It is well and truly summer in Boston, at least for now. Today it’s 91° and hazy hot (91! In May! My coworker in Madrid says its hotter here in Boston than in Spain, which almost never happens). The trees have gone from the pale green of spring to the deep green of mid-summer. The zucchini plants are growing by inches every day, and the tomatoes could not be happier (although the delicate foxgloves flop over in the midday sun). The other morning I walked out of the subway station to find a group of 3rd graders on a field trip and the smell of sunscreen hit me full force. It made me smile – the idea of being outside all day, hot and steamy, running through sprinklers and guzzling cold lemonade. The smells of summer are the best – freshly mowed grass, hot pavement, salty sea air. I get tired of summer fast, but for now, it’s a novelty, and I love it.

Last weekend, I was at a beach house on the Jersey Shore for my college roommate’s bachelorette party. Friday the weather was absolutely perfect, and we spent the morning and early afternoon sitting out in the sun, drinking shandies, walking on the beach, and playing cornhole. Around 2, someone had the idea of walking to the ice cream parlor about a mile away and my heart lit up. An ice cream cone with homemade ice cream, eaten on the boardwalk looking out at the beach? The definition of happiness.  The definition of summer. So we put on our shoes and walked the mile to the store – only to find that it wasn’t open until the next day! And of course Saturday was cold and rainy and no one wanted ice cream anymore (except secretly, I did). So I’ve spent all week thinking about that lost ice cream cone, and then it got hot and sunny in Boston and my ice cream fantasies morphed into ice cream float daydreams (inspired by last year’s Bon Appetit article), and here we are, Memorial Day Weekend, and I have boozy, dreamy, Tahini Caramel Ice Cream Floats for you.

This ice cream is an evolution of my favorite recipe, which started with the NY Times Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream, morphed into Blackberry Goat Cheese Ice Cream, and here takes the form of Tahini Caramel Date Ice Cream. The custard is almost as thick fridge-cold as it is frozen, which is just the way I like it. For the floats, pour a splash of bourbon in the glass, top with cream soda, add a scoop of ice cream, more cream soda, then finally top with whipped cream and a drizzle of extra caramel and you will be in instant ice cream heaven. For kids, just skip the bourbon. This combination of flavors – dates, tahini, caramel, cream soda, and bourbon – went above and beyond what I was dreaming of. Now I just have to make the ice cream last the whole weekend.

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Tahini Caramel Ice Cream Floats

Serves 2. Inspired by Bon Appetit.

• 2 oz. Bourbon
• 1 bottle cream soda
• 2 scoops Tahini Caramel Date Ice Cream, recipe below
• whipped cream
• Tahini Caramel Sauce, for drizzling

1. Add 1 oz. Bourbon to the bottom of two glasses or sundae dishes. Top each with a splash of cream soda and 1 scoop of ice cream. Pour remaining cream soda over ice cream until glass is almost full. Top floats with whipped cream and tahini caramel sauce.

Tahini Caramel Date Ice Cream

A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipe, originally inspired by NY Times. Makes 1 1/2 quarts ice cream.

• 7 egg yolks
• 1 c. sugar, divided
• 1 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 c. whole milk
• 10 whole pitted dates
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 oz. neufchatel / low-fat cream cheese
• 1 cup of Tahini Caramel Sauce

1. Whisk the egg yolks and 1/2 cup of the sugar together in a large, heatproof bowl, until yolks are pale yellow. Set aside.
2. Add heavy cream, whole milk, dates, and remaining 1/2 cup of sugar to a large saucepan. Whisk briefly to combine, then heat over medium-low heat, whisking occasionally. When the cream mixture comes to a gentle simmer, remove from the heat and immediately transfer to a high-powered blender. Blend on high until dates are fully incorporated into the cream (always be extra careful when blending hot liquids!). Pour the hot cream mixture directly over the egg yolks, whisking the egg yolks vigorously as you do so to temper the yolks. Then return the mixture to the saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, until custard is thick, about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat.
3. Strain the custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean bowl, discarding any solids that are left behind. Stir the vanilla extract into the strained custard. Add the cream cheese to the custards in small pieces, and whisk until cream cheese is fully melted into the custard. Cover the custard tightly and refrigerate until cold, at least 3 hours but ideally overnight.
4. Freeze the ice cream according to the directions of your ice cream maker. Just before the ice cream is done churning, drizzle the caramel sauce into the top of the ice cream maker so it swirls into the ice cream. Alternatively, you can transfer the churned ice cream to a loaf pan, drizzle the caramel sauce on top, and use a spatula to swirl the caramel into the ice cream. Transfer the ice cream to a container, cover tightly, and freeze until firm enough to scoop.

