TWD: Vanilla Ice Cream

I've definitely been enjoying my ice cream maker this summer, so I was excited to see that Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu picked vanilla ice cream for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. Excited, that is, until I saw that this was one of those egg/custard kinds of ice cream. Some people learn to deal with their weaknesses by facing them head on until they conquer them; I prefer to deal with my weaknesses by avoiding them. And since there are wonderfully delicious Philadelphia-style (non-custard based) vanillas out there, it has been gloriously easy for me to avoid dealing with eggs in my ice creams. But I wanted to be a good sport and give the custard thing one more try. And this time, I was armed with some incredibly helpful comments and suggestions left by my fellow bloggers after my last custard failure. So I went into this one feeling really optimistic.

The main thing I took away from the honey-peach debacle is to ditch the thermometer. The thermometer's great if you want to figure out the interior temperature of your challah, or whether your steak is medium rare, but it can really mess with your head when you are trying to make custard. I do have my eye on a more custard-friendly thermometer that I might ask for my birthday or Christmas (along with some equally sentimental gift like a biscuit cutter) but until then, I decided to trust the spoon test and (shudder) my own common sense. And it worked like a charm! It only took the base 2 or 3 minutes to pass the spoon test. Now that I know what the custard is supposed to look like, I am very grateful that my family survived my honey peach ice cream, given how appallingly overcooked the custard for that actually was (I probably cooked that one for 30 minutes trying in vain to get it to reach temperature). I feel lucky that we all got away that time with nothing worse than "grainy mouth feel."


But there was no grainy mouth feel this time - this vanilla was delicious, and smooth as silk. It kept its wonderful texture even after a couple of days in the freezer, which might be the main benefit to using eggs in the ice cream. In terms of flavor, it's almost impossible for me to choose whether I like this one or David Lebovitz's Philadelphia-style vanilla better without an actual side-by-side taste test. They are both fabulous. I'm probably more likely to stick with the Philadelphia-style, simply because it has one less step for me to potentially mess up. But I loved Dorie's vanilla, and am glad to have finally conquered custard.

Thanks for this great pick, Lynne!

TWD: Honey Peach Ice Cream

Everyone is familiar with the old saying "if at first you don't succeed, try try again." I remember my mother cheerfully chirping that one to me as a kid if I messed up in soccer or didn't understand my math homework. I feel like old sayings with staying power get that way for a reason - they have merit, they embody wisdom, they hold some universal truth. And so, despite my multiple failures, I have continued to try to make custard, time and time again, like the good old adage-follower that I am. But this saying does not promise eventual success. It just tells you to keep trying. There is no follow up, no instructions for what to do "if at second you don't succeed." (Although I do think that the saying implies that you should try at least twice more after your first failed attempt -- "try try again" - that's two more tries.) But I have to believe that if we could ask the author of that saying what we should do if we keep try-trying and not-not succeeding, he would say "if at fifth you don't succeed, you really need to move on."

And that's where I find myself with custard. Custard is not my friend. I can't put my finger on exactly why things tend to break down for me when I make custard, but break down they do. And since custard was required for this week's TWD selection, Honey Peach Ice Cream, you can probably guess how it turned out for me.

But first, let's discuss what did work. My peach puree.


That simply required peeling and cutting up peaches, boiling them with honey, and then pureeing them with an immersion blender. Apparently some people really hate peeling peaches and will go to great lengths to avoid it. My bloggy friend Di and I have a deal that if we ever live near each other, I'll peel her peaches and she'll make my custard. I totally get the better end of that bargain.
Now let's discuss the more complicated matter of what did not work.


I know the drill by now. Whisk egg yolks & sugar in one bowl, boil milk in a different bowl, add a small amount of milk to the eggs to temper them, add the rest of the milk slowly while whisking vigorously. But this time, we had to pour the egg/sugar/milk mixture back into the pan and cook over medium heat until it hit between 170 and 180 degrees.

