This ice cream has always been about pecans.

I came up with the recipe as an accompaniment for pecans
specifically for a pecan pie.

Usually, pecans make me feel mushy and happy because I associate them with home:
my parents have pecan trees growing on their property in Texas
my grandmothers both say PEE-can, tickling me no to end
and while I don’t care for plain pecans, when holiday baking begins I end up eating a treeload’s worth in pecan pralines.

The gooey and sentimental feelings on pecans persisted until a few days ago
right up until the fifth attempt at making a pecan pie simply to photograph under the ice cream.

Five times on top of a burned Thanksgiving pie is past my threshold of Pie Failures in Ten Days.

Just the ice cream photographs, then.

Pitting dates is easy enough.

If you spray your knife blade with non-stick spray
(or wipe it with neutral-flavored oil)
the dates will spend much less time clinging desperately to your blade.

I pitted the dates
sliced them into quarters
then piled the quarters up neatly and chopped into even pieces.

After all of the dates were chopped
I put everything into a small bowl

and poured over enough Grand Marnier to soak everything.

Soaking the date pieces in alcohol helps prevent them from turning into violent, tooth-cracking bits of shrapnel.

I covered the bowl in plastic wrap and then microwaved everything for a few minutes.

I would’ve done this step in a small pot
but every single pot in my kitchen was waiting to be washed at that moment.

I set the hot fruit and alcohol aside to soak for a while
and began on the custard.

I had not used orange blossom water with heat before
so I didn’t know if heat would diminish the water’s flavor
(the same way heat can dull vanilla’s flavor)
and decided to wait until I cooled the custard to add it.

Putting the orange blossom water aside
I warmed buttermilk, sugar, and cream in a pot.

While that was heating, I separated the eggs

(freezing the whites for later use)
whisked the warm milk mixture into the yolks to temper them

then added the yolks and milk back into the pot

that was clean, despite its appearance.

It had an unfortunate experience of being empty, forgotten, and over heat for a while.

I’m not sure its finish is going to ever recover.

After a few minutes the custard was ready:

I strained it
and poured in some reserved cream to help it cool down.

I added the orange blossom water and mixed everything to a uniform color.

Then I kept licking the spatula
and I knew things were good.

The custard went into the freezer for about an hour to chill.

Once the custard was very-cold-not-frozen
I poured it into the machine and let it churn for about 25 minutes.

I added the dates
which had soaked up all of the liquor

and continued to run the ice cream maker for another five minutes.

I like firm ice cream
so I packed the ice cream into a container and popped it into the freezer overnight.

The next morning I had buttermilk date ice cream with orange blossom water
and one of my failed pie crusts for breakfast
(failure is good for something, at least)
with chopped pecans on top.

It’s pecans that really make this ice cream.

The pecans and buttermilk remind me of buttermilk pralines
the orange blossom water of oranges, flowers, and pecans at Christmas
and dates soaked in Grand Marnier… well, that’s just a good idea at any time.

While good on its own
I made this ice cream with pecans in mind
and pecans it demands.

In light of demanding ice cream and (five) pie disasters
I’m happy to be able to give away a Brazos Bottom Pecan Pie from the fine people at Goode Company.

The fact that it is a pecan pie
and that the box is emblazoned with “You might give some serious thought to thanking your lucky stars you’re in Texas”
makes me a little homesick all the way in Pennsylvania
but the sweet-sad coverts quickly to excitement when I realize I get to facilitate pie appearing on someone’s doorstep.

Here are the rules to winning a pecan pie that you don’t have to make (or try to make five times and fail):

• The Prize: A Brazos Bottom Pecan Pie from Goode Company
• Number of winners: 1
• Prize Ships: Within the continental U.S..
• To Enter to Win: Leave a comment on this post. You could tell me if you like to eat your pie à la mode or if you like it stark naked (the pie), how your day was, or if you’re going to make this ice cream I’m proud of.
• Bonus Entry Opportunities: Pin a photo from this post to Pinterest, Tweet a link to this post, or share through Facebook. Come back here and tell me how you did it (if you share this post multiple ways, make sure to leave a separate comment for each way you shared) and you’ve got yourself another entry.
• Giveaway Ends: Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:59 pm Eastern time.
• The Fine Print: The winner will be selected at random. Up to four entries per person (one comment about anything, one pin on Pinterest, one tweet, one Facebook share). Entrants must have a valid e-mail address.

