Peach Ice Cream: Summer Beginnings

My least favorite thing about blogging is having to do the "well, long time no see" intro necessitated after every long lull in blogging. But since I hate it, I won't do it this time!
Its finally summer, and being forever in school, I have lot of things I've accomplished this year--

• Done with 2.1 years of medical school
• Maybe know a few things about pregnant women and non-pregnant women
• Finally got those 3 little numbers that more or less say what I can or cannot go into as a specialty in the future (so romantic right?)
• Found a lab to call my home for the next 4 years and ready to nerd out about some neurons

Things I have yet to accomplish--

• Dreadfully behind on my run 201.7 miles New Years resolution.
• What is baking? What is ice cream? 
• Soaking up enough sun to prove to people I actually live in California.

Fortunately I have 2 weeks of pure freedom during which I can start making progress on a few of the things on my "to-do list." Starting obviously with the most important- ice cream. My parent's peach trees have been reproducing like mad, and peaches dropped rotten on the earth just are a waste of life.
This ice cream is stupid easy to make- if I could make it after not touching an ice cream maker for over a year, then anyone can. If you're so lucky to live in a beautiful town where you can wander to your front yard and have your pick of fresh peaches, all the better. :)
Now time for some non-medical reading and living luxuriously out in the sun. But don't worry, there will be more peaches and creations to come!

Recipe from David Leibovitz's The Perfect Scoop. 
Also found here.

Panforte Ice Cream: California Seasonal Seasonings

I left Thanksgiving under the impression that the complete work-free break would be re-energizing for med school. And it was. For like, 4 hours on day 1. And then.....it was like, wow. I have a lot of things to memorize and I just don't care anymore. So I curled up in a fetal position and learned about the gastrointestinal system while drinking diet dr. pepper and eating twizzlers and jelly belly beans to survive to a much more real 2 weeks of winter break. So here I am, writing about ice cream I made over the teaser Thanksgiving break because real winter break has been filled with skiing and snow rather than lazy house baking.

Despite the abundance of fruit in California, I don't think fruit cake is a particularly common California holiday treat, or like anytime treat. Probably because we actually have fresh fruit to eat and thus do not need to suffer through dried fruit laden desserts to survive winter and plagues and wars. That being said, I'm not actually California born and raised, and California is large enough where fruit cake traditions may vary by regions. Looking at you in a super judgemental way Nor-Cal. Like seriously, if there were to be a part of California that enjoyed fruit cake, it would totally be Nor-Cal.

Fruit cake hating aside, Panforte (aka italian fruitcake) Ice Cream? Totally something I can get behind. This was a surprise find in my favorite David Lebovitz ice cream book. The first time I made this back in June, my brother finished off the entire batch within the span of two days before I could take proper pictures. Panforte ice cream doesn't actually involve dried fruit, but rather deliciously soft candied fresh citrus peels and lots of your favorite holiday spices and California almonds. While you could be lame or efficient and just buy candied citrus peels, they are fun to make in that vaguely mindless way of peeling citrus' and slicing them into the size of toothpicks. If you're into that. But so delicious!!

Given that this will be my last post of 2015, its only reasonable to do some reflecting, even though I think forced gratitude/reflection/affection due to holidays is silly. Well, for one thing, I never reflected last year so I can't go back and go hmm, did I fulfill what I reflected on last year? (You can thank interview season for that).

But anyways, my approach to New Year's (Day) is usually to think about what was old and what was new in the past year. So, new things- starting medical school, wonderful new friends/classmates for life, and taking the next steps to being the bitter uber science doctor nerd that was always within me (or will be forced into me). And old things- returning to california dreamin' and saying goodbyes to the labs that defined and shaped where I am today. But also, good riddance to east coast humidity.

I don't do New Year's Resolutions, but I guess I have 2 for 2016. 1) Run 201.6 miles because Michelle is making me do it. 2) Keep remembering to find small things to be happy about even on the roughest days of med school.




Recipe via David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, also found on the internet here.

