More ice cream! Three ingredients each: Banana ice cream and Raspberry ice cream

fter our fig ice cream extravaganza the other day, there was a bit of cream left over, and far be it from our family to allow that to go to waste!

Also, we stopped by a beautiful fruit stand in Victoria yesterday and Mom got another flat of raspberries--big as your thumb, these babies! So naturally we thought: raspberry ice cream. Good thought. I found a few recipes online but ended up culling the best of a few and making my own mixture. Keeping the raspberries fresh was key, as was not using eggs (we ran out after making potato salad for lunch!).

See, I meant it. Big as my thumb, anyway.

Raspberry Ice Cream
2 cups cream
1/2 cup sugar
3 cups fresh raspberries

Combine the cold cream and sugar in a bowl, stirring with a whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Put the mixture in your ice cream machine/mixer and let it mix for 10-15 minutes, then add the raspberries and mix for another few minutes until well blended.

When I added the berries, the mixture got quite soft again for awhile, and Pa made the bright suggestion that I should stick the berries in the freezer to chill prior to making it next time. I agree that might help speed the process up a bit, but we persevered and it was a good half hour later with occasional stirs that the ice cream was hard enough to scoop into dishes.

This makes not quite a quart in a Donvier ice cream make. I would recommend splitting this between six people, rather than the four we had... I know, we didn't have to dish up the whole batch, but it just kinda happened, and then we all walked around in a raspberry ice cream coma for a bit. Not eating cream on a daily basis, it was quite rich. Quite yummy too.

I had also glimpsed a recipe a couple of days ago on a Serious Eats post on my sidebar over there to the right... banana ice cream, using frozen bananas. Since I usually have some sad overripe bananas on my counter at home, I thought experimenting with this might be a good thing. And why not do it while visiting the parents, so they can be guinea pigs too?! Two birds with one stone. How handy.

Banana, Honey and Peanut Butter Ice Cream
serves 1
Adapted from The Kitchn

1 large, slightly over-ripe banana
1 teaspoon peanut butter
1 teaspoon honey

Peel banana. Slice it into about ten chunks. Freeze the chunks. Once frozen, put them in a food processor with peanut butter and honey. Puree until creamy, like soft serve ice cream, stopping the processor to scrape the sides when necessary.

OR

Forget to peel banana. Freeze it. Wrestle futilely with now-frozen banana peel. Give up and let it sit for 30 minutes to thaw. Peel banana like a two-year-old. Break it into three or four pieces. Add pieces to food processor with peanut butter and honey. Puree until creamy, like soft serve ice cream, stopping the processor to scrape the sides when necessary.

I picked the first method (doubled it to share with the family) and it worked really well. The whole family enjoyed it, thoroughly. Of course, there was also consensus that a dribble of chocolate would be a wonderful addition to the banana/peanut butter flavor and I have to agree. But for a dairy-free ice cream, that is one amazing dessert!

West African Peanut Soup

s the bowl of soup appeared before me, I heard the word "peanut." My first thought was, "No way. Not gonna like that." And was a little frightened, frankly. But one taste and I was converted. Completely. Granted, this was more than 20 years ago, but I do get that the idea of peanuts + soup is not something that most people would automatically put together. But my plea would be to give this one a whirl. It's delicious.

I hadn't made it in quite some time, but saw a version of it somewhere online and was reminded me how much I missed it! I did quite a bit of online looking around for recipes, but when push came to shove, I went back to the original that I've always made from Sundays at Moosewood. And it turned out as lovely as it always has.

West African Peanut Soup
Serves 6-8

2 cups chopped onion
1 Tbsp. peanut or vegetable oil
1/2 tsp. cayanne or other ground dried chiles (I used tubed chile paste)
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger (again, I also used the tube ginger)
1 cup chopped carrots
2 cups chopped sweet potatoes
4 cups vegetable stock
2 cups tomato juice (I use V8)
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 Tbsp. sugar (optional--I never add this)
1 cup chopped scallions or chives (garnish, also optional)

Saute the onions in the oil until translucent. Stir in the cayenne and fresh ginger. Add the carrots and saute a couple more minutes. Mix in the potatoes and stock, bring the soup to a boil, and then simmer for about 15 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.

In a blender or food processor, puree the vegetables with the cooking liquid, tomato juice and peanut butter. Return the puree to a soup pot and taste for sweetness. Add sugar if desired and reheat slowly. (I also taste for heat. If it needs a bit more, add a touch of chile/cayenne.) Also according to preference, add more stock or tomato juice for a thinner soup. Serve topped with scallions or chives.

I served this soup today over white rice. I got that idea from one of the online recipes... it was only OK, in my humble opinion. I get how that might be a worthy idea, but the soup itself is so tasty on its own, I don't think it needs anything added.

Side note: I do have to say that white rice is like crack, man (not that I know, of course...). I haven't had white rice in ages (we're a brown rice family) and it was quite yummy--I made a little bowl with sugar, cream and currants after lunch and boy-oh-howdy that took me back to some rice puddin' days. Maybe I'll post on that a bit later... if there's any rice left to take a picture of!

Cake truffles: Peanut butter and Nutella heaven

I posted a couple of pictures last week on these babies, but not the recipe. It's really easy, and really yummy, so you must give it a whirl sometime. The blog where I found it online, Baked Perfection, talked about all sorts of flavors, but I went for the same ones she tried and loved them. I didn't go all out and dip them in chocolate--I had just finished dipping a couple of hundred little marshmallow-krispie treats in chocolate and thought not only would that be redundant, but my little carpal tunnel hands needed a different activity!



Peanut Butter and Nutella Cake Truffles
(I changed the name from "balls" to "truffles"... don't you think?)

1 box yellow cake mix (cook as directed on box for 13 X 9 cake)
8 oz. peanut butter
8 oz. nutella

Bake the cake according to package directions. As soon cake is cooked split the cake into two halves and crumble each half into a large bowl. Mix each bowl of crumbled cake thoroughly with peanut butter in one and nutella in the other. Roll each mixture into quarter size balls and lay on cookie sheet lined with wax paper (Should make approximately 40). Chill for several hours (you can speed this up by putting in the freezer).

I rolled the peanut butter truffles in confectioner's sugar and the nutella ones in finely chopped toasted hazelnuts. I would probably do the peanut butter ones in chocolate in the future, but I was perfectly happy with how the nutella ones turned out.

These are definitely keepers!