I made lemon ice cream!

I have been itching to make ice cream, to use the beautiful Cuisinart ice cream maker I bought a couple of years ago with a birthday gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma. I decided to give it its first run of this summer with a recipe for lemon ice cream that I found on epicurious.com, and switched up just a little bit.  It made a beautiful, creamy, and very pucker-worthy lemon ice cream. It's absolutely delicious, and if you love anything or everything lemon like I do, it's a home run!

Here's what I did:

To make the custard, in a medium sauce pan, I whisked together:

1 cup heavy cream (original recipe called for half-and-half)
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest (I used a little more)
1/2 cup lemon juice
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I then heated the mixture over medium heat, whisking constantly, until it came to a true simmer, with little bubbles forming and breaking on the outside edge of the pot. I took it off the heat and whisked in:

1 cup whole milk (original recipe called for half-and-half)

Then...

I poured the hot mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a pyrex bowl, pressing the lemon zest with a wooden spoon to get as much flavor into the liquid as possible, and covered the custard with a piece of plastic wrap. I put it in the fridge over night.

This morning, I poured the chilled custard into the ice cream maker's pre-frozen bowl, and turned it on. I set my kitchen timer for 18 minutes, and kept busy doing morning stuff while it churned, like unloading/loading the dishwasher, made my breakfast, decided what to wear to work -- the every day stuff.

When the timer sounded, I was amazed at just how beautiful this ice cream is. It's light in color, creamy, and has a perfect texture.  It is so so so so lemony! I loaded up my new ice cream canister I bought over the weekend at TJ Maxx (Maxx for the minimum!) and placed it in my freezer until I could get home from work for the true test - a bit of the lemon ice cream in a bowl with a spritz of whipped cream. Actually (sadly) this was in place of eating a wonderful, healthy, balanced dinner, but sometimes, it's not just eat dessert first, it's eat dessert as if it IS dinner! That's what happened in my kitchen tonight!

Now I'm thinking of how many variations of ice cream I can come up with. I think my next batch might be "Drumstick" like the ice cream cones you can find in the freezer section of the grocery store. I'd make a basic vanilla ice cream, add some chocolate Magic Shell pieces, broken up sugar cone pieces, and some chopped peanuts! Can't wait to experiment with more flavors!

Light, creamy, and refreshing
on a hot summer night!

Baking and Writing, Writing and Baking!

Progress report: I had a great lunch meeting with a good writing friend M.M. (good friend, and good writer!), and we're supporting each other with our writing projects. We set goals and dates to meet again, which is both exciting and inspiring! We'll meet again August 1st to report on our progress and to set new goals. It's great to have support like this as I dig in to my cookbook project!

Meanwhile, the baking continues. This post is short and very, very sweet with four cakes I baked this past weekend, all for special people celebrating special occasions! Photos follow!

Hope you enjoy - no more cakes for a few weeks (she says gratefully!). I LOVE baking cakes for my friends and family, but being so busy with the full-time job and other baking projects, I welcome a short reprieve before the next cake is scheduled for July 12th (right, AP?!). Anyway…all work and no play, you know… :)

PS - please think about sharing YOUR favorite family recipe and, even more, the story behind it for consideration for my cookbook project!  Contact me with your story and recipe at adirondackbaker@gmail.com!