Lavender Honey Ice Cream: Provence and Disney Feels

As you can see, the lavender theme of this food blog continues! I am excited to announce that my small 1 oz bag of lavender is now maybe only 1/4 full now! I'm even starting to get anxious that I'll run out soon, and then order MORE, and then we can continue this happy romance with lavender. It's mildly amusing that I love lavender-flavored desserts (and floral flavors in general) so much because most people I imagine associate florals with perfumes, and if there's one thing I hate unequivocally in this world, its an excess of perfumes. So instead of smelling them, I choose to eat them instead. But seriously, what is wrong with the smell of soap.

I wrote the subtitle for this post a while back, so I got really confused about why I was feeling Disney feels. But then, I started thinking about the gorgeous lavender fields in Provence, France and then inevitably that scene in Beauty and Beast where Belle is running through the grass fields belting out her dreams of adventure after avoiding the unflattering advances of Gaston came to mind. Which, based on my iTunes library/Youtube is from Belle (Reprise).

Gotta love reprises. Though, do they have dandelions in France? Probably. I don't have an excessive amount of that ~wanderlust~ that seemingly every middle to high income 20 year old has, but going to a lavender field would 100% make it on my travel list if I bothered to ever make one. Not that I'll have much time for backpacking trips from the next decade....#academiaorbust.

The great thing about this ice cream is that its a fairly simple flavor- honey and lavender, both of which are detectable and well-balanced in this ice cream (gosh, doesn't that sound SO pretentious? well-balanced). You could probably be extra extra fancy and find an interesting tasting honey, and pair it with fresh farmers market lavender (or idk, take a jet to France if you're into that kind of thing) and have that extra effort actually come out in the flavor of the ice cream. A lot of times you can get away with using generics just because so many flavors are being mixed together in recipes. But I think the extra effort put into finding good ingredients would be worth it here. That being said, cheap honey and dried lavender makes for a great ice cream as well, as I and some tipsy medical students can attest to. I need to stop using ice cream as a crutch for social events.

Recipe via The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, a book I seriously recommend, but you can also find the recipe reposted on other food blog sites, such as this one if you wanted to try before you buy or something.

Also, cool side note, but I'm basically internet famous! Jk, not actually, but a photo from my last post about Asian Glazed Drumsticks was successfully submitted to foodgawker! My battle with natural lighting has finally given me one small victory!

Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk Sherbet: Sweet and Sour Beginnings

I think there's an inverse relationship between me stating on my blog "I promise to blog more consistently!" and me actually blogging consistently. I got into a major baking kick right in early June. And then I went on vacation and hiked some rocks. And then I realized how awful taking pictures of real food is. And then I moved to San Diego. And now we are here.

I probably have been putting off writing a new post because I don't know what to write. Maybe I was hoping that after a few weeks in San Diego doing things I would have things to write about? But unfortunately, my less than chipper attitude seems to be able to render even the biggest, most exciting of life changing moves into something that is just meh. Like yay! I moved! My new lab is cool! I wish I was less shy and awkward! I hate driving for 10-15 minutes stretches in traffic! I miss New Haven pizza! I miss walking to the grocery store even though I can now actually buy things like watermelon with my car! I feel awkward getting a car for essentially free because it was from high school and being so not an adult because I didn't buy my own car here! I watch way too much Scrubs! I need to run more since bad weather is no longer an excuse! What if I'm so unsociable that new lab won't even take me if I do want to do my PhD there! Being quiet sucks when I want to learn to do things and take initiative! My priority plot thing 100% did not work because I didn't fold my laundry until like today even though I said I was supposed to do it like 3 days ago! Clearly I have a lot of repressed slash fake stress given that its summer and school and real responsibilities haven't even like started and I keep using the word like!

