brown butter & roasted peach ice cream

To round off this little brown butter series, I wanted to show off the sweet side of the magical brown butter crumb. You have seen what they can do to pasta, and now here they are in a rich, super vanilla ice cream alongside roasted-soft, sweet peaches.  

I know it’s a bit early for peaches, but I really got it stuck in my head that peaches and brown butter was the only way to go for this ice cream. So I used frozen peaches and it was wonderful, but you feel free to wait around for peach season if you are more patient than me.

For a super quick version of this, stir a few tablespoons of brown butter crumbs into softened store bought vanilla ice cream and pop back into the freezer until firm. Spoon the warm peaches and brown sugar goo over top.

roasted brown sugar peaches:

• 2 cups sliced peaches (frozen is fine)
• 2 tsp butter
• 2 tbs brown sugar

Lay peaches in a small baking dish and dot butter and brown sugar on top of them. Roast at 400° until juices are bubbling and peaches are very soft and browning at the edges. Let cool.
 

brown butter and roasted peach ice cream:

Adapted from Bon Appetit

• 2 cups whipping cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• pinch of flaky salt
• 1/2 vanilla bean (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
• 4 tbs brown butter crumbs, divided
• 5 large egg yolks
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 batch roasted brown butter peaches

Combine whipping cream, milk, 1/4 cup sugar, 2 tbs brown butter crumbs and salt in a medium saucepan. Score the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the milk and add the pod as well. Cook over medium-low heat until just simmering. Cover the pot and let it sit about 1/ hour to infuse the vanilla bean (skip this step if using vanilla extract).

Whisk egg yolks and remaining sugar until very pale, 2-3 minutes. A little at a time, incorporate 1/2 cup warm. Whisk yolk mixture into remaining cream mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick enough to coat a wooden spoon, 2-3 minutes. Fish out the vanilla bean (rinse and save it - it still has some good vanilla flavour left!)

Freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions, until very thick and cold, but still scoopable. Stir in the remaining brown butter crumbs until well distributed. Scoop about ½ of the ice cream into a shallow dish like a loaf pan and layer in the peaches. Spread the remaining ice cream over the peaches. Freeze tightly wrapped in cling wrap, at least 3 hours.

More with brown butter:

Brown butter & pecan cake

Brown butter cream ravioli with greens

brown butter cream ravioli with greens

Wondering what to do with the tasty brown butter crumbs I told you all about last week? Just tossing them with some buttery, cheesy pasta would be amazing, but if you really want to take it up a notch, stir them into a garlicky cream sauce and toss that with butternut ravioli and layer all that over some fresh greens, to (slightly) offset all that buttery, creamy richness.

Use the leftover brown butter from making the brown butter crumbs in the sauce if you have it. Otherwise regular butter will do.

Butternut ravioli on kale with brown butter sauce:

• 1 package butternut ravioli, or any cheese filled stuffed pasta

• 6 cups greens, I used arugula and finely shredded kale

• 3 tbs pine nuts

• ½ cup heavy cream

• 1 cup chicken stock

• 2 tbs brown butter

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 pinch crushed chili flakes

• 4 tbs brown butter crumbs, divided

• ½ cup shredded parmesan cheese

Toast pine nuts in a dry pan over medium-low heat, shaking the pan frequently, until light brown.

Saute the garlic in butter until translucent and just starting to colour. Add chili flakes and cook about one more minute. Add cream and broth; simmer on medium low frequently stirring, until the sauce thickens. Sprinkle half of the brown butter crumbs into the sauce.

While the sauce thickens, cook pasta according to package instructions. Pile up greens on a big platter. When the pasta is tender, drain and toss in cream sauce. Spoon the pasta over the greens. Dress with parmesan, pine nuts and the remaining brown butter crumbs, very finely crumbled

The secret to the brown butter crumb? Powdered milk! You'll be sprinkling them on just about everything. 

magic brown butter crumb

Brown butter is amazing alchemy. Simply heating butter until the milk solids in it turn nutty brown and richly fragrant, changes it completely. Nothing is added or subtracted, but the flavour of butter is totally transformed. Browning butter gives me the same little thrill as melting sugar into caramel, revealing a complexity and depth in an ordinary ingredient.

Recipes for browning butter often call for straining the browned solids off of brown butter and discarding them. This just seems so wrong. The brown solids are where all the lovely flavour lives. They are salty, toasty, nutty and (obviously) buttery. So this recipe is basically the exact opposite of discarding the solids. Instead, increase the solids, isolate them and use them as their own special ingredient. Milk solids make up just a tiny part of butter, but you can amp them up by adding a whole bunch of skimmed milk powder when you make brown butter. Way more brown butter flavour to go around.