Notice: I am only a pie facilitator. I was not compensated in any manner by Goode Company or anyone else to host this giveaway. Goode Company will be shipping the pie directly to the winner.

If you don’t win the pecan pie
you can console yourself by making ice cream that needs only some toasted and chopped pecans to make it sing.

Drumroll please…
Using the And The Winner Is… plugin, the lucky pecan pie recipient is:

lizlizliz!

Keep an eye on your email lizlizliz and thanks to everyone for participating!

If you didn’t win, give the ice cream recipe a shot.
I promise it’s delicious.

We have a lot in common.
She cooks a lot, I cook a lot
I have lots of cookbooks, she has lots of cookbooks.

She did not teach me how to cook, however.

I’m sure I could’ve asked her to teach me.
She did try to teach me how to make bread one time
and I didn’t try to make bread for years afterwards.

It was not her fault.
I was one of those kids who liked to cook everything over high heat
then wonder why the crust was burnt and the inside raw.

I’m much better about that
(most of the time)
but my mother and I are still very, VERY different cooks.

My mom never met a recipe she loved for how it was
and cakes are her sworn enemy
…probably due to her recipe aversion.

I taught myself how to cook when Trevor was studying for the MCATs.

The standardized tests for entrance into medical school warranted serious attention
and 8 hours of studying on top of 3 hours of daily college classes
didn’t leave him a lot of room for cooking
or for eating.

I decided to cook for him.
That way, I figured,
he wouldn’t one day find himself unable to get out of his swivel chair because of malnutrition.

Scared to waste food and money by mangling perfectly fine ingredients,
I started cooking out of the few cookbooks I had
mostly chicken dishes.

Trevor didn’t waste away
and I got really good at cooking chicken.

I never stopped cooking after that.
People always tease Trevor
saying that he must be a really shitty cook
but he’s actually a very good cook.

(We won’t mention the one time he made cornbread that I privately dubbed ‘cornbrick.’)

He doesn’t cook because he loves my cooking
and PROBABLY because it’s significantly less work for him.

Eh heh.

Different though we are
Trevor also loves my mom’s cooking.

Every now and then I will unwedge a binder from the crammed bookcases
a binder full of notes and printouts
scribbled half-recipes and ingredient lists cut from packages
and pull out one of my mom’s recipes.

Of course, I use the term ‘recipe’ loosely;
like everyone elses beloved family member
her recipes are ‘a little of this, some of that, a few of those.’

A recently added recipe to the binder is another one of my mother’s.
It’s recipe for soup with a lot of kale
some sausage and potatoes
something fitting for the cold day that appeared out of nowhere.

We’ve had a weird fall here, with snow last month
one side of our yard home to blooming yellow flowers
the other, trees with fiery leaves.

It’s quite the technicolor show.

When I went to go collect the greens from the garden for the soup
I also brought in a few branches from a very red bush outside.

I’d like to believe I got all of the caterpillars out of the kale.

I haven’t run into any while eating the end result
(yet).
Such is a hazard of cooking from the garden.

Now
I like kale a lot.

(You know this because the last recipe I posted had kale in it.
Sorry about that.
We have a lot of kale in the garden.
Next year: less kale.)

Since I like kale so much
I decided I was going to put a lot of it in the soup this time around.

Like the kid who wanted to cook everything with the equivalent energy of the ENTIRE SUN
I realize, in hindsight,
that I need to learn moderation.

One of these things is not like the other.

Side note:
Flexible cutting boards are not my favorite cutting boards.
They get the job done
but I’d much rather thick plastic or wood under my knife.

I don’t feel like I’m cutting on anything when I use these.

I didn’t have enough small potatoes for the soup
so I grabbed a big potato
and cut it in half lengthwise before slicing it crosswise.

More on the cutting board topic:
the trick of putting a wet towel under your board really, really works.

You can even use a scrinched up paper towel
(one is just fine)
and you’ll find that you’re not battling your board from dancing off the counter.

The easiest way to take sausage out of its casing is to take a sharp knife
run it along the length of the link
then peel the casing off.

I remember that a few times when my mom was working on this soup when I was younger
she didn’t remove the casing from the sausage
and the slices ended up looking like I feel after too much Tex-Mex–
all muffin-toppy.