So maybe its a good thing I'm forcing myself tonight to post a blog post since every habit starts with a first step. And what better place to sandwich rambling sentences about my life that no one cares about than between really really crafted shots of roasted strawberry buttermilk ice cream (roll credits)? If I were actually a food writer, this would probably be the place where I would start romanticizing youthful summers, and farms, and cows, where kids frolicked and strawberries were so fresh they were a perfume and buttermilk so rich it was heaven or something. But no, we live in a modern world with billions of people on the earth that need to be fed, and the very lucky couple of them doing highly productive things in the labor force to advance society so 'aint nobody got time for romanticizing a pastoral life that is very much not the way we would actually want to live today.

But hey, if you were hoping for your own farm one day- a dream I just crushed because you also now  realized why the midwest is so cheap- let it be known that delicious strawberry buttermilk ice cream can be made with you local grocery store's offerings of such products from commercial big agro farms (this is not to say that there are not issues like antibiotic overuse or labor/wages/lobbying or sustainability issues in agriculture).

If you've never roasted strawberries before, I 100% recommend that you do. Even if you don't eat them. Just soak in the amazing scent that will be coming from your oven, and definitely stick your nose a little too close to the pan when they come out. The buttermilk adds a sour tang to the ice cream that while interesting, felt a little too strong for me relative to the strawberries. I'd probably either add more strawberries or more sugar next time I make this. Because there will definitely be more stress induced posts in the future where ice cream will very very very much so be needed.

Recipe from Bon Appetit.

Ginger Beer, Rum, Lime and Coconut Sorbet: Frou-Frou?

Serious Eats' ice cream guy, Max Falkowitz, called this the ice cream version of a frou-frou cocktail drink. And frou-frou it is indeed, in the sense that it is fancy and overly ornate maybe. If you're thinking of the association of frou-frou cocktails with wimpy drinkers and girly drinks, then congrats! You've just unnecessarily genderized something!

But don't worry, I did the exact same thing in draft one of this, going on a tangent about how absurd it is that we have "male" and "female" drinks based on how much your drink tastes of bark and leather belts. Alas, I made the mistake of assuming that a frou-frou drink must be girly, which is part of the internalized societal biases that harm myself and others. So you know, just because you don't blatantly say things like "girls are distractingly sexy in science!" or advise other female scientists to "take it with humor" when your supervisor keeps looking down your shirt, doesn't mean there aren't unconscious biases that we all need to actively remind ourselves to check. The word frou-frou doesn't even mean girly-it just means excessively fancy. And I know plenty of males and females who are frou-frou. And of course, if you choose to identify with any other gender identity, you too have the freedom to be as frou-frou or not frou-frou as you want to be.

So cheers to everyone enjoying bark-like alcohol when they want on a Tuesday, and then having a frou-frou drink (umbrella included) on a Thursday. Because it would be such a sad, flavorless world if we were confined to drinks and food based on random identifiers that are frankly probably most useful when playing "Where's Waldo" or on an episode of "Criminal Minds."

Societal sexism aside, despite its fancy name, this sorbet is really really easy to make. Sorbet, is a non-dairy frozen dessert. Unlike a sherbet, which contains about 1-2% of milk fat. Unlike an ice cream, which I guess contains more than 10%. And unlike the 3-9% milk fat desserts which get the really creative name of "frozen dairy dessert." Did they just get bored haphazardly going through naming frozen desserts by milk fat content? This sorbet technically contains coconut milk, which is a form of fat, so I'm not sure if the milk fat content scale is in reference to only animal dairy, or all types of fat?

The coconut is the most prominent flavor, though the ginger does come up quickly afterwards, and the lime/rum as more of an afterthought. If you want to add more rum, I would add it afterwards as a topping rather than into the sorbet, as adding too much might cause problems with freezing.
Quick note, if you for whatever reason don't read it on Serious Eats, ginger beer is a much stronger (in flavor) version of ginger ale, and 100% more delicious.

Recipe via Serious Eats

Cinnamon Dulce De Leche Ice Cream: The ~Spice~ of Life

Day one of my longest vacation yet starts now. I had the inkling of an idea to be productive-get this blog post done, go for a run, make pizza dough, temporarily unpack my life, find books to check out from the library. But then I ended up on amazon prime instant video and the asoiaf reddit. And its now the afternoon, or early evening EST. If I were in lab as I were last week, this would be ridiculous.