Kitchen thermometers mysteriously refuse to hit the desired temperature when they are taking the temperature of custard in my kitchen. When this first started happening, I thought that maybe the cheap thermometer I bought at Target or the grocery store just wasn't reliable, so I started diverting my children's college savings to fancy Williams-Sonoma thermometers in the hopes of ending my custard temperature-taking woes.


That's my fancy candy thermometer, hanging out at 155 degrees, a full 20 degrees shy of where it needed to be. It pretty much didn't budge from there, other than to drop a few degrees from time to time.

So I broke out my fancy new instant read and double teamed the custard:


Well, I can report, in true Consumer Reports fashion, that kitchen thermometers at all price points that are used to take the temperature of custard in my kitchen will reliably register readings that are a solid 20 degrees lower than required.

So my custard boiled and boiled away, never getting above 155 degrees. In addition to the temperature test for determining whether the custard is done, Dorie describes a "spoon test," in which the custard coats the back of a spoon, and if you run your finger down the bowl of the spoon, the custard won't run into the track. Well, I tried the spoon test, and it seemed to be holding the track. But then when I'd bend down to squint and read my thermometers while holding the spoon, the custard seemed to drip back into the track, so I started to doubt that it was satisfying the spoon test, especially since the custard appeared to be way short of hitting temperature.

I finally bailed after about 30+ minutes. As soon as it came off the heat, I knew that it was way overdone, probably by a good 20 minutes. I mixed the custard with the peach puree, refrigerated, and churned the ice cream the next night.

My first thought when I tasted it was "grainy." David didn't really notice the graininess, but he did think that it tasted like there was a film on it. I think that's even worse than grainy. The flavor was okay, as copious amount of peaches, honey, sugar, milk and cream have a way of keeping things from being truly awful no matter what you do to them, but I am sure the flavor was nothing like what it would have been had I not ruined the custard AGAIN.

The honey peach ice cream was chosen by Tommi of Brown Interior. Tommi, you couldn't have picked a better June recipe than this one, and I'm so bummed that I ruined it. I know that this had to be incredible for all the TWDers who cooked their custard for 5 minutes instead of 45.

Chocolate Banded Ice Cream Torte

This week's challenge comes from Amy of Food, Family and Fun. This is only my second TWD recipe, and to be candid, something about it scared the fool out of me. Maybe it was the ganache. But then I remembered the Fancy Nancy books I read to my kids, and told myself "ganache is just a fancy way of saying chocolate, butter, sugar and eggs all mixed up together." Pep talk delivered, I got back to the recipe and was delighted to realize that I was lacking an essential tool needed to make the torte and therefore had to go shopping. So step one was to stop by one of my very favorite retailers for an 8 inch springform pan.


Rounding out my shopping preparations was a trip to the packy to purchase Chambord. I always feel like I am doing something naughty when I go into a package store, even though I have been legal for nearly 15 years. The guy working there was chain smoking, heavily tatooed and pierced, and wearing headphones and a Jane's Addiction t-shirt. He pointed me to a ginormous bottle of Chambord. I told him I only needed a tablespoon for a recipe and asked if there was a smaller bottle. No, just the big bottle. Seeing as the Chambord was over $60 and an optional ingredient, I almost bagged it, but then Rocker Boy convinced me that it was a timeless classic with any chocolate/raspberry dessert, would be delightful in hot chocolate on a cold winter's night, and would last for years. I have always been a salesperson's dream come true, and to the surprise of no one who knows me, I bought the Chambord.

Next hurdle was dealing with the seeds of doubt planted in my head by posts on the TWD website calling attention to the fact that the ganache contained raw eggs. I hadn't really zoned in on that fact when I first read the recipe. I asked Amanda if she was worried, and she said that she was not, as she eats raw eggs every time she bakes. Excellent point, Amanda. I am also a veteran batter eater, but somehow it doesn't seem like a few licks of batter should count towards your daily salmonella allowance in quite the way that 8 raw eggs in three layers of chocolate might. I ended up using a tip from savvy TWD-ers and found pasteurized eggs at Publix:


I have no idea how they pasteurize eggs. Come to think of it, I have no idea how they pasteurize anything. But now that I know they have these on the market, I may well buy them every time I bake, so that I can eat the batter with abandon. Okay, moving on from all this salmonella talk.