(I figured I should clarify that statement as it could have different meanings to different people.
Uh.)

I broke down each link into about 6 meatballs.

Incorporating the sausage into the soup is the hardest part
(after eliminating kalerpillars).

Like casing issues
I kept running into broken meatballs
since they would stick to the bottom of the pan when I tried to brown them
then crumble when I tried to stir.

I wanted the fond
so a nonstick pan or boiling them were out of the question.

Using more oil didn’t sound appealing, either.

The dumplings I made the day before came to my rescue.

The previous night
I steamed pork dumplings and had been off in lala land for a while
thinking about the texture of the filling and how it transformed
from globby to cohesive– all from steam.

I’ve made dumplings several times
I’ve made this soup several times
but for some reason
the two finally came together this time around
UNITED AS ONE to solve my broken meatball problem.

That’s how I like to think of it, anyways.

I chopped a large sweet onion
then threw it into a big pot with some olive oil.

Once the onions were soft
I placed the meatballs on top of the onions
turned the heat down to low
and covered the pot.

After a few minutes
I lifted the lid off
and there were steamed meatballs
keeping it together.

I stirred them to see if they would continue to hold their shape
and sure enough
it worked.

I increased the heat to let the meatballs brown some.

I would’ve liked for them to brown more
(the lighting in my kitchen was weird here and shows the meatballs more golden than they actually were)
but my onions were in danger of burning.

Garlic and flour went in
one after the other
and after each was toasty
I added chicken stock, potatoes and a bay leaf.

I brought the mixture up to a boil
then left it to simmer for about 20 minutes.

The potatoes were soft
the sausage long since cooked through, but not dry.

Since the sausage I used was sweet
I added crushed red pepper to the pot.

Then
the kale.

You know what’s too much kale?

THIS IS TOO MUCH KALE.

This was after half of it had already cooked down.

I ended up taking out a good quarter of the kale once everything was cooked.

After I finished kale fishing
I stirred in the cream
and the soup was done.

Like many other soups
it benefits from a night in the refrigerator
warmed up the next day for lunch
preferably with some crusty bread
and fall colors all around.

Given my previous attempts at making noodles
I probably should’ve started the project the day before
but lady luck stood by a few hours before the supper club
and I had beautiful strands of beet pasta swaying on clean chairbacks.

My kitchen looked festive
and I think hats and horns wouldn’t have been out of place.

I kind of wanted to put on a flapper outfit.

I was disappointed that the pasta didn’t stay magenta.
It faded into BubbleYum pink
(just like this)
which was… interesting.

I didn’t overcook the noodles;
I put them in the boiling water and the color immediately leached out.

Boo.

Here’s this week’s menu plan
a little late:

Monday
Pizza with leafy green salads

Last night was movie night at the last minute, so for dinner we had frozen pizza.

When I picked up the pizza at the store I didn’t realize it had BBQ sauce on it.

There are three things that should never be on my pizza:
Chicken
Cheddar Cheese
BBQ Sauce

Last night I had a salad, theend.

The unfortunate BBQ sauced pizza made me wish for homemade frozen pizzas.
I freeze pizza dough all the time but haven’t frozen a composed pizza. I’m curious to see how that would, ah ha, pan out.

Tuesday
Dumplings with homemade wrappers

Trevor has been off of work today and yesterday, so today I made chicken fajitas for lunch.

I hope to squeeze out enough time between kitchen remodel work and baby wrangling to make a combination of this recipe and one from The Dumpling.

I have hopes, but they are not very bright.

I need to work on my nonexistent pleating skills, too. Given the time restraints put on me by Tiny, it may end up being the seal-n-go method.

Wednesday
Carnitas with homemade corn tortillas and queso fresco

Trevor was in the grocery store with me last week and came across pork shoulder on sale while I was looking at something else.

He brought it over to the cart and asked if we could make carnitas.

I nearly did the moonwalk in the aisle for two reasons:
1)The man barely asks for anything other than pizza, steak, or macaroni and cheese
2) He knew that pork shoulder was for carnitas

By all means, let us do carnitas.

Thursday
Kale, potato, and sausage soup

This is ripe for a blog post. My mother gave me this recipe and I’ve modified it to my liking.
I’ll negotiate with Tiny and see if he’ll let me photograph and write this week.