Of course, how typical that as a fairly motivated person, I think that my vacation and free time are wasted unless I'm doing something interesting. Oh, I could go on and on about how the work-life balance of our generation and times has become a 24/7 work lifestyle, or how being busy is the new way we measure social value, or how we're now happiest when we're busy, but we've all seen this article/headline/podcast story plenty of times. We've all thought and nodded "YES THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG," maybe even have written a motivational sticky that says something like "take time," or "no decision you make is ever a mistake," (my personal sticky) and yet we're all still going to continue trying really hard regardless and occasionally reading and nodding to these articles.



So I'm not going to delve into that (or I'm going to try to not), because these kinds of commentaries about how we should live our life kind of remind me of both commencement speeches and horoscopes- nothing new is ever really said and if you make it vague it enough, it will always apply no matter what kind of life you're living (plus, I'm not getting paid to make a click bait article about 10 ways to improve your life here).

To make this semi-relevant to cinnamon ice cream with dulce de leche, there are times when my life can be interesting and varied- like the dash or heaping of spices I like to add to different things. And then there are times when it can be dull-like a creamy white ice cream base that's just waiting for something extra. Which frankly, is what most ice cream is. It's milk, cream, sometimes eggs, infused with something partway through or swirled through at the end. Technique-wise, ice cream is pretty boring and standard, but the ability to mix and add almost anything keeps it an easy way to do interesting things. Maybe thats all I need in my free time, lazy ways to be interesting.

As a not-quite-real-adult, I don't really have a large spice assortment, particularly in the savory department. But cinnamon is that warm, Christmas-time, fuzzy feelings spice that is the Target of spices- ubiquitous enough for fake adults, but with the potential to be fancy when it wants to be. David Lebovitz likes to be fancy obviously, but again, being not a real adult, I don't have 3 types of cinnamon (surprise! there are different types of cinnamon!). So I went with the in-between fancy option of using normal cinnamon sticks to infuse the cream base and hand grated cinnamon rather than the powdered stuff every single other normal person uses. I did initially have a hard time tasting the cinnamon in the base, and consequently shaved about 75% of a cinnamon stick into the base for extra taste at the end, which definitely helped make the churned ice cream taste like cinnamon. I'd probably add more sticks or seep longer next time (in addition to buying fancy cinnamon).

Cinnamon aside, I had an extra can of sweetened condensed milk I never used, so I made dulce de leche out of it via the microwave method to mix in at the end. Within the realms of homemade dulce de leche, people online are seriously divided. I've only tried this microwave method so I can't really comment, but based on the 5-10 tabs I read, I'd say microwave is one of the safer methods, and adding a 1/2 tsp of water every couple of minutes seems to help with the problem of the dulce de leche becoming too brittle before it is done. I was trying to go for more of a swirled effect with the dulce de leche, but fairly thick toffee + cold = lumps rather than streaks. No complaints flavor or texture-wise though as the dulce de leche was still soft in the ice cream, albeit you got it in rather large quantities rather than interspersed.

Cinnamon Ice Cream via David Lebovitz
Dulce De Leche via Cooking for Engineers (multiple methods exist)

Tardis Tea Ice Cream: Better Astronaut Ice Cream

Remember those super trendy freeze-dried packets of "astronaut ice cream" that every science museum, art museum, or store that considered itself cool sold? While freeze dried foods are a fascinating novelty, do they actually taste that good? Not really. I mean, the freeze dried ice cream was actually pretty good given that ice cream is a delightful mixture of cream and sugar at its core. So even sucking the moisture out of it can't really do that much damage.



But here, I present an ice cream all astronauts, real and fictional alien ones, would probably enjoy. A bit of caffeine, some fruit, and some leaves- all part of a balanced space traveling diet. Though I get the impression that Doctor 12 is maybe not an ice cream type of person, or am I just grumpy old person stereotyping? He could very well be the exact opposite and be that crazy old man that subsists on ice cream. Related to that, ice cream for breakfast, while helpful with the whole natural lighting photography thing (which I still need to seriously work on), does not keep you full until lunch.

