whisking occasionally, just until milk begins to simmer.
2. While milk is heating, prepare three other bowls – in one bowl, whisk together the six egg yolks. In the second bowl, pour the remaining 1 c. of heavy cream, and set a fine mesh strainer over the top. Fill the third (largest) bowl halfway with ice water.
3. Pour the hot milk slowly over the egg yolks, whisking the egg yolks vigorously as you do so, to temper the eggs. Pour the custard mixture back into the pan and return to the heat, whisking the whole time. Cook over low heat, whisking constantly, just until the custard has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour the custard through the strainer into the bowl with the heavy cream, and stir to combine. Add the peppermint extract and food coloring, and place bowl into the ice bath. Stir until the custard has cooled.
4. Cover the custard and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Once thoroughly chilled, pour into prepared ice cream maker and process according to directions. Just before the ice cream has finished thickening, pour in the crushed candy canes and let churn for 1 minute more to incorporate. Freeze the ice cream until ready to serve.

Espresso Brownies

Recipe adapted slightly from Crustabakes. Makes 16 small brownies. 

• 5 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips
• 1 stick salted butter, cut into quarters
• 3 TBS cocoa powder
• 2 TBS instant espresso powder
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/4 c. sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 c. flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8×8-in baking pan with tin foil so that the foil hangs over the edges (for easy removal of the brownies).
2. Heat a large, half-full pot of water to a boil over medium-high heat. Place chocolate and butter in a smaller saucepan and place over the boiling water. Stir until chocolate and butter are melted. Remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder and espresso powder. Let cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Pour in the warm chocolate mixture and whisk to combine. Fold in the flour until just incorporated, then pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the top of the brownies are beginning to crack and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs attached to it. Allow the brownies to cool in the pan, then lift out using the foil.

Mocha Hot Fudge Sauce

Prepare this recipe, adding 2 TBS of espresso powder when you add the cocoa powder.

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It’s been a hot summer.  Maybe it seems hotter because it’s my first full summer in the city, where I’m pretty much a sticky mess topped with a fine layer of dust by noon, but according to the news, there’s more to it than the heat island effect – it’s been unusually hot all over the country.  There’s even a wikipedia page about it, so it must be true.  But having a scorcher of a summer isn’t all bad – it means happy tomatoes, extra-refreshing dips in the pond, and an excuse to eat even more ice cream than I normally might.

Making at least three kinds of ice cream was on my summer bucket list this year (stay tuned for an update soon!), and this plum sorbet makes three.  Not that that means there won’t be one or two more batches before the weather turns :-).  I was surprised by the simplicity and wholesomeness of this recipe – all you do is toss some plum halves with a bit of sugar and honey, blend, then freeze, and you have a gorgeously purple, refreshing, smooth sorbet.  Actually, the texture of this sorbet is easily the best of any homemade ice cream I’ve made – it doesn’t melt on contact with your spoon, and it has just enough airy-smoothness for my taste.  It’s another winning recipe from Suzanne Goin’s Sunday Suppers at Lucques, a book in which not a single recipe I’ve tried has been disappointing.  Suzanne suggests pairing this sorbet with these molasses cookies to make ice cream sandwiches, something I didn’t try this time around but definitely will in the future.

Counting sorbet as a “health” recipe for Greatist may seem a little suspect, but everyone needs a little something sweet sometimes – why not satisfy your cravings with a relatively light treat packed with fresh fruit?  You could even reduce the sugar somewhat, although your sorbet will freeze harder and be less creamy if you do so, as the sugar is one of the main things that keeps ice cream from freezing (read more here).  Head on over to Greatist for the recipe, and while you’re over there, check out their fun ice cream infographic.  (See, I’m not the only one who thinks ice cream has a place on health websites!)

Other tasty ice cream recipes from here…

• Lemon basil sorbet
• Cherry-chocolate ice cream
• Lemon buttermilk ice cream
• Roasted cinnamon ice cream
• Bailey’s fudge ripple ice cream

… and around the blogosphere

• Chocolate pretzel frozen custard from A Spicy Perspective
• Grapefruit and rosemary granita from In Sock Monkey Slippers
• Blackberry-cabernet sorbet from Gimme Some Oven
• Caramel brownie chunk nutella ice cream from Brave Tart
• Goat cheese ice cream with roasted strawberries from Heather Homemade
• Basil olive oil gelato from Cookie Talk

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Well, after 12 days of sunbathing, swimming, running, cooking, drinking, and catching up with family and friends, vacation is officially over.  This morning, at the very gray hour of 4:30am, we climbed into the car and made the long drive back to the hot and humid city.  I even had to go to work this afternoon.  Sigh.  But vacation ending isn’t all bad: I missed Trevor a teeny-tiny bit plus it’s good to be back in the garden – while I was gone the watermelon plant grew at least 3 feet, set out its blossoms, and is now covered in tiny watermelons.  The cherry tomatoes started ripening, there’s two baby figs on the tree, and we harvested our first summer squash this afternoon.  And it’s really nice to no longer be the whitest person in my office.  The bright side.

