Darienne

Made D Lobovitz's Candied Cherries to try out the recipe. DH loved them...I did not. They were OK, but then I don't have DH's sweet tooth. I hate Maraschino cherries...and come to think of it, cherries are far from my favorite fruit. Added them to the 'Cheesecake Ice Cream' which was a mistake in my estimation. It was all too sweet for me. I added some extra lemon zest, some lemon juice, and some very toasted almond slivers. The almonds helped. Gotta try it all... But I think I'll pass on candying cherries. Candying works best for me on substances which are not sweet in their natural form. I think...

Made the Cheesecake Ice cream. Very nice, but never going to be my favorite. DH loved it, but then he likes more sugar in things than I do. As it was cooling, I added more lemon zest and even some lemon juice, but it was still too sweet for me. Added some deeply toasted (aka almost burnt) slivered almonds and that helped a lot. But still... The Orange-Szechwan Pepper is my favorite to date. Made the Candied Cherries. Didn't really care for them. Maybe I did something wrong. But maybe I just don't like candied cherries. I loathe Maraschino cherries. The DH loved the cherries and he likes Maraschinos also. Perhaps it has a lot to do with childhood eating patterns. Ed's Mom was French Canadian and only the French Canadians could love Sugar Pie. My Mother didn't bake and I had very little sugar as a child and can't even eat a Butter tart. Ed ate sugar or syrup on his French toast...and I had salt. Curious. So onto the next. I am very curious about the Rice Gelato. I wonder if the sweetness content in the recipes is aimed primarily at the American taste bud? Any thoughts on this?

All good information. I loved the bit about the desiccant packages. I have never saved one, but now I will. In the end, I simply sifted a couple of cups of fruit sugar into a bowl and dipped each pop into it and then immediately popped them into their little bags and tied them off. Then into an airtight container and into the cellar for storage. I'll poke around and see if I can fine a desiccant package....oh, vitamin bottles also have them. Thanks again.

My kitchen is a galley type so we can't have a eating table in it, but we eat at the table in the sun room. It has on it: salt, pepper, soy sauce, napkins, one hot pad...and every thing my DH leaves on it on his way by either to or from his workshop. We also eat on the living room coffee table which has a small fake Navajo rug ...who can afford real?... and a fascinating collection of rocks, arrowheads, fossils, baskets, ceramic bits and bobs, magnets...which our dog hates... I just went to look at it and it would take too long to tell all. Suffice it to say, it is the repository for my other obsessions in life.

In defense of slow cookers: I have never actually 'cooked' something in one, but are they just the things for candying fruits and peels. Also when you have a huge gang, they are good for keeping things warm...like hot and sour soup in the Chinese feast. What IS useless is having 39 speed settings on blenders and hand mixers. My best blender which lasted for years had two speeds: ON and OFF. Worked for me.

I currently have a container of very sticky unwrapped hard tack lollipops in my life. Story: Confectionery partner, Barb, and I made some lollipops a week ago for an upcoming charity event. We made them in the microwave, using the LorAnn recipe which calls for 1 part sugar and ½ part corn syrup. Now I see that this is a VERY high proportion of corn syrup, no doubt to accommodate the microwave method. I never got around to wrapping them…simply stuck them in a plastic container and last night I unveiled them. Oops. Sticky lollies. Some stuck to each other. Some just tacky. Quite tacky. This is my first experience making lollipops in the Ontario summer. I will not use the LorAnn recipe again. Kerry’s Class 101 now gives me the answer as to why these lollipops are sticky: - too high a proportion of doctor to sugar - too humid a temperature (summer in Ontario) - not wrapped immediately in cello and/or airtight container Questions: - would the lollipops have remained viable if I had wrapped them immediately? or would they be sticky in their bags anyway? - can you put hard tack in the fridge? (I seem to think no, but then what do I know?) Perhaps storing them in the cellar would have helped…cooler, dehumidifier going, etc. I keep my couverture in the cellar for those reason. We do not have A/C in our old farmhouse. LorAnn’s recipe suggests dusting the pops in powdered sugar to keep them from sticking. I tried powdered sugar this morning on one…disastrous and unappealing results. Then I tried colored dusting sugars…a bit coarse in texture. Well, this was much better, except that the color in the sugar seems to have disappeared one hour later, although the sugar is still not dissolved. I also tried finely ground sugar…fruit sugar. Results also fine. I will sugar them and wrap them all this morning. 90% humidity today. More questions(sorry): - which would be better in an experienced maker’s estimation…colored sugar? colored sugar ground more finely? finely ground white sugar? ?? - in the winter or in low humidity (Moab, UT), you can make the lollipops way ahead of time. In our Ontario summer, should we have made them only days ahead of time instead? All advice gratefully received.

As always, thanks.

David L. gives a recipe for blood orange granita using the juice only. I have made his incredible Orange-Szechwan Pepper Ice Cream using the zest only from Navel Oranges...where we live we are pretty limited to one or two varieties of orange at a time. I can't see why you can't take pretty much any orange ice cream recipe and substitute blood orange zest or blood orange juice for any other orange. I don't know if there is an ice cream recipe that uses orange pulp. Something else to research...

Thanks for the cryovac information. So much information...so little time. I think I'll go for the fastest method this time. I have underway, David L's Cheesecake Ice Cream and I'll just chop up the cherries...we have now eaten most of them...and put them into the ice cream. Then I'll buy a huge whack and do one of the S L O W methods. Thanks again, all. ( I don't know what Kerry means: but then I haven't read the technical paper thoroughly. If I can't figure it out, I'll get back. Thanks.)

