Brandy Strawberry Yogurt Ice Cream

Food Scavenger has stumbled upon a surprise: brandy is very good with fruit. Also, Food Scavenger has stumbled upon the perfect ratio for fruit ice cream.


Awesome and fruity since 2011... (background orange is brandy peach compatriot ice cream - new and improved)

Brandy Strawberry Ice Cream 1 to 1 1/2 c. strawberries (halved or quartered or diced)
1 c. yogurt
1 c. milk
1/4 c. brandy
2 tbsp. sugar

Soak strawberries in brandy and sugar overnight.

Blend with yogurt and milk.

Pour into ice cream maker per ice cream maker's instructions.

10-15 minutes in, add diced strawberries.

Now, the general ratio for brandy fruit ice cream is:

Brandy Fruit Ice Cream
1 to 1 1/2 c. fruit (more if incorporated pieces of fruit too)
1 c. yogurt
1 c. milk
1/4 c. brandy
2 tbsp. sugar (more depending on sweet preference)

Brandy Banana Yogurt Ice Cream

Per usual, Food Scavenger has been on a food craze. There are some flavors that surprise her. Banana, for one. It is after all banana. What could be more innocent, more bland, more there to be tried and gotten over with than banana?

But that is where Food Scavenger was sorely wrong.

For Banana Ice Cream, while not bad-ass like peach or a heady caffeine kick like coffee is truly Food Scavenger's best friend. And the best friend to all ice cream flavors. It's simpatico. It's just that nice.

Brandy Banana Ice Cream
3 bananas
1 c. yogurt
1 c. milk
1/4 c. brandy
2 tbsp. sugar

Soak bananas in sugar and brandy overnight. 

Blend with yogurt and milk.

Pour into ice cream maker per ice cream maker's instructions.

Serve as you please alone in a cone or with an ice cream buddy.

The Banana Ice Cream (the four scoops below) is topped with a scoop of Coffe Irish Cream Ice Cream and chocolate cheerios.

Here, Banana Ice Cream plays second fiddle to the beautiful color of Strawberry Ice Cream (in the forefront on the right) and Peach Ice Cream (in the back, left-hand top corner).

And from the man himself...

Rum and Raisin Ice Cream

Sometimes, Food Scavenger can be quite foolish. Like typing up an entire post in a sticky note and then inexplicably closing the sticky note. Like scoffing inside at the idea of rum and raisin ice cream usurping flavors like coffee and chocolate.

Rum and raisin ice cream is Food Scavenger's mother's favorite ice cream.

The flavor also seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth (or off the nearby grocery store). Like mocha cappucino with spherical brownie bites (that had a crunchy inside that released an intensely coffee-flavored cookie). Life coffee fudge chunk.

However, Food Scavenger is always eager to delve into uncharted, gustatory waters.

Food Scavenger also happened to have used up a 2 liter bottle of brandy.

Don't look at Food Scavenger like that. Food Scavenger is dedicated. So, there she went to get herself this piratey libation of rum.

Then, she began to make the ice cream. She soaked raisins in rum. She saw the base come together, fluffy and white like snow, smooth as silk. She tasted this rum and raisin nonsense.

And was converted. She devoured this exotic, refreshing entity and then flapped around the kitchen trying to get rid of her brain freeze.

Rum and Raisin Ice Cream
2 1/2 to 3 c. milk (Food Scavenger happened to use 2% this time)
3/4 c. rum
2/3 c. raisins

Soak the raisins in 1/2 cup of rum overnight.

The raisins should be plump, having soaked in the rum-goodness.

Plump and drunk on rum.

There should still be a little rum at the bottom. Pour this rum into a 1/4 cup measuring cup. The measuring cup should be roughly half-filled, so about 1/8 cup. Fill the measuring cup with brandy till full. Pour this into a container (preferably, the container that will also keep the ice cream). Then add the milk.

Prep ice cream maker per ice cream maker's instructions. Add milk and brandy mixture.

10-15 minutes in, in which the mixture will have become smooth and fluffy, add the raisins.

Snowy fluff with scattered raisins.

Enjoy.

If raisins be not your sweet of choice, then the base could become a horchata ice cream base by adding cinnamon and sugar or be the base for any other mixture (with cookies maybe or chocolate, etc).