I’m not going to lie, I’m starting to nod off as I type (getting up that early is not really my jam), but I wanted to wrap up a wonderful vacation with a super summery treat – homemade ice cream sandwiches filled with Bailey’s Fudge Ripple ice cream.  Some ice cream recipes – like this one – are super simple, stir it together and throw it in the freezer types… this recipe does not fall into that category.  Making the ice cream itself is a bit time consuming, and when you throw in making the cookies and assembling the sandwiches it’s definitely only the sort of thing you’d do on vacation, or when you really felt like tackling a kitchen project.  However, the rich, slightly boozy, intensely coffee-flavored ice cream with a dense oreo ripple sandwiched between two soft chocolate cookies that is the result?  Worth the effort.  Even if that effort includes scraping off and reassembling your perfectly shaped ice cream sandwiches after not quite closing the freezer door overnight, not that I’m speaking from experience or anything…

Anyways, if you’re also getting back from a blissful vacation, I’d recommend looking at these and then buying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to fill the void.  If you’re lucky enough to still be on your blissful vacation, enjoy every second of it, and take the time to make yourself a little treat.

P.S. 100% disclosure?  I think I enjoy the classic $1.00 ice cream sandwich a tiny bit more than these (although maybe I’m just a purist).  But the ice cream recipe itself is totally worth making – serve it over  a brownie with a little bit of boiled down Bailey’s syrup for a real treat.

Bailey’s Fudge Ripple Ice Cream

Adapted from The Red Spoon, with a little inspiration from Tasty Kitchen.  Makes about 1 quart, or enough for 6-8 ice cream sandwiches.

• 1 1/4 c. Irish cream liquer, such as Bailey’s, divided
• 1 1/2 c. whole milk
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1 c. whole coffee beans
• 1 tsp instant espresso
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 5 egg yolks
• 2 c. oreos or other chocolate cookie

Ice Cream Sandwich Cookies

Adapted from The Cookie Dough Lover’s Cookbook via Brown Eyed Baker.  Makes 24 cookies (12 sandwiches).  Note: although I pretty much always make baked goods by hand (I don’t own a stand mixer), this is one recipe where I’d recommend using a mixer if you have one – the dough is very stiff and hard to work with, and I ended up kneading it by hand to get the best results.

• 1 stick (1/2 c.) salted butter, softened
• 1 1/4 c. light brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c. cocoa powder, sifted
• 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 c. flour
• 4 TBS room temperature water

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In a large bowl, cream together softened butter and brown sugar until fluffy.  Add vanilla and stir in.  In a separate bowl, sift together cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, and instant espresso.  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir until fully incorporated.
3. Add 1 c. of flour to the dough and mix until incorporated.  Add 2 TBS of water and stir until dough is even in color and moisture.  Repeat with the remaining 1 c. of flour and 2 TBS of water.  If necessary, knead by hand until dough is smooth and workable.
4. Lightly flour a work surface and rolling pin.  Roll half of the dough out into a rectangle 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick, and use cookie cutter to cut out rectangles.  Transfer to a baking sheet and freeze for 10 minutes.  Repeat with remaining dough.  Bake cookies for 7 minutes until just done.  Don’t overbake!  Let cool for 3 minutes on pan, then transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely.  Freeze cookies for at least 1 hour before assembling.

Ice Cream Sandwich Assembly

1. Remove the cookies from the freezer.  Tear out 6 medium-sized rectangles of plastic wrap, and lay two cookies side by side on each square.
2. Working as quickly as possible, remove ice cream from freezer and use rectangular cookie cutter to cut through ice cream.   Slide a large spatula under ice cream rectangle, holding cookie cutter in place as you work, and transfer the ice cream to one of the cookies.  Immediately sandwich the cookie, pressing down gently, wrap in plastic wrap, and put in freezer.  Repeat with remaining cookies and ice cream.