Jane: Thanks for pointing out that the recipe was there. Got it! Andie: As usual, you have such good information to pass on!!! A Brix metre is $75.00 at Lee Valley and it's out of my snack bracket right now, but I'll read all the downloads before carrying on. Sethro: I have no idea of what it means to 'cryovac the pitted cherries' and I guess that the cvap is a convection oven? Thanks all.

David Lebovitz, The Perfect Scoop, gives a recipe for candied cherries. It's pretty darned quick, the cooking and candying part taking less than an hour. The problem is that the candied cherries are good only for up to two weeks in the fridge. I did Kumquats by the slower method and they were good for a few months in the fridge. They all ended up in ice cream. Would it be useful to use Andie's technique of putting the pitted cherries into a simple syrup using the crock pot method similar to candying ginger? Or perhaps the microwave method? It appears that Lindacakes never reported back how her cherries turned out in 2007. Has anyone else candied cherries? I am not trying to make maraschino cherries. I think the chopped up cherries will end up in ice cream. (I really need to start a thread called 'Candied Anything which can be Candied'. It would be very useful. ) Whoops. Did not read the subheading. This is MY kind of topic!

I just laughed reading this topic, especially about the Bailey's on cereal. I love to melt some dark chocolate, add a little Grand Marnier or Chambord, dump some homemade granola into it and then just eat it with a spoon, hot or cold. An after supper dessert. DH thinks I'm crazy.

Good work, O fearless leader!

This all sounds very good...but I just might have to make the cheesecake ice cream very soon. In fact, I have some cream cheese on hand for something I didn't make last week and it might just go into some ice cream immediately. This book is just wonderful. David Lebovitz: I think I love you.

I'm almost always making ice creams and other frozen desserts, just not from the book this thread relates to (which I don't happen to own). I enjoy reading what everybody else is doing with it though. ← I was not chastising anyone...I just wanted someone else to play with. As for passion fruit puree. Boiron makes it and you can order it from their distributor. In Canada I would buy it from Qzina .

Is there no one else out there making ice cream in this ice cream time of year? Because I am making the rounds of the chiro and massage therapist almost daily...don't ask...I take Mr. Lebovitz with me to read in the waiting rooms. Found a recipe for Lemon-Buttermilk Sherbet. Remembering that there was almost a full litre of buttermilk sitting in the fridge from a sour cream event from a couple of weeks ago, I decided that the Lemon Sherbet was my next project. Now, I don't like the taste of buttermilk, and I didn't like the resulting sherbet all that much because for me the buttermilk taste came shining through. DH liked it which stunned me because he doesn't like sherbet or buttermilk. Who knew? Then I added some toasted walnuts to the sherbet. Aha! Now even I liked it. I can't think of a suitable word to describe the taste of walnuts, toasted or not,...a sort of non-sweet taste, mealy?, earthy?...someone help me...but the contrast made the sherbet perfectly delicious...IMHO. Next projects: the Fleur de Lait and the Leche Merengada.

After my heady success with a modified Orange-Szechwan Pepper ice cream, I am ready to go for the Fleur de Lait, mostly because it is so unusual, made with cornstarch. I see that mukki announced that s/he had Fleur de Lait cooling in the fridge, 9 April 2008, but s/he never reported back. Has anyone else tried this ice cream and if so, how was it? And do you suppose that one might feel free to add some extra bits to it? Well, I am going to make it straight the first time...and then add 'stuff'.

Sorry, guys, but I just can't find 'C.C.' anywhere in the last two pages of this thread. Please, for the uninitiated amongst us...

You're right. I've never tried bacon in chocolate. I might just love it. I had never tried pepper in ice cream either and that was delicious. Thank you all for so many interesting answers. There stretches out before me a long list of things to try. This has truly been a wonderful year, culinarily speaking.

No worries. I have never had anything 'mojito' except by my own hand and so have no sense of what exactly it should taste like. The information on the subject of the mojito on the web is so varied...wildly...that I decided to go at it more conservatively first. David Lebovitz has a mojito flavored ice. Maybe I'll try that next instead. Thanks. I'll get back to the mojito flavored ganache later.

Hmmmm....alright. I'll wait until I can buy some white chocolate to do the mojito ganache. And thanks so much for all the good information. There are other things I can do in the interim...

DH came home and we tried the ice cream together. I think I could have been more heavy handed on the orange zest even and am not sure about using that 3rd TBSP of pepper. The pepper creeps up on you and stays a l-o-n-g time. I should admit...it could make a big difference...that I used a Philadelphia base for the ice cream instead of the DL custard one. I usually do in my ice creams. We find them rich enough and one of our sons cannot tolerate eggs at all. All in all, it was incredible and like nothing I have ever tasted before in a cold dessert.

I just realized I am confused a tad by your answer. You say '(and keep the lime)' in the Dark & Stormies. There is no lime in Greweling's recipe. Do mean to add lime while substituting the mint and lighter rum or to leave the lime out? I don't have any white chocolate. I hardly ever use it at all so I am going to use 54% dark I guess and see what happens. Please let me know your idea about the lime juice. Thanks.

I certainly cannot compete with that incredible cake made by dystopiandreamgirl, but I did make traditional Chinese almond cookies, a chocolate layer cake with raspberry jam filling and raspberry-flavored chocolate icing for a friends' barbecue tomorrow and David Lebovitz' Orange-Szechwan Pepper Ice Cream. Tomorrow I am going to make Alton Brown's Moo-less Chocolate pie again, this time with Frangelico, for the year end Pot Luck Lunch of the No Name group (a fiber group of guild refugees which has no name, no executive, no constitution, no fees, no rules, no schedule which to our collective amazement has been running for over 5 years now.)

Ah...c'mon...tell us one... but nothing with bacon in it, please.