For the Food Scavenger's enjoyment, Food Scavenger supplemented the rum and raisin ice cream with a chocolate puddle cookie and poured onto the affair an extra dash of rum.

That's the life for Food Scavenger.

A little too much brandy in the Food Scavenger...

The brandy peach yogurt ice cream is almost gone.

This is most worrisome considering the fact that it has leapt from being merely pretty and delicious with the soft orange tinged with pink, the scattered hints of actual, real peaches to gaining a life of its own.

It began rather simply.

Food Scavenger could not refute such a statement. Indeed. Although, perhaps not, since Food Scavenger would rather not bathe in a stomach vat of hydrochloric acid and disappear forever (except as the broken, verily un-delicious compounds of biological excretion).

Yet. It took one step further.

Low blow Mr. Ice Cream. Low blow. Just because you have a sexy sidekick. Whereas Food Scavenger has professional, looking askance Mr. Camera.

FS: Hello Mr. Camera.

MC: To you, it's Mr. Panasonic Lumix. None of this friendly rubbish.

FS: *shrivels*

It hurts, when your food is much more interesting than you.

Brandy Peach Yogurt Ice Cream

So Food Scavenger has her own camera now.

What does this mean? Badly lit, unprofessional images will now abound! Why? Because the Food Scavenger makes food at night and the lights in the Food Scavenger's home are always on the fritz when it comes to showing off food.

Although, oddly enough, shadowy corners, like so, look quite pretty:

The darkly lit tulips, a romantic, organic contrast to the modernist glass-cut stand of the lamp and just to pique your curiosity the dated photograph of a young woman, head angled towards you, expression unreadable.

Now, though, the Food Scavenger hastens you towards another darkly lit scene: brandy.

Oh, brandy. So beautiful. So tasty. So good to peaches.

Brandy Peach Ice Cream
5 peaches
1 c. yogurt
1/4 c. brandy
2 tbsp. brown sugar

Soak 2 peaches in 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1/4 cup brandy overnight.

The next day, blend with 1 cup yogurt. The yogurt should preferably be original and plain and therefore containing fat. Food Scavenger knows people throw words around like "Greek" and "mesh strainer" and "cheese cloth."

But Food Scavenger is lazy and thinks the world of Costco so there you have it: Mountain High Plain Yogurt.

Blend with 1 more peach.

Toss into blender.

Then toss into ice cream maker.

10-15 minutes in, add 2 diced up peaches.

See yonder soft serve ice cream in ice cream bowl?

5 minutes later, shovel into a ice cream cone and run around the house trying to find the right source of light to take a good picture of the brandy peach ice cream.

At the living room table...

In front of the refridgerator...

Fail utterly.

Fail to resist licking at ice cream (oh, you may wonder, why is the ice cream so shiny and oddly shaped?).

Flail at various passerbys (blood-related) to try the ice cream.

Realize already half the ice cream is gone.

Panic.

Realize, though, that there's always another day to make ice cream. Cuddle ice cream maker bowl. Clean it. Dry it. Store in freezer for the next day.

Other considerations for the considering: why so many peaches? Taste. Making use of the natural color of the peaches. Creating different textures in the ice cream.

Why not skin the peaches? Food Scavenger likes the skin of her fruits.

WHY so many peaches? Food Scavenger rails against frozen yogurts and ice cream that declare themselves "fruit-flavored."

Whenever Food Scavenger reads something like that Food Scavenger's mind starts and stalls.

Wait.

Why would Food Scavenger eat a frozen dairy dessert that was merely "fruit-flavored?"

Food Scavenger: Putting the peach in yogurt peach ice cream.

So Brandy Peach Ice Cream is completely Food Scavenger-indulgent. Like so many food-related projects in Food Scavenger's life.

Flan Recipe

The Food Scavenger rails against her own inorganization. Recipes swim through e-mails and txt files in mysterious folders like so many tiny tadpoles waiting for their spring of froggy adulthood. One day, the recipes shall escape their digital confines to emerge three-dimensional and edible in reality.

Instead of letting them be digital riff-raff, the Food Scavenger now has this wonderful blog to consolidate her favorite recipes instead of using search on google, on Yahoo Mail, on Gmail, on Hotmail to finally find a recipe.