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Now that it’s officially summer and my nutso-busy project is (fingers-crossed) winding down (although I could be headed back to Spain in July), it’s time to get serious about summer.  It’s only for a few months a year, people!  This will be my first summer as a real person, meaning no vacation and no play-with-little-kids-in-the-sun-all-day summer job, and I’m already missing the dog-day boredom of waking up late, lying about in the sun and drinking lemonade, but I’m determined to make every weekend count.  So, I’m making a list (because, let’s face it, if you’re a list person you’ll always be a list person) of the 10 things I have to do this summer:

1. Go to the Cape.  I grew up spending summers in Falmouth and man do I miss the breeze, the foggy sea glass walks with my mom, the marshes, the seashells on the roads, and so many other tiny details.
2. Pick strawberries berries of some kind.  I think I may have missed strawberry picking season, but I certainly ate my fill.  I’ve got plenty of time for raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries though.
3. Learn to start the grill.  Or at least grill one thing.  I’m fairly certain I put this on my summer list last year but it appears I never actually published that list, so you can’t hold me accountable for not doing it.  I’m super jumpy around hot things, but Trevor can probably bully me into learning.
4. Make Cassis!  I searched everywhere for some fresh black currants last year with no luck.  This year I’m 100% determined to find them.
5. Visit the Harbor Islands.  I meant to do this all summer last year and never got around to it.
6. Ride my bike!  I just need to bite the bullet and buy a helmet… Man, I hate helmets.
7. Train for a half marathon.  I put this on here dubiously, given that I’m currently at about 5 miles max… and have been for the past 5 years.  But I told my mom I’d do one in October, and my knees aren’t bothering me anymore (knock on wood), and my metabolism seems to have abandoned me, so… I’ll do it.
8. Do a producer interview.  This is an idea I’ve been toying with for a long time – meeting and interviewing some of the super-committed food professionals in the area, but haven’t gotten around to.  I’d love to do it, and summer is the perfect time.
9. Plan a trip for this fall.  Now is the time to travel, and I keep putting it off for this reason or that reason.  This year has gone by so incredibly quickly, and I never managed to plan more than a weekend away.  I’m young, employed, and relatively free – I’ve got to start doing the things I dream about!
10. Make at least 3 kinds of ice cream…

… starting with this one.  Because it’s been really hot, and I just finished eating my first batch of ice cream (from March!  Who knew I had such self-control?)  Plus, I’m trying to work my way through at least a few of my bookmarked recipes for each super-seasonal fruit or veggie this summer, and cherries are in now.  Of course, cherries are pretty perfect straight from the fridge, but as the new owner of a cherry pitter (yes it’s a super-specific gadget, but it’s super easy to use and I’m totally happy with the $8 I spent on it), I’ve been using them other ways as well.

This ice cream, adapted from Technicolor Kitchen, is my favorite that I’ve made so far.  Of course, I’ve only made 3 others – meyer lemon buttermilk, roasted cinnamon, and lemon-basil sorbet – but this one was the most like one that I’d order at an ice cream shop.  I never seem to be able to get my homemade ice cream as solid as I want to (any tips on that?), but this froze fairly well.  The cherry flavor is sweet and intense, and the white and dark chocolate chunks add a little texture.  The addition of cassis just before freezing gives it a lovely floral, slightly boozy layer that really makes it shine.  It reminds me very much of the black raspberry ice cream my mom always ordered at Benson’s when we were on the way home from the beach (p.s. if you’re ever in Eastern Mass, you must try Benson’s – pair it with a trip to Crane’s Beach and a stop at the Clam Box for a true New England experience).  I never really liked that flavor as a kid, but I think it’s more of an adult thing – a little bit more intense and musky.

I’ll keep you posted on my summer activities, especially the food-related ones.  Hope you all are getting started on whatever summer activities you’re dreaming of!

Cherry and Two-Chocolate Ice Cream

Adapted from Technicolor Kitchen.  Makes 1 quart.

• 1 1/2 c. pitted ripe sweet cherries (from about 3/4 lb. cherries)
• 3/4 c. whole milk
• 1 3/4 c. heavy cream, divided
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 TBS creme de cassis
• 3/4 c. chocolate chunks – mix of dark chocolate and white chocolate

1. Add pitted cherries, milk, sugar, salt and 1 c. of the heavy cream to a large saucepan.  Heat over medium-low heat just until it begins to steam, stirring occasionally, then lower the heat to the lowest sitting and let sit for 15 minutes, crushing the cherries gently against the side of the pot with the back of a wooden spoon about halfway through.  After the 15 minutes is up, remove from heat.
2. Pour the hot mixture into a blender and blend (always be careful blending hot liquids) until smooth.  Pour into a large glass bowl, and stir in remaining 3/4 c. heavy cream.  Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for several hours or overnight until completely chilled.
3. Before assembling the ice cream maker (if your ice cream maker is like mine, the bowl should have been sitting in the freezer for at least 12 hours), remove the cherry cream from the fridge and stir in the lemon juice and cassis.  Set up ice cream maker, and process cherry cream according to directions.  About 1-2 minutes before the ice cream is done, pour in the chocolate chunks and let mix in.  Remove the ice cream from the ice cream maker and freeze for another 1-2 hours before serving, to let it harden up a bit.  This is delicious served with an extra drizzle of cassis.