So what exactly is Tardis tea? It's this awesome early grey tea blend with blueberry and vanilla notes created in honor of Doctor Who! The blueberry is clearly meant to be associated with Tardis blue, and earl grey I suppose embodies the BBC. The tea leaves from this smell straight up amazing and as close to fantasy and exploration as a scent could possibly come close to. While the tea brews slightly on the bitter side when drinking it, the cream and sugar in the ice cream base more than help balance out the bitterness. For extra measure, I also added in a swirl of blueberry sauce, which gave it a nice pretty streak of purple/blue too.



Of course, Tardis tea ice cream isn't exactly a common Tazo or Twinnings or Celestial Seasonings tea, but normal earl grey works perfectly in this recipe. Heck, the recipe I adapted this from is an earl grey ice cream recipe. I've been pretty successful with my attempts at tea-based ice creams in the past making green tea and chai tea and now this Tardis tea ice cream. That just about covers the bases of my favorite teas. I usually hate drinking fruity teas, but now I'm thinking they might have a redeeming place in tea-infused ice creams now. Even if you're an anti-tea person, tea ice cream might just be the type of tea you've been waiting to be offered your whole life!

Sidenote-isn't it kinda awesome that freeze drying food was invented thanks to NASA and the amazing energy and funding that we poured into scientific exploration back in the day? Take that Ted Cruz! Not to mention like the gazillion other maybe slightly more useful things in our lives aside from freeze dried foods.

Tardis Tea from Adagio Teas
Earl Grey cream recipe via Gimme Some Oven
Blueberry sauce via My Baking Addiction

Orange Creamscicle Frozen Yogurt

When it comes to having bad weeks or being sad, I think its always useful to have some ice cream around. Not like an entire freezer full of emergency Ben and Jerry flavors (though you're certainly welcome to that lifestyle if you would like), but like one or two solid ice creams you can grab a scoop or two as you mope through it all.


Of course, I might only be saying this because it gives me an excuse/reason to justify my continuous ice cream making. Not that you need an excuse to make ice cream, please. Though, orange creamsicle isn't exactly the type of ice cream or frozen yogurt one usually draws to for moping. And if you're going to froyo as your moping food, you're probably doing something wrong.



Orange creamsicle needs to have a renaissance. As a kid, we'd literally buy these huge bulk sized bags of creamsicle popsicles. They were the best. Icy, sweet orange juice on the outside. Soft creamy vanilla on the inside. And when it all starts slowly melting and mixing in that way only popsicles determined to drip all over the driveway do? Perfection.

My recent foray into the world of frozen yogurt may be related to my growing laziness at the worst possible time in terms of things I need to focus on in my life and work. That aside, frozen yogurt is literally the easiest thing ever. Just some sugar, yogurt, juice, whisk it all together. Add a dash of lemon and salt for tartness. Chill for like 10 minutes. Then churn churn churn. It definitely suits my minimal work style at the moment.
My frozen yogurt ended up with semi-large chunks of grated orange peel. Mainly because I don't actually have a grater or microzester but rather just a vegetable peeler and a knife. But I kinda like the bitterness you get from a small chunk of orange zest in this ice cream.

Bonus notinthekitchenoronatable photo because #naturallight is a thing people are into. I might have to stop making fun of people to set up absurd food photo shots on old crates because you know, I'm becoming one of them.

Recipe via the one and only Serious Eats.

White Wine Frozen Yogurt: Not Cersei

This is literally the opposite of Cersei. The opposite of that red wine berry sorbet I made a few months ago. Aside from the whole white wine thing, the fact that this is frozen yogurt means Cersei probably detests it with a burning passion. Probably reminds her too much of snow.

Being the well groomed adult I am, the only wine/beer/whatever glass I have is this fantastic Game of Thrones one. Not that I'm having large dinner parties where this is a problem or anything given my n=1 lifestyle at the moment.

