strawberry rhubarb crumble ice cream

I don't have an ice cream machine and I feel conflicted about them. I like making ice cream and a machine certainly makes the process easier, and give a slightly smoother, creamier result. I have waffled back and forth over buying one. But they are terrible space hogs and they are pretty one-task. I have plenty of space hog kitchen tools (stand mixer, food processor) and even lots of one task items (vegetable spiralizer, pasta roller, ravioli molds). But I'm just not sure I would use an ice cream maker more than a couple times a year. But it's summer and it's hot and this perfect idea of a summer ice cream kept rolling around my brain; strawberry rhubarb crumble ice cream. All the components, the gooey fruit, the crispy crumbs, packed into the ice cream. 

Thankfully, you don't actually need an ice cream machine to make ice cream. David Lebovitz has a great post about making ice cream without a machine, and I have been used his technique a few times. It's so labour intensive that every time I do it, it puts me right off making ice cream for a long time. But it also satisfies my occasional urge to make ice cream without having to buy a bulky new kitchen tool. I'm pretty sure all the whisking must be cardiovascularly effective too, so making this is effectively like going to the gym. Good job!

strawberry rhubarb compote:

• 1 cup rhubarb, chopped
• 1 cup strawberries, chopped 
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbs water 

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat until fruit is falling apart. Set aside to cool. 

crumbs: 

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup cold butter

Combine ingredients in a food processor. Process into a rubble. Tip the crumbs out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment. Bake at 350 until golden brown, 10-15 minutes.  Set aside to cool.

vanilla ice cream: 

adapted from David Lebovitz 

• 1 cup whole milk
• A pinch of salt
• 3/4 cup (150g) sugar
• 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
• 2 cups cream
• 5 large egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Combine milk, salt, and sugar in a medium saucepan; heat on medium. Scrape a teaspoon along the inside of the vanilla bean; add seeds and bean pod to the pot.  Take the pot of the heat and infuse for one hour, covered. 

Make an ice bath by filling a large bowl with ice and water and place a medium bowl in the ice bath. Set a strainer on top and add the cream to this bowl. Stir the egg yolks together in a small bowl. Heat the milk in a sauce pan and pour a very small amount into the yolks, stirring constantly. Repeat this, adding about half the hot milk to the yolks. Return the yolks/milk into the saucepan and cook on medium until it thickens. Scrap the bottom of the pan well and stir constantly to prevent scolding or lumps. Strain the thickened custard into the cream. Stir to combine the cream and custard. Chill for several hours or overnight. 

If you are using an ice cream machine, freeze the custard following your machine's instructions. 

To freeze your ice cream with no machine, pour the custard into a wide, shallow pan and place in the freezer. Set a timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the pan and whisk vigorously. Make sure to scrape down the sides where the first ice crystals will begin to form. 

Repeat this process every 30 minutes until the ice cream is very thick and whisking becomes very difficult. This will take ages, depending on how cold your freezer is, probably several hours. 

Stir the cooled crumbs through the ice cream. Swirl the rhubarb compote through the cream. I like to keep distinct blobs of rhubarb strawberry goo in a vanilla ice cream matrix, so I stir it in minimally. Return to the freezer until the ice cream is firm, at least a couple hours. 

hazelnut mocha cake

I was very excited to discover, while assembling this cake, a new use for my blowtorch. I love my blowtorch and I like to use it as much as possible. I used to have one of those small culinary blowtorches with a little, tame flame. Then I got a big one from the hardware store. It has a much larger flame and it takes much less time to do the same job as a smaller blowtorch. Plus, it makes me think of the welding in Flashdance. I discovered my new reason to wield the blowtorch when I was pouring the ganache over the chilled, frosted cake. The ganache was a bit cool so that it wouldn't run too much and the cake was very cold. I started to coax it over the sides of the cake to make little ganache icicles but it set up really quickly on the cold cake and only a few little chocolate rivulets ran over the sides before it stopped running entirely and  just sat there on top. I thought that the cake was doomed to be lopsidedly ganached. But gentle application of blowtorch flame loosened up the ganache and the cake was saved. 