Friday
Leftovers

Saturday
Leftovers

Ordinarily I wouldn’t do leftovers back to back, but Trevor’s schedule is crazy this week and freshly made dinners would be wasted on these days.

Sunday
Mutti’s Louisiana Chicken Stew with pickled peaches

Mutti, my grandmother, made a gumbo that is one of my favorite meals. Growing up, we all called it Louisiana Chicken Stew and it wasn’t until I started playing with gumbo recipes that I realized her Louisiana Chicken Stew is a gumbo.

Now ‘gumbo’ sounds funny. Gumbo, gumbo gumbo!

She gave me her recipe for the stew and (quick) pickled peaches for my wedding
and it was my favorite present.

The leftovers are even better than the meal the first time around, as usual for stews and gumbos.

I’ve linked up to Menu Plan Monday.

I am surrounded by people who are adamant about waiting until after Thanksgiving to get the Christmas music going
but I like to multitask.

I may have Dean Martin warbling about his love keeping him warm
but on the dining room table are various dried corns, two types of wheat, teeny white pumpkins, and gourdsgourdsGOURDS.

There are also a few pumpkins on the doorstep
so I have my holidays covered until the end of the year.

I wait to break out the Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving
but music is a go after Halloween.

Look.
YOU can’t hear it
so you can’t complain.

The week’s meal planning is more fall than winter
with fresh carrots ending up in a soup I’ve never tried or eaten before.

I picked one row of carrots from the garden this weekend,
surprised that they grew so well
even though we planted them a little late.

There is still another row to come up
but there were a lot of slugs and worms in the carrot tops
so that row is ALL Trevor’s.

Escargot is not on this week’s menu
and it never will be, either.

I realized that half-way through making a meat sauce for spaghetti tonight
that I accidentally planned two pasta dishes this week.
We have a supper club that meets once a month
and this Friday happens to be a meeting with pasta as a main.

Spaghetti is Tiny and my favorite food
so it’s only Trevor who is complaining
who also had tortellini last night at work, too.

Forget decorative gourd season.
In our house, it’s pasta season.

Monday
Capellini with Meat sauce

I made my pasta sauce with 85/15 ground beef, sliced garlic, onions, fresh thyme, oregano, and parsley, garden tomatoes, and garden tomato sauce. I will sulk when we use up all of the tomato items we canned from the summer. I used Spanish onions which were a little sweet, but I liked the sliced garlic in place of the regular minced garlic.

Tuesday
“Almost Confit” Chicken from Radically Simple
Cannellini beans
Frisee salad with piquillo peppers and balsamic vinaigrette

Through trial and error (and lots of crunchy beans) I figured out how to use my pressure cooker for dried beans. I will save so much money by eating dried beans that I will be able to buy canned beans with all the money I’ve saved!

Wait.

I think I’ll throw some Parmesan rinds into the pot. I have no idea what dressing I’ll make for the salad.

Wednesday
Leftovers

We having Tiny’s one year photography session on Wednesday. I’m planning some small bites and possibly cake so I don’t want to deal with those and dinner on the same day.

Thursday
Carrot soup with fried tops
Leafy salad with a lemon shallot vinaigrette from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

I think I am going to use a little bit of Heidi Swanson’s soup recipe with a garnish I saw in Rozanne Gold’s Radically Simple.

I could drink the salad dressing from ATK. I will try to restrain myself.

Friday
Beet Pasta with two sauces

This is supper club night. The theme is “favorites from childhood, kicked up.”

I haven’t narrowed down what my “two sauces” are other than one will be cream or vegetable based and one will be a meat sauce. I’ll play with The Flavor Bible and figure something out.

I’ve made mediocre pasta every time I’ve tried to make fresh pasta. I have some nerves.

Appetizers, sides, and desserts are the responsibility of the other members of the supper club.

Saturday
Skirt steak with chimichurri from Seven Fires
Roasted endive from Seven Fires
Mashed potatoes

Like the salad dressing up there, I have to stop myself from tipping the little bowl of chimichurri into my mouth. What is it about condiments?!

Sunday
Leftovers

Probably steak sandwiches or mashed potatoes with a chimichurri swirl or lemon shallot vinaigrette with a side of chimichurri.

Side projects for the week are bread, yeasted waffles one morning, melting peppers from Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, jalapeno jelly with the bushel and a peck in my refrigerator, and maybe, oh maybe, some cake for a very cute one year old.

