Lemon and Basil Sorbet

Are you a fan of Italian ices?  When I lived in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, they called them water ices. Joe has been buying a lot of the lemon Italian ices from the supermarket, and I wondered about making something similar.  After two rounds of homemade ice cream recently, it sounded like a lighter and more refreshing option.  And not in that bland diet way.  These are wonderfully cold and lemony and won't weigh you down.

But I didn't want to do a plain lemon sorbet, and I remembered Kiersten from Oh My Veggies blogged a Meyer Lemon and Basil Sorbet a while back.  Alas, meyer lemons were in season when she blogged them in February but they aren't now, and I've never seen a meyer lemon sold around here.  But the sorbet still turned out awesome with ordinary lemons.  I was afraid when making the simple syrup that it smelled too strongly of basil, but when tasting the sorbet it truly was the perfect amount of the herb.  It doesn't overpower the lemon at all but enhances it, and while the basil definitely has a presence I wonder if others could guess what it is.

And Joe?  He went nuts for the sorbet.  It costs just a little more to make the homemade sorbet rather than buying the Italian ices -- luckily I plucked all the basil off my front porch -- but the sorbet was way better.  I can't say I'll be replacing his Italian ice fix with homemade sorbet a few times a week, but it will make an appearance a few more times this summer.

Click here to visit Oh My Veggies for the recipe.

Update: This post made the Foodbuzz Top 9.  Thanks for all the buzz!

Bailey's Ice Cream

I had been looking to bake something, but it's been a scorcher of a week.  I went to the beach yesterday and actually didn't enjoy it, compliments of what felt like heatstroke.  So forget any recipes I had been eyeing that involved using the oven.  My mother forbids using the oven at her house in the summer, but how else can you get great summer pies and cobblers?  But even I couldn't argue with that on these 95-degree days, so ice cream it was.  And what an ice cream.

This tastes just like Bailey's, and is one of the best ice cream recipes I've ever made.  Some ice creams turn a little icy or crystallized, but this was very rich, creamy, and luxurious.  The alcohol is cooked out, but the taste still has some potency.  The book also has suggestions for mixing it up: throwing in a half-cup of chocolate chips at the end, or a teaspoon of espresso powder for fans of Irish coffee.

Scoop some Bailey's Ice Cream into a glass of cold-brew coffee for a fun take on Irish coffee.

I won't lie -- this is an expensive ice cream to make.  Cream and sugar don't cost much, but Bailey's does.  I got a 375-milliliter bottle for $18.99.  That gave me the amount I needed for the recipe, plus a little kick left for me over ice.  Joe mentioned that you can make your own Irish cream with some Jameson and heavy cream, and I see that covered in a bunch of blog posts.  Has anyone ever tried that, and would you recommend it?  I normally say you should use quality ingredients when cooking and baking, but it doesn't make sense to spend over $20 making about a quart of ice cream.  Even if it is a really freakin' good ice cream.

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Plum Skillet Cake

Sometimes it's fun to conquer baking challenges -- braided bread, lattice-top pies, croissants -- but sometimes it's nice just to mix together a few ingredients and throw them in the oven. Here a cake batter is easily stirred up, poured into a skillet, and topped with fruit. No fuss, and a stunning and delicious dessert.

The cake is simple but tasty, and the cast iron gives the edges a nice crust. The plums, which I can find bitter in their fresh form, mellow out as they bake to become lightly sweet and tart, even the peel. A dollop of whipped cream makes a slice even better.

Some important tips to share: Wait until the cake is halfway done baking before adding the plums.  The top row is the first cake I made, and you can see that the beautiful plums sank into the batter as the cake baked.  Also, the plums were only in the center of the cake, so the outer edges didn't have any of the delicious fruit.  In the bottom row, I added the plums after 15 minutes of baking, and you can see that they barely sank in.  I also increased the number of plums to four, so every slice of cake has plenty of fruit.

Update: This post made the Foodbuzz Top 9!  Thanks for all the buzz!

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Rum Raisin Ice Cream with Caramel Sauce

I've bailed the ice cream maker out of the basement, and given it a home on the counter.  I know that sounds like neglect, but it's big and heavy due to the built-in compressor (no need to freeze churning bowl!) so I waited for ice cream season to begin.  I never thought Rum Raisin Ice Cream was my thing, until I had something like it at a local ice cream shop last summer.  And then I saw this recipe at Pastry Affair a few months ago, and it's been on my brain since.  And apparently it's Joe's childhood favorite.  I'm not a big fan of drinking rum, but I've concluded I love rum-flavored desserts like Vanilla Bean-Pineapple Tart, Black Bottom Tart, and Baba au Rhum.