These flavour bomb crumbs will last in the fridge basically forever. You can sprinkle them onto pasta with toasted breadcrumbs and parsley, fold into ice cream with some toasted pecans, stir them into cake batter they make just about everything better.

brown butter crumbs:

• 1 pound butter

• ½ cup dried skim milk powder

In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Stir in the milk powder, whisking thoroughly to break up any clumps.

Cook, stirring constantly, until the solids at the bottom of the butter turn toasty brown. This will take 5-10 minutes, be patient and don’t stop stirring. Brown butter can turn from a rich hazelnut to a smoking scorched mess very quickly.

When the butter is nut-brown, remove from heat and strain the solids through a fine mesh sieve. Chill the butter in a airtight container, and the solids in a jar. Once cooled, break up the crumbs with a fork into little crumbs. If you want very fine crumbs, blitz them for a couple pulses in a food processor.

Stay tuned for a couple more ways to use these delightful little flavour bombs, coming soon.

More with brown butter: brown butter and toasted pecan cake.

pistachio & lemon cake

In my many-years-long search for the most perfect frosting, I have come across many contenders that seemed to be the one, the true, perfect frosting. But they all eventually disappointed me. American buttercream is usually way too sweet, and mostly just tastes like icing sugar (though there are appropriate uses - a confetti cake calls out for American buttercream) . Swiss and Italian meringue buttercreams both briefly enchanted me, as they are more butter than sugar based, and so they aren't quite so cloyingly sweet. But as I used them I eventually found both to sometimes be too buttery, and they don't hold much flavouring before splitting or doing strange things to their texture. So it was hard to get rich flavours using any of these methods that didn't taste like just sugar or butter.

Then I found ermine frosting, sometimes called boiled milk frosting. It's a strange technique, you start by making a strange cooked milk and flour paste that looks an awful lot like wallpaper paste. Then you cool that goop and mix it into creamed butter and sugar, which after extended mixing turns into a super fluffy, silky, not too sweet or fatty, basically perfect frosting.  Cooking the flour in milk gets rid of any chalky, flour flavour. It is so well balanced.  I think I may finally be ready to settle down and commit to a long-term relationship with just one frosting. I think this is the one.

I made this cake for my friend's birthday and I wanted something light and springy to go with Spring. The tangy lemon curd is perfect with the rich, nutty frosting. This is kinda a showstopper of a cake, perfect for a birthday or another proper celebration. Or maybe just because it's springtime?

pistachio & lemon cake

yellow cake:

adapted from smitten kitchen

• 4 cups plus 2 tablespoons cake flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 cup butter, softened

• 2 cups sugar

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 4 large eggs, at room temperature

• 2 cups buttermilk (or two cups milk soured with a splash of lemon juice)

Heat oven to 350°F. Line the bottoms of two 6" cake pans with parchment paper.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Cream butter and sugar together until light in colour. Add vanilla and eggs and beat to combine. Scrape the sides of the bowl and eat again until well incorporated.

On the lowest speed, beat in buttermilk. Add flour mixture in three additions. Hand mix with a spatula a little to avoid flour explosions. Scrape down bowl to make sure there are no unmixed spots.

Reserve about ⅓ of the he batter for another use (pop it in the freezer for some emergency cupcakes). Divide remaining batter between two prepared 9" pans. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until cakes are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool cakes and run a knife around the edge so they come out of the pan cleanly. Trim off the outer edges and level the cakes, cutting off any domed top portion.

pistachio frosting

adapted from Martha Stewart

• 6 tbs unbleached all-purpose flour

• 1 ½   cups whole milk

• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

• Pinch of kosher salt

• 1 ½ cups butter room temperature

• 1 ½  cup sugar

• ⅓ cup pistachio paste

• 2-3 drops green food colouring (optional)

Cook milk and flour in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens to a gluey, pudding consistency. Cover pan and cool to room temperature. It needs to be completely cool before the next step or it will melt the butter. Also, if you chill this mixture in the fridge, do not proceed before bring back up to room temperature - a cold mix added to butter will seize and split the frosting.

In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, whip together butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy about 5 minutes. Add in room temperature milk mixture and increase speed to medium-high. Whip until the mixture is smooth and very fluffy, which can take more than 15 minutes sometimes. It may look split or grainy, but just keep on mixing until fluffy and velvety. This always takes way longer than I think it should, so I recommend that you walk away at this point and don’t look at the frosting more often than every 5 minutes. I like to use this time to do some of the dishes I have made or have a snack. Just don’t stare at your frosting getting stressed out.