This cake is a bit of an undertaking to make, I recommend doing it in stages, at least over two or three days, so that it's not overwhelming. There's nothing all that hard to make, but there are  a lot of components. 

coffee syrup: 

• 1/2 strong brewed hot coffee
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Dissolve the sugar into the coffee. Set aside to cool. This can be made well in advance and stored in the fridge or freezer. 

hazelnut cru nch: 

adapted loosely from baked 

• 3/4 cups crisped cereal, rice or millet
• 1/2 cup feuilletine flakes
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup or corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped hazelnuts 

Cook the sugar and syrup together with 3 tbs water in a small pan, stirring to combine. Let the syrup come to a boil and check the temperature with a candy thermometer. While the syrup is cooking, mix cereal, hazelnuts and feuilletine in a medium bowl. Once the syrup reaches 235 F, remove from heat, add butter and pour over the cereal mix. Coat the cereal with the syrup quickly and spread thinly over a baking sheet. Let cool. Store in a sealed container in the fridge. 

coffee italian meringue buttercream:

adapted from Martha Stewart

• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup water 
• 5 egg whites or 1/2 cup + 2tbs pasteurized egg whites
• 2 cups butter, softened
• 1 vanilla bean's innards or 1/2 tsp vanilla powder
• 3 tsp coffee extract

Bring sugar and water to a boil in a small sauce pan. Using a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature, continue boiling until the mixture reaches 238 degrees. 

As the sugar is boiling, whip the egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium speed. The goal is to get the egg whites stiff when the sugar reaches 238; if they are getting close to being stiff but the syrup isn't hot enough I turn the mixer to the lowest setting until the syrup is nearly up to temperature. 

Once the sugar syrup is up to temperature, turn mixer up to high speed and pour the syrup into the egg whites in a very thin stream. Lower the speed to medium and beat until the outside of the mixer bowl is no longer hot to the touch. Add butter in small chunks, 2-3 tbs butter at a time. The frosting will very likely curdle; this is normal and it should resolve if you keep beating. A stand mixer is very useful here because it makes your arm ache if you have to hold a hand held beater for that long. Also, I like to leave the frosting beating at this point and do something else rather than stand watching the curdled mess. 

Once the frosting comes together again, add the vanilla and coffee extract and mix thoroughly, scrapping down the bowl. 

Note: this recipe will make far more buttercream than necessary for these macarons, but it freezes very well and I like to keep frozen buttercream in the freezer for frosting emergencies. Use what you need and store the rest in a mason jar in the freezer. When you just want to frost a few cupcakes, scoop out frosting as required with an ice cream scoop and bring up to room temperature. Whip in a stand mixture-it will break at first and look horribly like a runny, viscous scrambled eggy mess. Keep on whipping and it will fluff up again. 

chocolate frosting: 

• 8 ounces chocolate
• 3/4 cups heavy cream
• 1 tbs golden syrup (or corn syrup if you wish)
• 3/4 cups butter

Heat cream and syrup over medium high heat. Pour hot cream over chocolate in the bowl of a mixer and mix on the lowest setting. Scrape the bowl to mix and make sure all the chocolate is melting evenly. Let the chocolate cool to room temperature. Mix chocolate mixture on medium speed, adding butter a little at a time. The frosting will become remarkably light and silky, though still deeply, intensely chocolatey.

Make the chocolate frosting  directly before frosting the cake, do not chill the frosting. It won't stay smooth and silky and lovely if you chill it. 

hazelnut vanilla cake:

recipe adapted from baked

• 2 1/2 cups cake flour
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tbs baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup shortening or lard
• 1 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla or 1 tsp vanilla powder
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 cups ice water
• 3 egg whites
• 1/2 cup hazelnuts, toasted and ground into a fine meal

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Cream together the browned butter and the lard. Add the sugar and the vanilla and beat until fluffy. Add the egg and just combine. Turn the mixer to low and add the flour mixture and water in turns. Scrape down the bowl to ensure everything is mixed properly.

In a clean bowl, beat the eggs until soft peaks form. Gently fold egg whites into the batter until well combined. 

Divide batter between two 6 inch pans and bake at 325 degrees F for 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Allow cakes to cool completely and cut each cake into two layers, trimming off the tops if necessary to make even layers. 

Chill or freeze cake layers wrapped in cling wrap.

