Why-Not Wednesday

Before:

After:

Blackberry Sorbet

Every August growing up, I would walk the edges of nearby fields, picking blackberries, and watching over my shoulder for neighborhood dogs on the loose!  Those blackberries were sweet, huge, juicy and plentiful. I'd come home with a sherbet container full, and more than a few prickers.

Nowadays, I get my blackberries at Wilson's Farm or the local grocery store. Unfortunately, they're rarely as sweet and large as they used to be, but still fantastic. 

This year my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I was left with a lot of blackberries in my fridge before leaving town for a few days...hmmm...what to do? I also had some watermelon and a few kiwis that I also didn't want to go bad...time for 'Everything but the Kitchen Sink' sorbet! 

This came out so well, I urge you to try something similar with some leftover fruit from your labor day weekend festivities!

This sorbet tastes like late summer, and is full of wonderful blackberry flavor. The addition of some sugar, with the sweetness of the watermelon and kiwis, brings out the true blackberry flavor even if you have some pretty sour blackberries.  This fruits of summer sorbet combines the light, refreshing flavor of mid-summer watermelon, the sweet taste of kiwi (which has a strawberry and banana cross flavor to it), and of course the end of Summer blackberries. So good!

Blackberry Sorbet

1-2 cups blackberries (approximately, use what you have)

1-2 cups watermelon (again, approximately)

2 kiwis

Juice of 1 lime (I squeezed gently, didn't go too crazy with the lime juice)

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup water

1 Tbsp Coconut Rum *optional...helps with scoopability post freezing

Blend with a blender or handheld mixer

I started to strain out some of the seeds, and did so with a fine mesh strainer and a rubber spatula...but decided to just leave everything in there, because a lot of the flavor comes from that pulp.

 In the end, the seeds were not a big deal at all! So don't worry about it. They are so fine, it did not make a difference.

Blend, pour, freeze...

EAT! Enjoy! Happy Last Days of Summer!

Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

I finally accomplished a long held goal, sugar cookies with royal icing! Yay! Not only did I make one batch, I made two batches, for two separate events, within a week of each other.

I am now on a sugar cookies sabbatical, at least for a couple more weeks!

My first attempt at these cookies was for a dear friend's baby shower.  She is having a little girl, and all I could think of was pink, pink, pink! I made large teddy bears, baby bottles and little pink feet with painted toes. My friend and I love to get pedicures together, so of course the cookies had to have a perfectly painted pedicure. (OK, 'perfectly' painted is quite an overstatement for my first attempt!)

I have been doing my research for cut-out sugar cookie recipes, royal icing, and getting inspiration from a few of my favorite blogs like Bake at 350, University of Cookie, and Cookies and Cups.  These ladies know how to bake a cookie! University of Cookie is a great resource started by Bridget of Bake at 350, and it is loaded with cute videos and helpful tips and tricks! Definitely go check it out if you are venturing into this oddly addictive venture.

My second attempt was for another dear friend's son's first birthday party, and they were a lot of fun to make.  The color theme for the party was red, yellow and blue, so I brought those into the cookies by using the paste food coloring in the little tubs which provide a much more vibrant color than water based or gel based food coloring.

Lesson Learned #1:

XX Sugar or Confectioner's Sugar sprinkled liberally on your work surface will make your cookie making experience a lot better, and easier!

Lesson Learned #2:

Cut out your cookies to the same thickness. This is done by either the rings you can put on a rolling pin which will roll out your dough to the same thickness, or if you have two strips of wood (clean wood!) the same thickness, roll out your dough in between these two strips, while using the strips of wood like rails to roll your rolling pin on.

Lesson Learned #3:

Make two batches of dough if you want to have a good amount for a gathering, and chill the dough for at least an hour.  I patted the batch of dough into a 6 x 7 inch rectangle, approximately, then wrapped it plastic wrap and put in the fridge.

OK, that was more than just one lesson.