This frozen yogurt is great. The white wine flavor is pretty strong at first, but it matches well with the tangy yogurt base. Plus, there's no egg tempering, and custard making, so it takes all of 5 minutes to mix it all together and start churning it.

It being October, it seems inevitable that seem form of pumpkin should leak into one of my posts (or be entirely dedicated to it), so lo and behold here we have it. Pumpkin butter and pumpkin macarons. Courtesy of our favorite trader name Joe. The macarons were decently good given that they are from a grocery store freezer aisle. The pumpkin butter is a perennial classic. There are many online who discuss their "I bought 10 jars of this stuff!" adventures, but I honestly have a hard time thinking what to put it on aside from yogurt and weird grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwiches, so I think I'm good with 1 jar to happily last me through my "ahhh must succumb to pumpkin phase."

Recipe via Serious Eats

Chocolate Lavender Ice Cream: Flower Power

I've slowly become increasingly resentful of my dedication to the world of food blogging. The part where you take pictures that is. The thing about working in research is that 5 PM is not a set in stone end of the work day hour. So sometimes its a bit later, which combined with fall/winter means darkness by the time I get around to actually taking pictures. The great thing about research is that I could theoretically just leave whenever, like at 3 PM. But I don't like the thought of myself with that much power.

That being said, even with questionable lighting, its not like I'm trying to make it onto foodgawker or get named one of Saveur's top food blogs of the year, so even with unpleasant shadows and bright yellow lights, its still fun. Though its so easy to get carried away into wanting to be ~food blog famous~. But I have other goals and aspirations I can aim to excel in. Food photography? Not so much.

As you can tell, my obsession with incorporating lavender into literally everything continues. I swear I'm going to have enough lavender to last for the next 20 years even if I do add lavender to every single recipe. If you're wondering, those flecks of green are pistachios, but chocolate lavender pistachio ice cream seems like a mouthful, but the pistachios are definitely a nice touch and a nice distraction if you're honestly getting sick of lavender like a certain someone typing this.

Even with my waning interest in lavender though, this was still a really great ice cream. Especially if you're looking to serve something esoteric. If you're not, this chocolate ice cream itself is super rich. It tasted more like fudge ice cream than chocolate ice cream. I'm personally very picky about chocolate in that the richer it is the better. So this chocolate ice cream was right up my alley. If you're not so into rich, dense, dark chocolate, I would suggest another recipe.

Chocolate lavender ice cream recipe from The Wholesome Pursuit, with ~1/4 cup of chopped, lightly roasted pistachios mixed in. Original chocolate ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Also, if anyone wants to buy me a present at some point, hint hint.

Cannoli Ice Cream: Toppings Megabus

If only pistachios were $5. Not that Megabus is even $5 dollars these days. Sorry Boston friends. You are definitely worth the $35 or whatever they charge these days though. Friendships are worth above money. Though there is a certain element of responsiveness and genuine communication that seems to falter despite all the forms of "talking" we seem to have these days.

quality photo right there. the makings of a true food photographer.

Anyways, to break the 4th or whatever wall I seem to avoid by trying to make my posts timeless, its already Friday at midnight, I'm rather sleepy and running on 22% battery-life, so I'll have to make this fast and not-so-cute. Basically, banana loaf lasagnas means left over ricotta. Which means cannoli ice cream. Which means an abundance of toppings. Probably a little too much-pistachio, chocolate chips, and crushed sugar cones. The original recipe called for actual homemade cannoli shells, but I don't have that kind of time, so sugar cones it was. The beauty of ice cream toppings is that you can add or subtract whatever you want without a major recipe make over.



 Unfortunately, I forgot that sugar cones get soggy. While the crunchy was great when the ice cream was freshly churned, it wasn't so awesome on the 3rd day or so. Not sure if homemade cannoli shells would have that same effect, but I'm curious now since that wasn't really a disclaimer in the original recipe. The ice cream itself is absurdly easy since all the richness derives from the ricotta and your typical mixture of milk and cream rather than cooking a custard. I was a bit skeptical about whether it would actually taste like a cannoli both because 1) There was a lack of mascarpone which seems like a necessary staple for most real cannolis, 2) I've only had 2-3 cannolis in my current existing life so can I really recognize cannoli in ice cream form?, and 3) My last few ice creams have been kind of a miss on the full flavor side.