I linked this up over at OrgJunkie.com because I like seeing what other people are eating, too.

Honestly,
this morning I’ve gone around
not saying much more than “spank that cookie.”

Thankfully, it is my left hand
so my dominant right can do mostly what it needs to do
unless the left is needed to help.

You know,
I only need my left hand for things like picking up a baby
holding something while chopping
getting dressed
changing a diaper
or a million other things I need to do all day long.

Nothing of import has been completed today.
However, there is still time
so maybe I’ll lug around my useless hand and check off a few to-do boxes
counting myself lucky that my wrist is still attached to my arm.

I HAVE managed to make out my menu plan for this week.
One box checked.

On Saturday I watched snowflakes the size of dessert plates land in my backyard,
thankful I managed to save the bell peppers from the garden the night before.

some of the bell peppers

By the end of this week I may not be as thankful.
I’ve tried to wrangle green bell peppers into the menu without being too much at once
but I’ll know how well I did at the end of the week.

I think most of them will end up chopped and frozen
but we’ll eat a good amount fresh.

Like some other folks at OrgJunkie.com, I menu plan on Mondays, too:

Monday: Pepper Steak with steamed rice
Tuesday: Chicken Gumbo with Pickled Peaches
Wednesday: Stuffed Bell Peppers
Thursday: Curried Butternut Squash Soup with Spinach Quiche

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are still up in the air
(so much for checking off this box)
as one of my dearest friends is coming to visit me for a long weekend
so we’ll cook together.

I will be glad to have another hand in the kitchen this week
especially since mine is such a dud
but moreover I’m thrilled that the hand belongs to such a lovely person.

I’m leaving the weekend open for cooking and eating together
something I’ve missed doing with her for a long time.

The more I think about it
the more I am happy that the weekend is unsketched.

It will be fun to nibble on new things
figure out what is missing a taste of something
laugh, laugh, laugh when something fails specTACularly
and cook with love.

Oh, I like this week’s menu plan very much,
green bell peppers be damned.

I love stealing down the stairs before anyone is up and starting breakfast
sometimes bringing it back to bed when I’m done
sometimes hearing the steady sound of descending footsteps before I’m finished with everything.

My husband’s favorite breakfasts are pancakes, waffles or dougnuts.
I make these for him at that magical intersection of him asking and me being willing.

A sweet breakfast is something I do out of love
and that’s pretty much it.
Any other time of the day
something with that much sugar would be classified as dessert.

I can’t start my day off with dessert.
I think I’d keel over from my blood sugar dropping by my toes.

Instead
give me breakfast tacos
filled with potatoes and tomatoes with cheese, bacon, and a lake of salsa fresca
an onion bagel with butter
polenta with green onions and parmesan!

Onions seem to be a reoccuring thing.

Always kiss me goodnight
BUT, BOY, YOU BEST HANG ONTO YOUR SOCKS IN THE MORNING.

In addition to onions
I also sing glory to eggs.

I don’t like an egg sunny-side up
or hard boiled
or soft boiled
or by itself.

I like them mixed in with other things
or scrambled with a lot of butter or bacon fat
or in a cheese omelet
or baked.

Baked eggs are wonderful things.

I had never made them before
but I ate them in one form at Bouchon in Las Vegas
and then came across this post about them.

Like Jennifer, I wondered why I hadn’t made baked eggs yet.

One morning I stood at my kitchen window
and realized the kale plants were starting to look like palm trees.

It was time to use some kale
it was time for breakfast
and it was time for baked eggs.

Kale from a garden is not for the squeamish.
An impressive variety of spiders claim its curly edges for home
and I now know those ruffles make a perfect spot for cocoons.

After picking, cleaning, chopping
AND GARBAGING DISPOSAL-ING THE HELL OUT OF SOME SPIDERS
I put all of the kale into a pot.

After it had cooked down a little
I added some onions
OF COURSE

and cooked those until they were softened and brown around the edges

A little salt and sherry vinegar
and the kale was done.

I had tomatoes in the garden
(we’ve only been done with them for a few weeks now and I miss them already)
so I chopped up a Cherokee Purple
and set it aside to add to the eggs.

I greased ramekins and then filled them up

and baked them until the whites were just set.