Oh and sift your sugar for your icing!

There are seriously so many things I learned while making these cookies. 

The cookies themselves, pre-icing, came out great. I modified Bridget's sugar cookie recipe, and it worked well. 

I used vanilla and my secret weapon:

This flavoring gives the cookies an extra buttery, every so slightly citrusy flavor that all melds together for a very. tasty. cookie. 

 I did add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to one batch as I thought it might need it since I was using unsalted butter.  Turns out, it didn't make a difference at all.

I also used Bridget's recipe for royal icing. I used fresh lemon juice in the baby shower cookies, and pure vanilla extract for the birthday cookies. Both tasted great. 

So here's the bad news, large teddy bears take extra, extra long to dry! Just plan on a little extra time if flood icing a large cookie.  Another challenge I ran into was that some of the cookies, in both batches, had the flood royal icing get little holes or pock-marks, once completely dry. Talk about freaking out! In the end, I think it may have been due to the fact that when I thinned my royal icing, I did not thin it out gradually! Patience is apparently important with royal icing. I was able to embellish some of the cookies with piped icing...

In the end, each batch took a full three nights to complete. 

Night 1: Make dough and chill. Cut-out and bake.

Night 2: Make royal icing, outline cookies and flood ice cookies

Night 3: Do detailing of cookies, embellish etc. Let completely dry overnight if needed.

Phew!

Mango Sorbet

I know, I know, my last post was about sorbet, but that was chocolate sorbet, I feel like mango sorbet is REAL sorbet...it's fruit! It's like healthy ice cream!

OK, so I am a little obsessed with ice cream, sorbet, and my ice cream maker attachment to my KitchenAid...although this you can make without an ice cream maker. (More on that later.)

Sooo, Mango Sorbet! Technically this is Mango Peach Lime Coconut Sorbet....but really everything but the mango just enhances the flavor of the mango, I am so impressed with how the other flavors bring out the mango flavor. Just the mango itself, surprisingly would not result in the full mango flavor that this sorbet has.

Dave, my bff, as mentioned in my Chocolate sorbet post, had a recipe that I based this recipe on. His recipe included mango, dark rum, and lime juice; I mixed it up a bit. Find his original recipe in his book, "The Perfect Scoop".

Mango Sorbet i.e. Mango Peach Coconut Lime Sorbet

2 ripe mangoes (Spelling tip, Mangoes or Mangos is correct)

1 peach

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup water

Juice of 1 lime

1 Tbsp Coconut Rum

1. Peel and dice 2 mangoes (This duplicate correct spelling is bugging me)

I have tried the seemingly popular way to dice a mango, and it just never works for me, so I went for what felt right to me. I peeled the mango with a vegetable peeler, and sliced as much mango as I could off of the wide flat seed. Be very careful when working with ripe, slipper mangoes! I definitely want one of those mango slicers!

2. Peel and dice one ripe peach and add to the diced mangoes.

3. Add water, coconut rum, and the juice of 1 lime to the diced fruit. (The rum helps keep the sorbet slightly soft enough to be scoopable after freezing and leaves ZERO alcohol taste)

4. Stir mixture to incorporate, and then either pour into a blender or use an immersion blender to blend smooth as possible.

5. Chill mixture ( I chilled it for about an hour which seemed just fine)

6. Whir it up in your ice cream maker! 

Or, if you simply freeze this mixture and stir once or twice while freezing, you'll get a nice frozen treat without the need for an ice cream maker.

You won't be disappointed by this mango sorbet recipe! 

As a shout out to my wonderful college friends and a long ago trip to Miami, 

"Wet Willy's is Booooring, Mangoes is fuuuuunnn!"

Chocolate Sorbet

Chocolate Sorbet is so lovely. It's rich and satisfying, yet doesn't have the weight of some chocolate ice creams. I say, perfect for summer! Here in Boston, it's going to be in the 90s starting tomorrow!