This time around though, it was obvious that the ice cream base was creamy in that cannoli sort of way. I've never been a big fan of chocolate chips in ice cream, but added them in just to try it out. Still don't really like chocolate chips, but loved the ice cream anyways, especially the pistachios and sugar cones in their non-soggy state. Maybe next time I'll try chocolate flakes because chocolate is still delicious. Just not in crunchy rock hard chip form. Gosh, imagine if I used full sized chips and not mini ones. That would have been a disaster.

As a general update, I ended up running to reserve battery power at the beginning of that last paragraph, so I had to grab my charger. I could re-edit this so that you would never know that I was in the midst of a battery crisis, but I like adding an edge of danger to my posts. Sorry that was a bit too hyperbolic even for me.

Recipe from Cooking Classy (yay alliterations!). I used a hand mixer with a whisk to blend the base since my blender was a bit occupied by pesto. I was concerned I would make whipped cream, but mixing with a spoon when it got too foamy seemed to resolve this. The final base was a little grainy from the ricotta, but the final product was still creamy.

Red Bean Ice Cream: Summer Vacays to the Homeland

I want to say that this is the first time I've had red bean ice cream while in the US, but I feel like that isn't true. It's not like red bean is a super absurd flavor these days. Regardless of the accuracy of my memory, red bean ice cream is something I tend to affiliate with hot, dusty, humid summer days in China visiting family. Every 4ish years or so, we go back to China and, if you have any sense of what Chinese family reunions are like, its a big old time. So much food. So much nice dining. So much one uncle insisting over the other to pay. So much fish oil to bring from the US (and chocolate of course). So much cutesy mechanical pencils and stationary to bring back. It's great.

One of the memories I have from these visits is the reasonable, yet possibly absurd amount of ice cream my siblings and I would consume on a daily basis while being shuttled from one monument to the next. Sure there were some normal flavors, like drumsticks and plain vanillas, but there were also some (at first) fascinating flavors that we probably only tried after the insistence of our mother. Some classic flavors include red bean, green bean, and one that we called "green tongue jello," whose actual name still evades me as a semi-adult.

I'm not sure if this ice cream was a strongly red bean flavored as I would have liked. The super DIY-er in me bought red beans rather than just pre-cooked, sweetened red beans--definitely the easier route. In my defense, I was not deliberately trying to be a hipster or snob. I literally did not realize that pre-made red bean paste exists. This is probably also pretty telling of how terrible I am at grocery shopping if I didn't notice the red bean paste sitting a few shelves away from the dry red beans.

Thankfully, making your own red bean paste is not that difficult- and probably even better if you're particularly picking about the texture or sweetness of your paste. My stove is unnecessarily hot at times, so I did accidentally burn some of the beans when the water got dangerously low while "simmering." Its unclear if this is a placebo effect, but I do feel like after a few days, the ice cream has gotten richer in red bean flavor compared to when it was freshly churned. Orrrrr, I just have really really messed up taste buds from all that sugar.
Regardless, it may not be my best ice cream yet, but its definitely one I plan to try making again at some point. And as a side note, happy belated mid-autumn festival! Go eat some mooncakes!
Ice cream and red bean paste recipe from food52.