This was excellent.  The raisins are briefly cooked in rum and soak up all the liquid.  When they were almost done I put the lid on my saucepan and turned off the burner, and the flame puffed up before going out -- except it must have caught some alcohol fumes because the lid rim was suddenly blue and aflame.  "Whoa!" I shouted.  "What's up?"  Joe called from the other room.  "Unintentional flambé!"  It was entertaining, but just be careful.

If you're like me, you might ask if you need the caramel sauce.  No one needs caramel sauce, but you want it.  Trust me.  The ice cream and the caramel are each very good on their own, but combined they might sing to you.

View the recipe at Pastry Affair.

Want more recipes for frozen desserts?  Here are some oldies but goodies:

Chocolate Gelato

Blackberry Ice Cream

Lychee Sorbet

Caramelized Pear Ice Cream

Maple Ice Cream in Waffle Cone Cups


Frozen Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pie

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Boston Globe review: The Bloomy Rind

Shirley Goh/Globe Staff

Check out my review of The Bloomy Rind in Hingham, Massachusetts.  It's a cheese and gourmet foods shop with a chef who used to cook for Todd English.  This is a cheese slate at the shop with manchego cheese (on the left), camembert (on the right), spicy plum chutney, Picholine olives, dried apricots, Medjool dates, and fresh figs.

Even if you're nowhere near the south of Boston, you might be interested in all the cheeses and gourmet items I tasted.  There were so many, I couldn't fit them all in the review.

Read the review here.  If you run into the subscriber pay wall, the review is also available here (but with only one photo).  Again, I'm open to suggestions of South Shore restaurants and food places to cover!

Cherry-Cream Cheese Hand Pies

After Memorial Day every year I must make two things: pie and ice cream.  Summer fruits are delicious on their own, but they're also so good inside of a pastry crust.  And even after baking the flavor of the fruit was fresh and maintained its shape, and it didn't turn into that cherry goop I hate in storebought pies.  The cream cheese mixture adds a nice sweetness and tang to the cherries.  I can see myself throwing these in the picnic basket all summer.

I was bummed at not posting last week, but look what I've had to distract me!  Nearly a year after losing my best buddy and the sweetest cat in the entire world, Baby, we found Shnooky a little brother.  We got Dalton,1½ years old, at the local shelter.  During the day he sleeps under the bed, but at night he's a furball of energy.  He loves chasing the laser pointer dot and cries if he loses sight of it, and he likes to sing at 2 a.m. when the world is asleep.  We're working on changing his name, and Joe is pushing for Gandalf the Grey because he waves his paws around like he's casting spells.  You'd think I'd love that, considering the name of this blog, right?  I'm not sure yet that Gandalf sounds cute enough for this fella.

I have a point to my digression.  I had done my baking prep, making the pie dough and quartering the cherries.  And since they were frozen cherries, I didn't have to wrestle with the pitter.  Then we got our new cat, plus my editor asked me to submit my next Boston Globe dining review a week earlier than we'd agreed on.  So no time for cherry pies.  The cherries stayed unspoiled in the freezer, as did half a batch of the pie dough.  For some dumb reason I didn't freeze both halves, so I substituted some storebought puff pastry sitting in my freezer and it worked great.  So when life gets busy, baking projects are salvageable!

Also, my next food review runs in The Boston Globe this Sunday, so check back here for the URL!

Update: This post made the Foodbuzz Top 9!

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Boston Globe Review: Sher-A-Punjab

Photos by Shirley Goh/Globe Staff

My dining review of Sher-A-Punjab is in today's Globe.  If you're in the Boston area, pick up a copy and flip over to the Globe South section.  It's the first of my occasional reviews of restaurants and other food places south of Boston.  And if you know about a place on the South Shore that should be reviewed, I want to hear about it!

I haven't really discussed my job on this blog, but I work at The Boston Globe as a copy editor on the news desk.  Some people ask me what that entails -- I edit metro, nation, foreign, and business stories, along with writing headlines and doing some page design.  In my down time I've written this food blog for fun, and now I'm enjoying this Globe South writing gig.

Sher-A-Punjab is an Indian restaurant in Quincy, Massachusetts.  You can also read my review online at http://tinyurl.com/7laohzl.

Update: If you hit the subscriber-only pay wall at that first URL, you can try viewing it instead at http://www.boston.com/yourtown/quincy/articles/2012/05/20/modern_indian_cuisine_at_sher_a_punjab_in_quincy/.