When you have smoothness and fluffiness, add in the vanilla, salt, food colouring and pistachio paste and beat until fully incorporated.

If your frosting becomes a little soft and droopy after the pistachio paste is added chill in the fridge for about 10 minutes, and the beat again. Repeat until frosting is smooth and holds a peak.

Note on pistachio paste: if you can’t find pure pistachio paste (just ground pistachios, no sugar or anything else) you can make your own. Toast 1-2 cups pistachios until fragrant and puré until a smooth paste forms. Keep in the fridge in an airtight container.

lemon curd:

adapted from Martha Stewart 

• 6 egg yolks

• ¾ cup sugar

• ½ butter, cut into 1” cubes

• ½ cup lemon juice

• Zest from one lemon

• a pinch of salt

In a saucepan off heat, combine all ingredients, combining well. Set over medium heat and cook, stirring constantly. When the mixture is thickened remove from heat, cover, and refrigerate until cool.

Note on pistachio paste: if you can’t find pure pistachio paste (just ground pistachios, no sugar or anything else) you can make your own. Toast 1-2 cups pistachios until fragrant and puré until a smooth paste forms. Keep in the fridge in an airtight container.

lemon syrup:

• ½ cup sugar

• ½ cup lemon juice

Mix lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Cool and store in the fridge.

assembly:

Drizzle lemon syrup generously over the cake layers and let soak in for a couple minutes.

Place one cake layer on a 9" cake board if you have it, or a flat plate or cake stand. Cover cake with a very generous layer of curd, it should be quite thickly set so you can really pile it on without oozing over the edge. Leave a thin border of uncovered cake around the edge to make space for squishing when you add the next cake layer. Sandwich next cake layer on top and cool in the fridge around 15 minutes to set up, to help the curd not ooze out into your frosting. This is a good time to finish make the frosting.

Frost the chilled cake quickly all over with an offset spatula, making sure to cover all exposed cake. Adding more frosting as you go, use an offset spatula, or bench scraper to tidy up and give the cake some nice clean angles. Chill again for 15 minutes and add a generous second layer of frosting, using the bench scraper to make smooth, straight sides. Chill again about 10 minutes, and decorate as you like, I used a sprinkles and chopped pistachios sprinkled over a little micro-forest of piped poofs and rosettes. But you do whatever feels right.

pb & j blondies

Peanut butter and jam is a classic and perfect combination, but it suffers from a somewhat childish reputation. But there is a reason children love it - it’s great. The addition of a little flaky salt on the top is enough to make these blondies grown up, but not put off the kids who have tirelessly campaigned for the PB & J movement these many years.  

I like to use crunchy peanut butter because it gives a little textural variation. You could go with smooth and add some chopped peanuts if you like, but I don’t recommend using sweetened PB, these are plenty sweet with natural style peanut butter. Don’t be shy with the jam - I increased the jam considerably from the original version, and it was delightful. Do not over bake: these should come out fudgy and gooey, the centre will look just set when you pull them out of the oven.

PB & J blondies:

Adapted from Bon Appetit  

• ½ cup butter, melted

• 1¼ cups all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 2 large eggs

• 1½ cups light brown sugar

• ¾ cup peanut butter (I used and recommend unsweetened, chunky peanut butter)

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 6 tablespoons strawberry jam

• big pinch flaky sea salt (such as Maldon)

Heat oven to 350°.

In a large bowl combine eggs, sugar, peanut butter, butter and vanilla and mix until smooth. Fold in flour, baking powder and 1 tsp salt until evenly incorporated.

Spread batter in a parchment lined 8”x8” pan and press a spoon-back into the batter to create little dents for jam. Dollop jam generously into jam-dents and sprinkle a pinch on flaky salt over the top. Bake 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle (avoiding jammy spots) comes out clean. Let cool and cut into squares.

grapefruit & gin slush

I love a slushy drink, like a blended margarita or a julep. They are so festive and vacationy and they have just a hint of childish nostalgia for slurpees. But I always feel like they are a bit too much bother with all that blending, and I get anxious that I won’t get the slushy texture right. This one comes together with a perfect slushiness and the tart grapefruit goes wonderfully with herbaceous gin.

Make sure to peel the grapefruit really well, otherwise you will be chewing on a lot of roughage with your cocktail.

grapefruit & gin slush:

• 2 cups grapefruit sorbet
• 1 pink grapefruit
• 4 ounces gin

Peel grapefruit, removing as much with pith as possible. Roughly chop and freeze in a zip-top bag until frozen solid.

Combine sorbet, frozen grapefruit and gin in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. Serves 4.