Chai Ice Cream: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

I usually have a hard time picking favorites. Maybe its because I'm a sibling, and the idea of favorites seems mean. Or that I have problems making definite decisions. You see, its that whole parallel universe idea from those sci-fi/fantasy books I read as a child. The minute you make a choice, you close the door to another alternate reality. Amber Spyglass anyone? (hint, Golden Compass, hint, Phillip Pullman)

Anyways, even if I did have the ability to travel through different worlds or realities, this Chai Ice Cream would remain the one constant in my exciting and dangerous little life. My totem if you will (if you're into Inception). It's rare for me to have a favorite, as my parallel world's intro rambling just told you, but I'm pretty confident that Chai Ice Cream is by far my favorite homemade ice cream yet. Yes. Even above pumpkin and apple pie and speculoos ice cream. Maybe it was because I took the extra two hours to boil my own chai-spiced custard base. Which I probably would have consumed on its own without freezing if I didn't love ice cream freaking much.

There are Chai Ice Cream recipes out there that probably entail just soaking chai tea bags in hot water to create a concentrate, but please please please please take the extra 2 hours, 1 hour of driving around to grocery stores, and extra $20 bucks to buy whole fragrant spices if you have the freedom of post-graduate life. Because man, while I hate recipes that call for a million things that I would only use for one recipe, this is so worth it if you're a fan of either ice cream or chai or being happy. Well, scratch the last one. I can't tell you what makes you happy, but just thinking about a bowl of this ice cream and my backyard on a stereotypically lovely Californian day certainly makes me happy.

An ice cream recipe this perfect can only come from my favorite food blog itself--Serious Eats. The comments mentioned adding sugar because it wasn't sweet enough, but ignore them. I did not ignore them and added an extra 1/4 cup, but in the end, the extra sugar was quite unnecessary.

Red Wine Berry Sorbet: The Stuff of Fantasy

I think authors and daydreamers have a romanticized notion of red wine. I can easily imagine several of my favorite fantasy characters sitting around a hearth fire with a glass of red wine mulling over their next enemy or the fates they have been dealt by the gods. Ok, so I'm mainly thinking about Cersei Lannister at the moment, but I'm sure that you too had someone pop into your head.

As I, and so many other college/young professionals have been told, alcohol is an acquired taste (that is, if you're not dousing it in orange juice first). While I have acquired a taste for beer and to a certain degree white wine, red wine continues to challenge me. Sure, it has a nice warmth to it, and I don't think I particularly mind the tannins, but something about it just makes me excessively sleepy and occasionally gives me a mild headache. But red wine in the books seems reserved to be sipped only by the oldest, most elite, most evil, or most wise. Perhaps I need to work on losing more of my sense of rationality and morals before I can sip away at wine like Cersei can. Or you know, just grow very old with wisdom in a cold, mildly post-apocalyptic setting.

But until that happens, I'll have to get my serving of red wine (since thats a key part of the nutrition plate of course) via the one food group almost everyone easily fills--dessert. In this case, red wine berry sorbet. After making white wine cupcakes, I felt I needed to make something out of the other wine. While I throughly researched several potentially great red wine and chocolate cupcakes, a little visit to a winery during senior week where we sampled a chocolate red wine (yes, it was literally a red wine flavored with chocolate) turned me off from the pairing. Especially after one of our friends commented that it tasted a bit like cough syrup and it was forever imprinted into my taste pallet (Thanks--you know who you are).

Since the chocolate and wine combo was off the table for now, I ended up making this sorbet instead (incidentally my first sorbet). Luckily, there was about a half cup of Cabernet Sauvignon in our fridge at home, which was just a little less than what I needed for the recipe I used from Today's Nest. I believe the recipe says you can use either frozen or fresh berries, so I just used a the frozen mix that my one true love Costco sells. While the sorbet came out sorbet-like in the end with both berries and wine present, I think I would have liked it if it were a little more creamy. The taste was a lot like a berry smoothie with a bite of red wine at the end. I personally prefer my sorbets and ice creams on the creamier side, so perhaps I should have used a creamier milk than 2%. I might stick to custard based ice creams for now since they are just so delicious, but maybe I'll peruse the sorbet side of frozen treats again one day.

TL;DR:

• Red wine is used a lot in fantasy. Even one of my favorite bands titled a song after it.
• Sorbets aren't as creamy as ice cream.

P.S. I know my pictures are usually not very good, but these have some seriously questionable lightening/color. So for that, I apologize profusely.