The post Boozy Memorial Day Ice Cream Floats – Tahini Caramel Ice Cream, Cream Soda, and Bourbon appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I think maybe I overdid it on cherries this year. For me, cherries are the epitome of the “get ’em while you can” mentality that comes over me every time some new type of produce comes into season. Cherries just seem so fleeting, and they’re really at their best eaten fresh, unadultered. They can be expensive, but usually there’s a week or two when stores are trying to clear out their supplies before they go bad when you can get better prices. Long story short, a few weeks back, when Wholefoods announced a one-day sale on cherries for $1.99 a pound, I went a little crazy and bought 7 pounds. On top of that, I still had 3 pounds in the fridge from a previous grocery store shopping spree. I can tell you from personal experience, 10 pounds is a lot of cherries, even for the most rabid cherry consumer.

So I got out my cherry pitter and went to work. Plenty of the cherries got put aside for eating fresh and several pounds got simmered in brandy and red wine and packed away in jars for holiday eating. After this, I had about 2 pounds of cherries left, all of them a little sadder and more bruised than their fresh-eating counterparts. I toyed with the idea of making more jam to add to the pile of newly-filled ball jars that has been slowly building on our shelves, but really, the thing I couldn’t get out of my mind was fresh cherry soda. So I turned to my copy of True Brews and quickly whipped up a batch of Cherry-Vanilla Soda. If you have cherries to spare, please make this soda – it is so sweet and fizzy and refreshing, and it’s a gorgeous clear cherry-red color. Just a little glass feels like a special treat. And it’s even more of a special treat if you add a dash of bourbon and chocolate extract, like we did for this cocktail. The mixture of cherries and bourbon and chocolate feels very Southern and indulgent, a drink for sipping slowly on your porch at twilight, when the heat finally begins to fade.

Ingredient note: I’m not sure you can still buy the Taza Mexican chocolate extract we used for flavoring – I looked for a link to direct you all to, but learned that it was only produced from 2010-2013. You can read about it here, but I couldn’t find any online vendors selling it. It’s more similar to a chocolate baking extract than a chocolate bitters – something like this might work in its place.

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Cherry-Chocolate Bourbon Soda

Serves 1.

• 3/4 c. homemade cherry-vanilla soda (recipe below) or other cherry soda
• 15 drops Taza Mexican chocolate extract
• 1 oz. Bourbon

1. Add the soda, chocolate extract, and bourbon to a glass with several ice cubes in it. Stir gently, then serve immediately.

Homemade Cherry Vanilla Soda

Recipe adapted from True Brews. Makes 8 cups.

• 2 lbs. of pitted fresh cherries
• 4 limes
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 c. water, plus more to fill the bottles
• 9 TBS sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp dry champagne yeast

1. Place the cherries, lime juice, and vanilla in a large bowl. Bring the cup of water to a boil, then stir in the sugar and salt until dissolved. Pour the mixture over the cherries and let macerate for 10 minutes.
2. Place the cherries and their liquid in a blender and blend until smooth. Strain the puree through a fine mesh strainer, catching the juice in a bowl. Pour the cherry juice through a funnel into a clean 2-liter soda bottle (do not use glass, as it may break under the pressure of the fermentation process). Add water to the bottle to fill almost to the top, leaving at least 1 inch of headspace between the top of the juice and the cap. Taste and add more lime juice, sugar, or vanilla as desired.
3. Add the yeast to the bottle. Screw on the cap and shake to distribute the yeast. Let the bottle sit at room temperature out of direct sunlight until the bottle feels rock solid when you press against the sides. This carbonation process usually takes 12 to 48 hours: check the bottle periodically to avoid overcarbonation and a potentially bursted bottle. Once the soda is carbonated, place it in the fridge to slow the carbonation process. Open very slowly over a sink the first time you serve it, to avoid bubble-ups. Serve cold. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