I started with the ganache. Once I got past the fancy French name, it didn't sound too terribly difficult, and it really wasn't. The chocolate and butter melted nicely in the bowl over the pan; I didn't have the separation issues that Dorie mentioned in the book.

The humble beginnings of the ganache:



The sugar and eggs whisked right in. I worried a bit that mine didn't have any bubbles, and therefore there didn't seem to be any reason to whack the bowl on the side of the counter to de-bubble it, but I did it anyway, because who doesn't like to whack things every now and then? It looked, smelled and tasted so rich that I felt guilty just being in the same room with it. The finished ganache:



It spread into the pan easily enough, and I stuck it in the freezer and moved on to the ice cream. I used Mayfield Vanilla, which was very good, but hardly super premium. I added it to the pureed raspberries and, of course, the Chambord, a.k.a. The World's Most Expensive Tablespoon:

The ice cream was UNBELIEVABLY delicious. That had to be because of the Chambord! I was a little worried that my texture wasn't right, however. Despite my conservative food processor pulsing, it seemed a little closer to the liquid end of the spectrum than it did the creamy end of the spectrum. So I fretted that it would be a little icy and not quite creamy enough once it refroze inside the torte.

I layered it all up. This recipe requires a wait time of 15 to 30 minutes between layers to let each new layer set. That worked well for me because everything I do happens in 15 to 30 minute bursts. The torte-making night went something like "spread ganache, give the kids baths, spread ice cream, read the kids books, spread ganache, deal with laundry, spread ice cream, watch Olympics, spread ganache, go to bed." I feel certain that the reality TV show trucks will be rolling up to my house any day now.

I was pretty sure that my layers were uneven. I am not good at eyeballing "one third of the ganache" or "half the ice cream." Instructions like this cause me angst every time. I am not an eyeballer. My grandmother, who was a phenomenal baker, did not even own measuring cups or spoons -- she eyeballed everything. I inherited her love of baking, but sadly, I did not inherit her talent for eyeballing. Also, my second ganache layer still seemed a little soft after 30 minutes and probably needed more time to set, but I am just not patient about such things, so I went ahead and slapped the ice cream on that layer anyway, knowing full well that this might cause me to end up with a wavy torte. Given all this, I was very curious to cut into the torte and see exactly how dizzy I got when I looked at my layers.

I woke up the next morning like a kid on Christmas, just itching to take my torte out of the pan. But our morning routine is hectic, and I decided that adding "extract torte from springform pan" to the to-do list might just cause the whole house of cards to come tumbling down. So I had to wait nearly 24 hours after the torte assembly to see the finished product.

The recipe suggests using a blowdryer to soften the torte enough to get it out of the pan. I decided that this was a two person job, and recruited my husband to blowdry while I lifted the pan. Here is David, who had to wait 36 years to blowdry his first torte:

To my great delight, the blowdryer method worked like a charm, and the torte came out perfectly! As I suspected, my layers were uneven. The best side:
The "if you were a Christmas tree, I'd stick you in the corner" side:

By the slice:

The ice cream, as I feared, had sort of that icy edge to it that you get when ice cream melts and refreezes, but it had a great flavor. Looking back, my ice cream came out of the carton soft, so it is not surprising that it essentially melted when processed. Next time, I will crank up my freezer and start out with very hard ice cream; I think that will help with the texture. Overall, the torte was delicious. My husband does not eat chocolate (and yet, I married him anyway) but we had family in town for the weekend, so thankfully I had some tasters around. Thanks Mom, Dad, Jane & Grady! Everyone seemed to like the torte. I would definitely make this again. I love the chocolate/raspberry combo, but depending on the occasion or season, it would be great with vanilla, strawberry, mint, or peanut butter ice cream as well. Lots of possibilities here. This one's a keeper!