Roasted brandied cherries chocolate ice cream

It's cherry season! At least it was until about a week ago.

 Cherry season

Vanilla bean ice cream, browned buttered peaches and a berry sauce

I bought a litre of cream before the big move. Should I say it was a big mistake on my part?

I should have known that there was no oven facilities at the temporary rented place, and my ice cream maker was packed away in some box that was moved to the new place. So, how in the world was I going to use cream that was due to expire within one week? I've come up with some ideas on how to use up cream. The first thought I had was ice cream. Hand churned of course since the ice cream maker was playing hide and seek.

 Vanilla bean ice cream, browned buttered peaches and a warm berry sauce

Roasted banana ice cream

Bananas spot easily. Their brown spots grow at an alarming exponential rate. Way faster than how a normal spot grows on the human face. I'm glad I'm not a banana.

To use up some spotty bananas, I decided that I was not going to go my usual route of making this uber scrumptious banana bread, but to go for something with a chill - ice cream, instead.

What do you get when you combine bananas, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon?

A damn sexy looking tray, that's what you'll get.

Passion fruit ice cream

Right after my last passion fruit post, I was craving for more passion fruit straight away. In fact, when I was making those passion fruit tarts, I was already planning for the next passion fruit dessert - passion fruit ice cream. I was planning to find fresh passion fruit from the supermart so that I get the lovely passion fruit seeds in my ice cream too. Alas, whenever you're specifically searching for an item, it will invariably bound to be not available at that very moment. Other times, it will just be there in the supermart, mocking and tempting you. Anyone feels the same way?

Passion fruits from a lovely girlfriend's vine makes...

Ice cream fever

Ever since we discovered that there was an ice cream machine at home. I just knew (and I was right!) that there was going to be tubs of homemade ice cream(s) in the house, anytime, anyday.

In fact, since the Sis is sort of on an ice cream craze, she's been putting it to full use (making up for the lost time perhaps?) by churning out flavours every few days or so.Yes, I'm talking about an ice cream kingdom here baby. Well, she does make half the quantity of whatever recipe she has on hand, so she gets to experiment with more flavours (and thus explaining the tubs of ice cream residing in our freezer...).

In fact, I can't remember preparing any ice creams myself anymore since she's taken over, and the last two flavours that I remember making are these - honey lavender and pear caramel.

Honey lavender ice cream fizz

Cookie topped choux puffs

My girlfriend who's into baking had said "Let's bake together one day!" so one Saturday, we decided to meet at my place for a baking session. As we only had a short time to bake, we decided to make something simple. I had just gone to the library earlier that week and I suggested baking profiteroles, since I had borrowed a very cute book on profiteroles. My lovely girlfriend okay-ed the idea, so we arranged to meet about 1pm in the afternoon at my place (lucky for us, we stay quite near each other :)).

Vanilla crème patisserie filled choux puffs

The eighth sin - chocolate

This is one super dense and rich chocolate ice cream designed to seduce. My first lick of this confection, and I was instantly hooked (lined, and suckered). I was looking for a really dark and chocolate-y chocolate ice cream, and this is one recipe that max out all my expectations.

The eighth sin - Chocolate

Berry ice cream and cinnamon walnut palmiers

I had leftover puff pastry in my freezer for god knows how long. And I don't think anyone in the family, aside from me is a huge fan of puff pastry.

I was going to use up the leftovers to make palmier cookies. The pretty ice cream sandwich cookies seen here made me want to make my own too. I had leftover cream from making the chocolate mango mousse cake, and Sis was leaving for her America trip, I wanted to finish the cream quickly to make an ice cream for her to try before she left. The cookies will be made only after she's gone, cos she's not a puff pastry lover anyway.

The below ice cream sandwiches? For me and me alone... 

 

Berry ice cream and cinnamon walnut palmiers

Salted caramel ice cream with caramelised cocoa nibs and roasted almonds

I think I need to buy an ice cream maker. Soon. I've been making my own ice creams so often lately that it's a bit scary. Hand churning ice cream every half an hour for a few hours is no fun. Not to mention time-consuming. I can think of several things to do in the meantime of having to set the alarm to remind myself to churn the ice cream when the time is up. Imagine if I had an ice cream maker...oh gosh. Okay, on second though, scrap that thought. That'll probaby result in me making ice cream like once every week. Or something. ;)

The weather was hot (a few months back, now, it's just rain and rain and more rain), so I was thinking of a cold dessert. Something that doesn't require me cranking up the hot oven. Salted caramel sounds like a good idea. The Sis loves salted caramel. I decided to make a salted caramel ice cream. But plain ol' salted caramel is just not good enough for me...I like my ice creams to have add ins. I was contemplating what I should add in, and browsing random websites for inspiration. In the end, I settled on adding caramelised cocoa nibs and roasted almonds.

Salted caramel ice cream with caramelised cocoa nibs and roasted almonds

Black sesame ice cream

Back when in May I mentioned I had made some macarons (in April! haha...), it was because I was making black sesame ice cream. I had bought a small container of black sesame paste ages ago like maybe last year even, and I kept it and kept it and kept it. Then one day, I was like, oh yeah, it's April already. The paste expires in April. It was expensive and no way I would have let it gone to waste. The reason why I bought it was cos I wanted to make my own black sesame ice cream.

So, of course, that was what I did. (:

Black sesame ice cream

Vanilla bean icecream

People always seem to be divided between two choices when it comes down to basic icecream flavours. They either choose vanilla or chocolate. I wonder why, why can't they just choose both? ;) Anyway, I've made David Lebovitz's vanilla icecream recipe (from his book "The Perfect Scoop") like at least two times by now. It's simply yummy-licious from the addition of vanilla beans, and not to mention rich, from the all those egg yolks...

Vanilla beans; Mise en place