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I’m teasing you a little bit with this headline: you don’t get recipes for all three home brews in this post, only the soda. For the other two, you’re going to have to go out and get a copy of Emma Christensen’s True Brews. And it’s not because I don’t want to share, I do. It’s just that I couldn’t make the daunting process of brewing your own beverages at home seem nearly as clear and easy as Emma does, so I want to leave most of the explaining to the expert. Because that’s exactly what Emma is, and True Brews is a fantastic (and fun) resource for anyone looking to get their hands dirty with fermenting their own soda, kombucha, kefir, cider, beer, mead, sake, or fruit wine. Certainly, you could find much larger tomes dedicated solely to the science behind brewing any one of these beverages, but for someone who just wants an easy introduction or who likes to dabble, True Brews is the perfect starting point.

This review has been a long-time in the making. For three months there have been buckets of brews bubbling away in our new house, turning rice into sake, blackberries into blackberry wine, and homegrown watermelon into fizzy soda. Now that all three recipes are finished, it’s time to have some friends over for a tasting party – that is, before we get started on our next project! (Cranberry mead, if you’re curious).  Like most DIY food projects – cheese-making, charcuterie, bread-baking, canning – home-brewing takes time, practice, patience and a small investment in the necessary equipment. I have to say, so far, brewing is a bit more rewarding than the other projects we’ve tried – it’s less labor-intensive and the results are faster and more consistent. Plus, drinking a glass of mead that’s a little too dry is a lot more enjoyable than trying to eat a piece of cheese that didn’t cure properly.

True Brews both clearly covers the basics for all kinds of brewing, and provides a number of appealing recipes to get you started. I’m really impressed by how not-daunting this book makes the whole process. Any questions we’ve had have been explicitly answered, and all three of our recipes worked out, even though Trevor wanted to start with the “advanced” sake recipe, which requires feeding the sake a little specially prepared rice every few days for almost two weeks. I started more simply, with the watermelon-mint soda, which was a snap to make – 24 hours after cutting up the watermelon, I was sipping a super fizzy, refreshing, slightly sweet soda. I can’t wait to make a few more varieties; it’s really the best soda I’ve ever tried. And the blackberry wine was enjoyable too, in a completely different way – it’s sort of thin and has a bit more tang than most wines, but with a pleasant aroma of ripe berries and a uniqueness that makes you want to finish the glass. Not to mention, it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous color, and completely translucent. I’m not really a sake drinker, but the sake is OK too – it’s breadier than sake is supposed to be, but a chilled glass is still good, if not craveable. Because the first three recipes were successful, I’m eager to try more recipes – besides the cranberry mead, I have my eye on the Sweet Spiced Apple Cider, the Jamaican Ginger Beer, and the Apricot Wheat Ale. I feel like my drinking choices just got a whole lot more awesome.

The bottom line: True Brews is an excellent primer on fermenting your own home-brews, both alcoholic (cider, beer, mead, sake, wine) and kid-friendly (soda, kombucha, and kefir). Emma covers the basics clearly and succinctly, making home-brewing accessible, appealing, and fun. The recipes are diverse and turn out impressively, and the enticing photography and clean design make this book the complete package. This may be a little light on new and detailed information for a seasoned brewer, but for someone just starting out, it’s perfect.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of True Brews from Ten Speed Press, but was not otherwise compensated for writing this review. All opinions are my own, as always.

Watermelon-Mint Soda

Recipe from True Brews. Makes 2 liters.