I had the Chocolate Fudgsicle sorbet at JP Licks last weekend, which is exactly what started this quest.  Their official description: Chocolate Fudgsicle Sorbet - Chocolate heavin! Tastes just like an old fashioned fudgsicle.  They were oh so right. It was just so good, especially when accompanied by their new Banana Oreo...seriously, c'mon, ridiculously happy ice cream moment!

I found this recipe in David Lebovitz "The Perfect Scoop", modified it slightly, and have been eating it for a week!

I did not follow the recipe precisely, I did not have Dutch process cocoa powder, so I used the Hershey's cocoa powder I had in the cabinet.  I also used the brick chocolate that I had, but this still came out absolutely amazing. I do want to try this again with Dutch process cocoa powder as it does have a somewhat smoother quality when used in ice cream and has a milder flavor.  

This had a very strong flavor and was so very rich, that I found having a bowl full of wonderful fresh summer berries with it really helps to cut the strength the chocolate. As the ice cream melts, you then have chocolate covered strawberries and raspberries. Really, it was wonderful!  If you use an even higher quality chocolate, it would of course make it even better. Dave suggests that a higher quality chocolate will yield better results, but the chocolate that I had in my cabinet worked just fine for me! (And yes, Dave and I are on a first name basis...we're BFFs)

Chocolate Sorbet

Adapted from "The Perfect Scoop" by David Lebovitz

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups Water (Divided into 1 1/2 cups water and 3/4 cup water)

1 c sugar

3/4 c unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

Pinch of salt

6 oz. bittersweet chocolate

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix together 1 1/2 cups of water, sugar, cocoa powder and salt in a large saucepan. Stirring almost constantly, bring this mixture to a boil. Once boiling, whisk the mixture while on the heat for approximately a minute.

Take the mixture off of the heat, and add in the chocolate. Mix well, the residual heat will melt the chocolate almost immediately. Add the remaining 3/4 cup water and vanilla.

(Dave suggests putting your mixture into a blender at this point for 15 seconds. I used an immersion blender, but didn't find it really did much to the mixture, but did result in some splattered chocolate.)

Chill well and then throw it in your ice cream maker! (Gently...gently!)

Ahhhh chocolate sorbet.

Mix In Ideas

No pudge brownies, cut into bits ( We may have done this one night, it may have been divine)

Fresh berries

Mini Peanut Butter cups

Mini Raspberry filled cups

Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich

Need a dessert? Need a dessert for a BBQ without having to use plates or utensils? This is the dessert for you! 

I made these this weekend for a BBQ, and they were a big hit.

The night before the BBQ I made a batch of my mint oreo cookie ice cream, but instead of crushed Oreos I used 1 cup of chopped bittersweet chocolate.  I buy Bakers since I can find it at my grocery store, but use any sort of bar chocolate you like as long as you can chop it. This isn't too expensive, and the bittersweet works very well for this ice cream.

Mint chocolate chip ice cream fabulousity.  When you chop the chocolate you get little shards of chocolate throughout the ice cream that lends a nice texture, without having to use chocolate chips. Obviously you can use chips if you want to, but I really prefer the chopped chocolate.

I made this the night before so it could freeze to a solid enough consistency to assemble the ice cream cookie sandwiches the next day. 

The next morning I made chocolate chocolate chunk cookies and chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. You want to make the cookies far enough in advance so that you can assemble the cookie sandwiches and have them set up hard before you serve them. 

Cool the cookies completely before assembling your cookie sandwiches, or you will have a soupy mess!

If your ice cream is extremely hard set (if you use store bought for instance (gasp!)) you might want to let it sit out just for a few minutes to slightly soften, but not too much, otherwise you won't be able to make the sandwiches.

I chose to use homemade ice cream and made the cookies from a mix (I know, sometimes you have to choose your battles). If you're short on time, make homemade cookies and use store bought ice cream.  

Have fun and enjoy these little handfuls of summer fun!