The yolks were still a little runny
and screamed for toast soldiers.

I scream for ice cream
yolks scream for toast soldiers.

I can’t help it.
I started in college and never stopped.

The first cookbooks I owned were published by Hermes House
a publisher whose catalog often shows up on discount tables at Barnes and Noble
(Borders always used to carry them;
now that they’re liquidating, maybe you can find them there even cheaper)
and at places like TJ Maxx and Ross in their teeny book sections.

Hermes House books were my starter books because they were cheap
less than $10 new
the recipes were easy
and they had a lot of pretty photos.

For a college student
it was perfect.

As my collection grew
I cooked from a larger range of books
and I ended up donating many of the books I started off with
(books with lots of photos and little else)
but I’ve held tightly onto the books from Hermes House.

The recipes in these inexpensive vibrant books are good.
They’re surprisingly good.

I have 10 or so of their books
and I’ve yet to try a bad recipe from any of them.

I will say that the only downside to their cookbooks
is that there is a small amount of recipe overlap among them
but not so much as to discourage me from buying them when I come across them.

(Cook’s Illustrated is the worst offender for recipe overlap in their books
in case you’re wondering.)

In most of Hermes House’s books
they use European terms for ingredients
aubergine for eggplant
courgette for zucchini
but that is interesting to me
not a mark against them.

When I made a meal plan for this week
I had down “zucchini soup and tomato tart” for Wednesday’s main meal
but was without a recipe for the zucchini soup.

Since I was up for a challenge
I first checked James Peterson’s Splendid Soups
a gorgeous and amazing (and labor intensive) book.

Peterson did not deign to offer a zucchini soup recipe
and even explained WHY in the book:
zucchini on its own is not assertive enough.

It made me wonder if he had ever eaten as much zucchini in a summer
as a few plants could put out.

That plant would show HIM unassertive.

THANKS FOR NOTHING, PETERSON.

I shelved Splendid Soups
saving the challenge for another day.

I turned to ol’ faithful
a Hermes House book
Soup: Superb Ways with a Classic Dish by Debra Mayhew.

It had a zucchini soup recipe
but I didn’t have the exact ingredients
and I didn’t want as much cream or butter in the soup as it called for
so I set the book beside my cutting board for inspiration and made lunch.

I’ll never forgive everyone for not introducing me to the combination of bleu cheese and zucchini earlier in my life.

Jerks.

I served the soup with a tomato tart from a Canal House issue from last year.
You can find the recipe here.

We have been overrun with cucumbers.

I mean that in quite a literal sense
as the cucumber vines are breaking out of the garden
through our chain link fence
and onto the sidewalk
where everyone in the neighborhood takes their nightly walks.

I hope they take some of the cucumbers as they go by.

In a concentrated effort to use up the cucumbers
I’ve been trying every recipe I find that uses them.

We’ve been pickling
having a lot of cucumber salads
and I have a cucumber risotto coming up on the menu plan.

I’m thankful for the risotto because it uses ten cucumbers
which should put a dent in our supply…
for a few days.

While the frozen yogurt recipe in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home doesn’t call for ten cucumbers
it does call for at least part of one
so I felt it would be appropriate to make Honeydew, Cucumber, and Cayenne Frozen Yogurt
on the heels of The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World.

Instead of the familiar switch of a custard base for a yogurt base
as in most frozen yogurt recipes
Splendid Ice Creams instructs you to make the usual ice cream base
and then add in strained yogurt.

So, I strained that yogurt

and left it to sit overnight.

I began the rest of the recipe the next morning.

It calls for a mere 1/8 of a honeydew melon
(“1 medium slice honeydew [about 1/8 medium melon]).

This was my 1/8:

Yes, this was a medium melon at the grocery store.

I had issues with this recipe starting at this point.

Melons come in lots of sizes
(eh heh heh heh)
and 1/8 of one melon is not the same as 1/8 of another melon
OBVIOUSLY.

I picked up a honeydew that fell into the ‘medium’ category at the store
as directed.

Maybe it’s the cake-baker in me coming out
(or my undying love of Rose Levy-Beranbaum)
but I think a weight measure would have not been awful to see here.

Bauer does say to use a medium melon
but maybe her medium is different from my grocery store’s medium?

Produce picking and clothes shopping seem to share a lot of the same problems.