• 4 pounds seeded, cubed watermelon (from a 6 pound watermelon)
• 1/2 c. packed fresh mint leaves
• 1/2 c. freshly squeezed lime juice (from 4-5 limes)
• 1 cup water, plus more to fill the bottle
• 9 TBS white sugar, plus more to taste if needed
• pinch of salt
• 1/8 tsp dry champagne yeast (purchase at your local home-brew store)

1. To make soda you will need a clean, 2-liter plastic soda bottle, a blender, a fine-mesh strainer, and a funnel. Make sure all of your equipment is clean before you start.
2. Combine the watermelon, mint, and lime juice in a large bowl and set aside. Place 1 cup of water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat, add the sugar and a pinch of salt, and stir to dissolve. Pour the hot syrup over the watermelon, stir briefly to coat all fruit in the syrup, and let stand for 10 minutes.
3. In batches, blend the watermelon mixture into a smooth puree, then strain the puree through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean bowl, stirring the puree to allow as much juice as possible to run into the bowl without pushing any of the solids through the strainer. If you want a very smooth soda, line your strainer with a piece of cheesecloth.
4. Pour the juice into the the clean 2-liter soda bottle. Add water to almost fill the bottle, leaving around 1 inch of headspace at the top. Taste, and add a little more sugar or lime juice if desired.
5. Add the yeast to the bottle. Screw on the cap and shake the bottle to dissolve and distribute the yeast. Let the bottle sit at room temperature out of direct sunlight for 12 to 48 hours – the soda will ferment more quickly in a warmer room. When the bottle feels rock solid, with very little give, the soda is ready. Place it in the fridge overnight or for up to two weeks. Open slowly over a sink to release the pressure (sodas can easily overcarbonate). You can transfer to pretty glass bottles to serve the soda, but always store it in the plastic bottle to prevent explosions.

The post Book Club: True Brews // Blackberry Wine, Homemade Sake, and Watermelon Soda appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Four of my best girlfriends have their birthdays in between mid-September and the end of October.  For each of them, I am making cupcakes, because that is the best way that I can think of to show my love. And also because who doesn’t love things that are small, pink, delicate, and, most importantly, edible?  I’m of the opinion that everyone should have something both cute and slightly indulgent on their birthday.  Because each of my friends is lovely and wonderful and unique, each of them clearly had to have their own highly-personalized batch of cupcakes.  Here’s what I made, for whom, and why.

Becky. Shirley Temple Cupcakes. Becky and I have been friends for an extremely long time.  In fact, I think she might be the oldest friend I have whom I’m still in touch with, besides like, my baby brother.  And my mom.  You know.  We used to jump rope together and write stupid ridiculously girly letters to boys while at the beach.  We used to have a fake joint AIM account we used to harass our crushes.  I went to her bat mitzvah.  She threw me an incredible surprise birthday party in 8th grade.  I have some really epic pictures of us in our awkward stages.  We ended up at the same high school, where we grew apart a little, but would still go on long, long walks once every few weeks to catch up and then we would get cold and it would be gray and we would continue talking in long uninterrupted streams in Starbucks.  We both got accepted at Duke, and by complete chance ended up two doors apart from each other in our freshman year.  We got close again, made the same friends, dressed in matching outfits to go to parties, had a few drunken adventures.  We started an excellent tradition of girl talk with Megan and Phoebe.  And now we’re seniors, we live a few buildings apart, and we’ve officially been friends for 11 years.  Wow.

It’s because of all this… past, that I decided to make shirley temple cupcakes for Becky.  Because we were already close when we were young enough to get excited about ordering shirley temples out at dinner.  And I seem to have a very vague memory of some chicken fingers and shirley temples and something that felt unbearably funny late at night during a jump rope trip.  And they are just innocent and sweet and their appeal is enduring, and it seemed appropriate.  The cupcakes have a grenadine based cake batter topped with a lemon-lime cream cheese frosting.  They came out well – a lovely color, fluffy texture that reminded me of the box mix texture that can be hard to achieve from scratch, very sweet, and a simple flavor.

Shirley Temple Cupcakes

Recipe from The Cupcake Project. Makes 15.