So, today the Food Scavenger decided to try out Heidi Swanson's chocolate puddle cookies recipe. Lo and behold, Food Scavenger has no walnuts, but that's alright. She has plenty of peanuts.

Then, Food Scavenger realized the cookies would leave her with a veritable mountain of a molehill of egg yolks. What to do with so many egg yolks?

It's summer! What else to do but make flan?

Thus, began the Food Scavenger's hunt through her various e-mails for her flan recipe.

Flan
6 eggs (for an eggier version, use 7 eggs; for a creamier, richer version, replace whole eggs with egg yolks)
3 c. of milk
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Making the caramel:

Melt 1/2 c. of sugar over medium to high heat until caramellized. Food Scavenger likes a dark brandy color, when the sugar caramellizes to a smoky, dark flavor. It's a habitual Vietnamese taste: dark, smoky.

Pour into a rectangular or circular mold with a volume of at least 6 cups (measure by pouring water into the mold).

Place mold into a pan, which will hold eventually hold hot tap water (or microwaved water).

Making the custard portion:

Gently beat eggs. Then pour milk in. Then add 1/2 c. sugar. Then add vanilla extract. Stir until ingredients well incorporated into a homogeneous mixture (a pale, creamy yellow).

Now pour custard through a sieve into the mold with caramellized sugar in it. By this time, the caramel might have hardened and may crack under the cool temperature of the custard mixture. Do not be alarmed. When this goes into the oven, the caramel will melt anyway to be incorporated into the custard, becoming the flan that we all know and love.

In the water pan, fill the pan with hot tap water or microwaved water until the mold containing the flan is submerged beneath one inch of hot water.

Now, carefully transfer water pan with custard mold in it into the oven to bake for an hour.

Sometimes, an eggy film may form on top of your flan. You can place aluminum foil on top of flan during baking to ensure this does not happen.

To test that your flan is done, run a knife through it. If the knife comes out clean, your flan is done.

When your flan is done, remove it from the oven and place it on a rack to cool. Then, move the flan to the refridgerator to chill. A few hours should be enough for the flan to set. The longer you allow it to set, the more incomporated the caramel portion in the custard.

Sometimes, the Food Scavenger makes flan in the morning so that the caramel is fully absorbed by the flan as an after-dinner dessert.

Strawberry Cabernet Sauvignon Sorbet

Revisiting Food Scavenger's tendency to roam amongst the un-opened, ignored bottles of alcohol in her house. Food Scavenger and family do not drink for pleasure. Alcohol is reserved for a much higher calling: flavoring food.

There happened to be an opened bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Last time, this was used to flavor ground beef in a Shepherd's Pie. Taking a leaf from Food Scavenger's dining hall, the Shepherd's Pie contained a bottom layer of ground beef, a middle layer of corn and caramellized onions (plus some green and red bell paper for color), and a top layer of mashed potatoes. After combining all three layers, Food Scavenger broiled the top, which was sprinkled with garlic powder, cheddar cheese, and slices of jalapenos. The only "leaf" taken from the dining hall was having three layers: beef, corn, and potatoes. Everything else was sheer scavenger inspiration.

This time, though, Food Scavenger eyed it up in combination with a box of fresh strawberries. This led to this fruity delight:

There used to be a full bowl, but in the course of taking pictures, Food Scavenger became a little hungry...

Strawberry Cabernet Sauvignon Sorbet
1 1/2 to 2 c. strawberries (sliced in halves or quarters)
1/4 c. Cabernet Sauvignon
3 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 c. yogurt
Optional: 1 tbsp or more of brandy.

Soak strawberries in the Cabernet Sauvignon and sugar and lemon juice. Store in refridgerator for a few hours. Then, blend with yogurt. Chill. Add to ice cream maker per ice cream maker's instructions.

At first, Food Scavenger and family was... it's okay. Light, fruity, a nice break from the heaviness of everything else they'd been eating. Oddly carbonated (the Cabernet Sauvignon in attendance?). Then slowly, but surely the request for ice cream was just strawberry. Strawberry. Strawberry.

Then, things got a little crazy and Food Scavenger found herself finishing off an entire container*. It was just so easy to eat at night, when the summer's heat bore down on you and coffee and chocolate seemed too heavy a flavor.