This step can be done well in advance; the cake can last in the freezer if triple wrapped in cling wrap. 

assembly:

Set out cake layers, frostings, syrup and hazelnut crunch. One layer at a time, brush the cake with syrup, frost with alternately chocolate or coffee frosting and sprinkle on the hazelnut crunch. Stack on another layer and repeat until you have five frosted cake layers. Roughly frost the top and side of the cake with coffee frosting and refrigerate until the frosting is set hard. Re-whip  the remaining coffee frosting until it is soft. Cover the cake with the remaining coffee frosting. Chill again. 

If you wish, drizzle the cake with a little ganache (1/4 cup cream, 1/2 cup chocolate, melted together and cooled slightly) and a few whole hazelnuts. 

Photos by Tyrel Hiebert 

penne a la vodka

This is a deceptive little sauce. It looks more or less like plain old tomato sauce, it's just as easy to make as plain old tomato sauce.  But it is not just tomato sauce; it's tomato sauce with vodka! And cream! It's richer and creamier and fancier. It's fancy tomato sauce.  If you want to make it even fancier, you can serve it topped with some shrimp sautéed in garlic and butter. Or really lean into the carbs + butter combo theme of this meal and have some garlic bread. 

I have been making this recipe for a few years, ever since I saw it on Smitten Kitchen, where the brilliant Deb Pereleman adapted it from a Rachel Ray recipe. But I was reluctant to post it here, for some reason I couldn't quite fathom. In her post, Deb talks about being embarrassed by the original name of the recipe: "You Won't Be Single For Long Vodka Cream Pasta". I find names like this more than just embarrassing-they make me shudder, they make my skin crawl a little. I can't say them aloud; the idea of ordering something with a name like this makes me feel unwell. Embarrassing names like this tend to turn up in bars that have house invited libations  (I feel like there may be a correlation between names of this sort and bartenders who call themselves mixologists, but this is just a hunch). I wonder about the thought process behind these names. Do bartenders and menu writers do this knowing the moment of anxiety they will produce among their more neurotic customers when they contemplate saying these things? I have sometimes resorted to pointing at what I want rather than having to say the unpleasant names that proud (or malicious?) bartenders or chefs have given their inventions. If the idea of this sort of name is unfamiliar to you, browse through any Guy Fieri menu and I think you'll see what I mean. If you can contemplate saying "guy-talian" to another human being without breaking a sweat, you are a stronger person than me. 

Maybe the residual embarrassing-name-shame I felt from just reading about the recipe was keeping me from sharing it. But I powered through my overdeveloped sense of awkward-name-anxiety for two reasons:

• This pasta is really tasty.

• And it has another name! A proper name, a sensible name. A name I can say without blushing: penne a la vodka.

penne a la vodka:

adapted from smitten kitchen

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

• 4 cloves garlic, smashed

• 2 shallots, minced

• a big pinch of red chili flakes

• 3/4 cup vodka

• 1 cup chicken stock

• 2 cups tomatoes, roughly chopped (if it's not tomato season, canned or frozen tomatoes are probably better than fresh)

• salt and pepper

• 1/2 cup heavy cream

• lots of fresh basil, shredded

• penne

Fry garlic, shallots and chili in oil and butter over medium heat until they begin to brown. Add vodka and cook until reduced by about half. Add chicken stock and tomatoes. Cook until the tomatoes are falling apart and the sauce has thickened. Add cream and simmer on medium low until the pasta is ready.

While the sauce is cooking, cook penne in a generous quantity of salted water. When the pasta is al dente  drain it and toss into sauce. Serve, topped with basil and a little parmesan if you want. Call this dish whatever you like and try not to be too stressed out about it. 

Spicy tequila sour

This is a kind of seasonless cocktail. It can certainly qualify as a summer drink; the tequila and lime combination feels beachy and sunny. But the pleasant heat from the jalapenos has a winterizing effect; it will warm you during these rainy, snowy, grey months while you pine for sunshine and heat. This cocktail is highly effective all year round. It will fortify your spirits and remind you that winter can't actually last forever.

The tequila sour is based on the whisky sour, but with tequila and lime in place of whisky and lemon. It's easy to double or triple for and you set it out in the pitcher for self serves cocktails if you like. 

jalapeno simple syrup: 

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 cup water

• 1 jalapeno, thinly sliced

Combine all ingredients in a small pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the syrup is quite spicy when you taste it (let it cool well before tasting!). Keep in mind that the other cocktail ingredients will mute the heat; I try to make the syrup a bit hotter than I want the drink to be. 