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Now that summer is in full swing, it’s ice-cream time.  For my birthday this year, my parents got me the cuisinart ice cream maker – one of those cute bright red ones – that had been at the top of my kitchen wish list.  Soon after my birthday (in April it was already summer in North Carolina), I made the inaugural batch of frozen goodness, a lemon-basil sorbet with such a strong, refreshing flavor that if I ever have a fancy-schmancy restaurant, this will be the palate cleanser I serve on a spoon between courses.  It was awesome, and I was super proud of it.  Then came graduation, and May, and I packed up the ice cream maker along with the rest of my belongings and tucked it away into the U-box I had ordered, which I had been assured I would receive within 5-7 days of putting it in their hands.  (If you don’t like frustrating customer service stories that might also be construed as plain old whining, skip to the recipe now.)

Ha.  Hahaha.  That did not work out exactly as planned.  Or at all as planned.  From the moment I arrived home from Miami and saw that Megan’s box was still sitting in the parking lot 5 days after it was supposed to be picked up, I had a bad feeling about U-box.  Then I called the office and they had lost the online reservation I had made a month in advance.  Now I had a really bad feeling about U-box.  Then they didn’t drop it off until 5 minutes before closing time.  Then, when I called and really needed them to pick it up by 1 in order to make my flight home, I spent half my moving day on hold, and the guy with the trailer didn’t show up until 5 minutes before my cab arrived to take me to the airport.   Not to mention the fact that every time I did manage to speak to a person they said, “now this is getting stored in Chapel Hill, correct?”  “No,” I would answer, “it’s getting shipped to Massachusetts.”  By the time they drove away with all of my personal belongings, U-box was pretty much at the top of my least favorite companies list.  After Time Warner Cable and The Belmont.

About 10 days later, after several more calls to remind them that it was supposed to end up in Massachusetts, I received an email saying my box had arrived.  “I guess I should have given them the benefit of the doubt,” I thought.  Upon arrival at the storage facility, the guy clipped off the lock (I forgot my keys), opened the bolts, swung open the door and… voila!  It was not my stuff.  My name was written on the box in sharpie.  The serial code matched the one on my order.  But the belongings were not mine.  Luckily, I had snapped a picture of the serial code on my actual box just before it pulled away.  So, in an ideal world, they should be able to track it down pretty quickly.  Sigh.  Not so much.  To make a long story just a little bit less long, it took them 5 days to find the box in Texas, another 10 days to actually ship the box from Texas (so much for expedited), and 3 days in transit.  All told, it took over a month from the day the box left to receive my stuff (I really started missing my shoes, man), probably over 8 hours on the phone with 6 different offices, and a whole lot of headache before the issue was resolved.  You, too, can have this experience for only $800!  Ugh.

In the meantime, I’ve been craving this sorbet.  Every time I walk by the basil and get a whiff of it I think, mmm, sorbet.  Too bad I can’t make any.  But, the past is the past, all’s well that ends well, forgive and forget, etc: I have my ice cream maker, and ice cream has been made!  Like I said, made at full intensity, this sorbet is too strong flavored to eat a full bowl of it – it makes a better amuse bouche or palate cleanser.  Watered down a bit though, it’s infinitely refreshing.  The basil really comes through and adds a little bit of herbal intrigue to every bite.  So here’s to summer, fresh herbs, ice cream makers, and having my shoes back.

Lemon-Basil Sorbet

Makes about 4 cups.

• 1 c. sugar
• 2 c. water
• 15-20 large leaves fresh basil
• zest of one lemon
• 1 c. lemon juice

1. In a medium saucepan, heat water and sugar over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar is completely dissolved.  Remove from heat, and add basil and lemon zest.  Let steep for 10-15 minutes, then remove and discard the basil leaves and mix the lemon juice into the syrup. Place the mixture in the fridge for at least 2 hours, until completely chilled.  Set up ice cream maker, then pour the chilled mixture into the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.  Note: for stronger flavored, but slushier sorbet, reduce the water to 1 cup and the lemon juice to 1/2 cup.

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