* Food Scavenger reuses 32 oz yogurt containers. She finds them to be the perfect size for chilling and storing an ice cream batch.

Brandy Ice Cream: Two Flavors - Chocolate and Coffee

Food Scavenger too likes to haunt food blogs. The food blogs inspire her to fiddle around with their original recipes. Food Scavenger likes using whatever is it at hand. In this case, Food Scavenger often finds herself staring at David Lebovitz's Chocolate Banana recipe. She has followed the recipe down to the letter... and then found herself sans Bailey's liquor. She had used entire bottle without noticing.

Thus, the search began for a ratio of liquid to alcohol to banana to sugar ratio. Food Scavenger happened to have a gigantic bottle of brandy on hand. Food Scavenger likes brandy, brandy burns, adding depth and darkness to her experiments with chocolate or coffee ice cream.

Why, might you ask, does Food Scavenger eschue traditional ice cream recipes involving egg yolks and heavy cream?

Food Scavenger's guinea pigs i.e. family i.e. specifically her mother does not like the taste of eggs or cream in ice cream. Thus, store bought ice cream is not popular with her mother.

Also, Food Scavenger and her mother have high cholesterol. Runs in the family. Food Scavenger's grandmother died of a heart attack, because of this.

Hence, Food Scavenger's happy adherance to alcoholic ice cream*. Food Scavenger uses the Cuisineart ICE-21 ice cream maker.

Variant of David Lebovitz's Chocolate Banana Ice Cream 
2 c. milk
1/4 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 ripe bananas
1/4 c. brandy

Melt chocolate chips with one cup milk over a water bath. (Water bath: Place metal bowl on top of simmering pot of water. Melt ingredients as need be in metal bowl. Hold metal bowl with coaster or kitchen guard.) Stir occasionally with spatula until chocolate and milk incorporated (no sticky bottom of chocolate, just flakes throughout milk). Then, let cool.

Meanwhile, peal two ripe bananas. Deposit bananas and 1/4 c. brandy into blender. Add rest of milk. Now add chocolate and milk mixture. Blend. Pour into container and chill an hour in the freezer or a day in the refridgerator before adding to ice cream maker.

Follow ice cream maker's directions. For Food Scavenger, it's switch on ice cream maker so paddle will turn. Then add chilled mixture. Although not in the instruction manual, Food Scavenger likes to cover the ice cream maker in swathes of thick towels to speed up ice cream making time. That way she can make two batches of ice cream, each taking a 10 minute whirl in the machine.

Hazelnut Cream Coffee Ice Cream
1 c. milk
1 c. coffee
1/4 c. hazelnut cream (or 5-6 mini Hazelnut cream cups)
1 tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 ripe banana
1/4 c. brandy

Dissolve sugar in coffee. Blend ingredients. Chill in container before adding to ice cream maker.

Food Scavenger's mother's favorite variant of brandy ice cream. The Hazelnut cream adds a nutty kick to the ice cream. Also, the aroma of decadent hazelnut makes the ice cream a heady experience.

Irish Cream Coffee Ice Cream

Replace hazelnut cream with Irish cream. Cool and refreshing, a lilting sweet contrast to the pungent hazelnut.

Coffee Milk Ice Cream

2 c. coffee
1/4 c. milk or plain cream
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 ripe banana
1/4 c. brandy

No one, but Food Scavenger can eat this. Too bitter, they all exclaim with a grimace on their face. Food Scavenger just smiles, because Food Scavenger finds its perfect, maybe a little too sweet? Ah, well.



Advance warnings, however, the consumption of too much of this ice cream may lead to a headache or a pleasant tipsiness. (Everyone's alcohol threshold is a bit different.)

Moreover, since the ice cream contains no egg yolk or cream, the consistency is more like soft-serve. The chocolate banana holds its shape the best, since it contains the retarding effects of alcohol and sugar and fat (the sugar and fat from the chocolate chips). The sugar and fat give it the heaviness and thickness of more conventional ice cream. The others while not the usual consistency of ice cream are refreshing and satisfying, a cool treat that kicks your taste buds into action.

*Technically, some people would not call this instead of ice cream since this contains dairy, but no eggs or the high fat content of conventional ice cream. So be it. But for Food Scavenger and family's simple life, this is ice cream. It goes in a cone. It's cold. It's biteable.