Let cool. 

hot tequila sour: 

• 6 ounces tequila

• 3/4 cup fresh lime juice

• 4 ounces jalapeno syrup

• 1/2 cup water

• thin lime and jalapeno slices to garnish

Combine tequila, lime juice, syrup and water in a pitcher with ice and stir to combine. Adjust to taste, adding more lime juice or syrup if needed. 

Divide between four glasses and garnish with lime and japapeno slices.  Share with some friends who need a beachy, balmy, spicy boost!

Photo credit: Tyrel Hiebert

malted blondies with pecans & kisses

Blondies are underrated. Brownies get more attention; I see more brownie recipes floating around the internet and I generally feel more palpable brownie excitement. I tested this scientifically (by googling) and I turned up 1,360,000 results for blondies and 47,300,000 results for brownies. This seems crazy. I like brownies a lot, I'm not trying to denounce them or lower them in the public esteem, but blondies have some pretty enticing charms of their own.  I am here to advocate for the blondie-I am the Lorax of the blondie. 

Maybe brownies seem sexier-so chocolatey and intense. But blondies have great rich toasty-toffee flavour, without being overpowering like the chocolate in a brownie. This makes blondies a particularly good canvas for experimentation. Their flavour is similar to great chocolate chip cookies but in a denser, chewier form with a thin crispy, shattery crust. They are great and they deserve a place in our hearts and minds that rivals the oft praised brownie. 

I added malt powder, pecans and mini kisses to these blondies, which emphasizes their lovely toasty quality.

adapted from smitten kitchen

• 1/2 cup butter, melted

• 1 cup brown sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• a pinch of salt

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/4 cup malt powder

• 1/2 cup toasted pecans

• 1 cup mini chocolate kisses (or chocolate chips, but really the mini kisses are great)

Mix butter and sugar until combined. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and malt powder. Add pecans and mini kisses and combine until they are evenly distributed. 

Spread evenly in a 8"x 8" pan lined with parchment paper and bake at 350 degrees for around 20 minutes until just set. They should be soft in the centre and just crispy around the edges. If in doubt pull them out early-the gooey-ness of the blondies is crucial. 

Let cool a bit, though I strongly encourage eating them before they are entirely cooled. They are best soft and warm from the pan, ideally with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

Photo credits: Tyrel Hiebert

preserved lemon rubbed roast chicken

I really like preserved lemons. They are one thing that is really worthwhile to make at home, because when you get them from the supermarket, they tend to come in tiny precious jars with a few lemon in them for $15. They are really expensive to buy and they are easy and cheap to make yourself. If you want to make them, check out my post to learn how.  The large amount of salt means that the lemons will keep indefinitely in the fridge. Lots of recipes call for just the rind of the preserved lemons to be used but I like to use the whole lemons, the insides taste great too. 

I like to turn them into a salty, lemony, spicy paste using lots of whole preserved lemons and a few hot peppers. This paste keeps for ages just like preserved lemons will. It's great blended into a vinaigrette or tossed into pasta with lots of garlic. It's also great rubbed all over the skin of a chicken before roasting. The salt in the lemon paste dries out the skin a little and makes it crispy and delicious. 

This chicken goes really well with herbed harissa and feta carrot salad or possibly some roast potatoes tossed in a little harissa & olive oil. Yum.

preserved lemon and chili paste: 

• 10 whole preserved lemons

• a couple fresh hot chilis, finely chopped

• In a food processor, blend the lemons and chilis until a smooth paste forms.

preserved lemon rubbed roast chicken:

• preserved lemon and chilli paste

• one chicken

• black pepper

• onions, garlic and lemon halves to roast chicken over

Rub the chicken all over and inside the cavity with a generous amount of lemon paste. Sprinkle on lots of cracked black pepper. Lay the onions, garlic and lemons in a roasting dish and place the chicken on top. Drizzle with a little oil Roast the chicken at 450 degrees for 1-1.5 hrs, depending on your chicken size, until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees. 

Photo credits: Tyrel Hiebert