Here’s another ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz’s book, The Perfect Scoop, and it’s a great one for now, Quebec’s glorious strawberry season. It’s not a very sweet ice cream, but really shows off the flavour of the strawberries, so make sure you use only the best berries for this ice cream. The sour cream gives it a nice tang, and the heavy cream that smooth, ice creaminess you would want. It’s a simple ice cream, meant as a showcase for the berries.

I had made a strawberry-rhubarb compote a bit later in the week and topped this ice cream with it. It got about 10x better, so definitely try something like that!

Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream
from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop

1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vodka or kirsch
1 cup sour cream
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Slice the strawberries. Put them in a bowl with sugar and vodka or kirsch.

2. Stir until the sugar begins to dissolve and all of the strawberries are coated. Let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

2. Pulse the strawberries and their liquid with the sour cream, heavy cream, and lemon juice in a blender or food processor until almost smooth, but still slightly chunky.

3. Refrigerate mixture for at least one hour. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

We’re off on a 3-week vacation soon…two weeks in Hawaii (Big Island and Kauai) and one week driving the California coastline. We’ll be visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, with stops along the way.

This is a call to the Internet! If you’ve eaten delicious food in any of these places, resto or market, please give me recommendations! I’ve been doing my research online, but I would love to hear more. I’m really looking for those hidden treasures, or those local spots that offer the things I don’t get up here in Quebec (especially seafood!)

I recently checked my little carton of molasses and saw it was a few days from its expiry date, so I started checking out everything I could bake to use it up. Seeing as I had a little tub of crystallized ginger, already minced, ready to be used, I figured some ginger molasses cookies were in order.

The ones I ended up making were absolutely fantastic. Thick, chewy in the middle, slightly crispy around the edges, with little pockets of intense ginger. You could add ground ginger and/or cloves to them, but I liked them simple, with the flavour of molasses standing out. The sugar coating adds a great crunch.

Apparently, these taste just like the ones sold by Starbucks. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that statement, but I do know whenever I will have the urge for some molasses cookies, these will definitely be the ones I bake!

Ginger Molasses Raisin Cookies
adapted from All Recipes

2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup molasses
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, minced
1/2 cup raisins
1/3 cup white sugar (for rolling)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

2. In a large bowl mix oil and 1 cup of sugar. Add egg, beat well. Stir in molasses, 2 cups flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and raisins. If necessary, add more flour to make a firm dough.

3. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Roll in 1/3 cup sugar. Place 3 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until tops crack. Remove from baking sheet and cool on rack.

After a long, rainy and cool spring here, it’s finally hot summer temperatures – almost 32 degrees C with the humidity (or 90 degrees F) today! The last few days have been pretty steamy, so of course, I had to whip out my newest addition to my cookbook collection, David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. I vowed to make more use of my ice cream maker this summer, and I’ve been doing good to my promise so far, having already prepared two ice creams from this book.

This maple-walnut one is the first I made. Something about salty-maple-sweet walnuts appealed to me. We had just bought a bunch of maple syrup at a great price, so that helped me make the decision. This was a very, very smart decision!

The recipe calls for a darker-coloured syrup, but I used a lighter one. This probably had an impact on the overall maple taste of the ice cream, as it wasn’t very strong. However, I was perfectly okay with that! It had a light maple flavour, and a rich creaminess. The candied walnuts were a great element, adding both crunch and hit of maple sweetness. Next time, I would use more maple syrup and more salt in walnut preparation though.

Maple Walnut Ice Cream with Wet Walnuts
from David Lebovitz’s A Perfect Scoop

1 1/2 cups of whole milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cup dark amber maple syrup (preferably Grade B)
1/8 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Warm the milk and sugar in a pot. Pour the cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. Set aside.

2. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, slowly pour the warm milk/sugar into the yolks, whisking constantly to temper the yolks. Scrap the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan. Continue cooking over medium heat and stir constantly with a heatproof spatula. When the consistency becomes like a custard, pour through a strainer and stir it into the cream to cool. Add the maple syrup, salt, vanilla, and stir until cool. Place in the fridge for 4-8 hours (or even overnight).

3. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the directions. While the ice cream is churning, prepare the wet walnuts.

WET WALNUTS

1/2 cup dark amber maple syrup
1 1/2 cups walnuts, toasted
Big pinch of Fleur de Sel

1. Heat the maple syrup in a skillet until it starts bubbling. Add in the walnuts and coat them generous. Stir for about 10 seconds and remove from the heat. Sprinkle some Fleur de Sel and let cool completely.

2. Stir in the wet walnuts a minute before the ice cream finishes churning. Save some to top off when serving.