• 1/2 c. lemon-lime soda
• 1/2 c. grenadine
• 1 tsp vinegar (cider, white wine, or white will all work)
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. canola oil
• 1 1/3 c. flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 oz. neufchatel cheese, room temperature
• 3 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp lime juice
• 3 c. powdered sugar
• 15 maraschino cherries with stems

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together soda, grenadine, and vinegar.  Let stand for a few minutes, then add sugar and canola oil and whisk until frothy.
3. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and stir to combine.
4. Add flour mixture to liquid.  Stir together just to combine fully; do not overmix.  Spoon batter into cupcake liners, filling half way (they will rise a lot).  Bake for 17 minutes.  Let cool completely.
5. In a medium bowl, beat cheese until smooth.  Add lemon and lime juices (a small amount of lemon and lime extracts might work better here, but I couldn’t find them in my local grocery store) and beat to combine.  Add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time, beating to incorporate fully.  Continue adding powdered sugar until taste and consistency are as desired – you may need more or less than 3 cups of sugar, and you may need to add more lemon or lime juice to achieve the desired flavor.  Refrigerate the finished frosting for half an hour.
6. Frost the cooled cupcakes.  Top with a maraschino cherry.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Phoebe.  Strawberry-Lemonade Angel Cakes. Phoebe and I were hall neighbors freshman year.  I don’t really remember when we went from awkwardly saying hi in the hallway to having intense late night conversations sitting on the bathroom floor, but it happened, and I’m glad.  Now, although we don’t see each other very frequently, she is one of my absolute favorite people to talk with.  We both spent the summer trapped in Durham and we spent a significant part of every week sitting in the library chatting and debating and laughing while she pretended to study for orgo and I pretended to do research.  Although I’m pretty sure she actually did accomplish learning orgo while the achievements I made in my research this summer were minimal.  Not that I didn’t try.  I think frustration is the point of research.  Anyway.  One of the things I love about Phoebe is her respect for people’s individuality.  She always makes me feel good about what makes me me – loving to be outside, wanting to take care of people, being mellow when it comes to my social life – and she shows equal dedication to and respect for friends that are completely different from me.  And also she’s intelligent and focused and way cooler than me and beautiful.

I made Phoebe lemon-based angel food cupcakes because she loves them.  The first time I made a similar batch we ate them sitting out on the dock by the scummy Belmont pond, and she told me how her mom used to make angel food cake for her birthday every year, and so how could I not make them?  This version of the recipe was super good, at least in my opinion.  The cake had a true lemonade tang and the fresh strawberries really shone through in the frosting.  They were zippy.  I could eat a lot of them.

Strawberry-Lemonade Angel Cakes

Makes 12.

• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. cake flour
• 5 egg whites
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 2 tsp lemonade mix powder
• 4 oz. neufchatel cheese, room temperature
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 5-8 fresh strawberries, diced
• 3 c. powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. In a small bowl, sift together 1/4 c. sugar with cake flour.  Set aside.
3. Beat egg whites until they begin to foam.  Add cream of tartar and continue beating until they are white and fairly fluffy.  Add salt, incorporate.  While continuing to beat egg whites vigorously, slowly add remaining 1/2 c. of sugar in a slow stream.  Beat until egg whites form soft peaks.
4. Fold flour mixture into egg whites, mixing just to incorporate flour fully.  Add lemonade powder (I used 2 packets of crystal light to go) and fold in.
5. Spoon batter into cupcake liners, filling 3/4 of the way.  Bake for 15 minutes.  Allow to cool completely.
6. In a medium bowl, beat neufchatel cheese until smooth.  Add lemon juice and strawberries and stir to incorporate.  Add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time until desired consistency is reached.  You may need more or less than 3 cups of sugar.

So happy birthday September girls!  And Megan, Margie, get excited.   Start leaving me hints about your favorite flavors.  Or, better yet, start trying to get me to associate your personality with the type of cupcake you want.  That could be a fun experiment.

Want some more?

Cupcake Lovin’, Part Two

The post Cupcake Lovin’, Part One appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.