After four months, homemade vanilla extract is finally ready! This super easy recipe requires two ingredients - a decent bourbon or vodka and 4 vanilla beans. Put in a fancy pants jar like what I have above from The Container Store or any container that you don’t mind NOT seeing for 4 months because you’re going to put this thing in the darkest part of your cabinets until it’s ready to be used. I used some in a chocolate sauce I made for bourbon ice cream last night. Yeah I said it.
Peach sorbet. I created this based off of the Strawberry Sorbet recipe I posted earlier. I used 1/2 cup sugar - adjust sugar based on how sweet your fruit is. You can also add a tablespoon of your favorite vodka for softer freezing. Don’t increase the alcohol just because you want your frozen treats to be boozy. The alcohol won’t freeze and you could end up with peach juice instead of sorbet.
Kona Stout Ice Cream, recipe courtesy of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream. I used Stone’s Russian Imperial Stout with Kona coffee. This ice cream needs no sauce, it’s perfect on it’s own when you’re craving something cooling and sweet but not too-sweet.
Strawberry Sorbet recipe, makes roughly one pint.
1 pound strawberries, rinsed and roughly chopped
1/2 cup sugar, more if your berries are bitter
juice of half a lemon
Puree strawberries in a food processor. Transfer to a bowl and add the sugar and lemon juice. Mix to dissolve sugar, then cover bowl and let sit in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Once chilled, add to ice cream machine for 15 - 20 minutes. Put in containers and freeze for 2 hours or overnight, or eat right out of the bowl if you eat it quickly. You can double the recipe and it will still fit in the ice cream machine, but start with 1/2 cup sugar and add in spoonfuls until you reach the desired sweetness.
And if you really don’t have an ice cream machine you are wasting valuable ice cream experimentation time and you have no excuse - you can get the standard Cuisinart Ice-21 for $60 and it will last you several years. You can start small with sorbets and work your way up to that peanut double-chocolate caramel swirl scoop you’ve been craving since the last time you left a real ice cream shop. Once assembled, ice creams take no more than 30 minutes to spin in the machine. Think of all the possibilities…
Favorite findings from this morning’s markets (Taken with instagram)
Tea made better with @cuppow (Taken with instagram)
Peanut butter cup ice cream (Taken with instagram)
Today’s projects - strawberry jam and beer pickles (Taken with instagram)
Chicken and prosciutto sandwich with fig jam @twentytap (Taken with instagram)
Golden Draak Ale, 10.5% (Taken with instagram)
Orange cupcakes with glaze and sugary tops (Taken with instagram)
Pickling spices (Taken with instagram)
Kabobin it up with @edtrauma
Nothin says lovin like a half slab of ribs (Taken with instagram)
Growing green onions inside