I cut off the melon rind at an angle
aiming to preserve as much melon on the slice as possible.

I chopped the honeydew up
getting it ready for the food processor
and weighed it to see how much 1/8 of a ‘medium’ melon weighed.

6 3/4 ounces.

I dumped the chopped honeydew into the food processor

and let it do its thang.

Only moments before
my nose had been in my camera’s place
and it smelled like summer.

It reminded me a bit of a lyric:
if I could bottle my hopes in a store-bought scent
they’d be nutmeg-peach and they’d pay the rent.

If I could bottle my summer
it would be honeydew.

The melon turned to a thin puree.

I set the puree aside
and found I had twice as much honeydew as I needed.

I should have picked a ‘small’
and not a ‘medium.’

(Unfortunately, in clothes shopping
for me it’s usually the other way around.)

With this in mind
I used 1/4 of a cucumber instead of 1/2 in the next step.

Splendid Ice Creams specifies a Japanese cucumber
but I did not have 30lbs of Japanese cucumbers
NOW DID I.

So the regular cucumber went through the same process as the melon
only I didn’t weigh it
thinking I wouldn’t have too much left over.

The cucumber needed a little encouraging to turn into a puree.

I scraped the sides down and turned the processor back on.

After everything was pureed
I measured out 1/3 cup of honeydew puree and 1/4 cup of cucumber puree.

The next step said to add sugar and cayenne to the purees over medium heat
stirring until the sugar dissolved

Once dissolved
I set the pot on a back burner
and went to work on the ice cream/frozen yogurt base.

I didn’t know how to feel about a frozen yogurt
that is really a standard ice cream base with yogurt added in.

Sometimes I think way too critically about these things
for someone who is not a professional food-maker.

Does it really matter if someone wants to add yogurt to an ice cream base
and call it frozen yogurt?

You are putting a substantial amount of yogurt into cream and milk
but does that mean it’s only yogurt-flavored ice cream?

What PERCENTAGE of yogurt qualifies the mixture to be frozen yogurt instead of yogurt-flavored ice cream?

IF ICE CREAM FALLS IN A YOGURT FOREST DO I STILL HAVE TO CLEAN IT UP?

Frozen yogurt or not
the recipe still instructed you to boil for FOUR MINUTES.

Not satisfied without a temperature
things got serious.

And then seriouser.

Things got dead serious a half second later
when the pot boiled over.

Dammit.

When my phone Boinged after the four minute countdown
the temperature of the base measured 228F (about 109C)
which is thread stage in candy-making.

The next question I have
is if it is not only temperature that matters
but if the length of boiling also has an effect the product.

Time and temperature aside for now
I added the cornstarch to the milks off of the heat
WHILE WHISKING
and bringing everything back up to a boil.

It looked much better this time.

There was more a little more cornstarch (2TSP more for 1/2C less milk) in this recipe
but the whisking helped the base set up properly.

Previous recipe without whisking while adding the cornstarch slurry:

This time, with whisking:

I mixed in the cream cheese and then added the strained yogurt

and then the fruit puree.

Not to be undone by any lumps
I whisked and whisked and whisked
AND WHISKED
but I still had lumps in my mixture.

Scowling
I took a spoonful
dreading hunks of cornstarch.

What I had been whisking so hard to get out
were pieces of melon and cucumber.

Some days…

I chilled the mixture in a Pyrex pan
and then put it in the machine to freeze

It barely filled over half the canister
so I was a little peeved when I looked at how much yogurt
plus melon and cucumber puree I had left over.

The mixture fluffed up in the canister
which was interesting.

Most recipes DO puff up a little
due to air incorporation
(a deciding factor when you [or maybe just me] choose an ice cream maker)
but this surprised me with how much the frozen yogurt(?) increased in volume.

It filled up my standard container
just like the chocolate ice cream recipe.

(I could go through the Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream recipe
and compare it to the Honeydew Cucumber Frozen Yogurt(??) recipe
to see how much mixture each made
so I could determine if more air gets incorporated into the frozen yogurt
but I have to leaving SOMETHING for everyone else to do.)

I stuck the frozen yogurt(???) in the freezer to let it set up for a few hours.

In the meantime
I fed the leftover yogurt and fruit to Tiny.

He made clean work of it
so I didn’t feel too bad about having a substantial amount of stuff left over from the recipe.

That evening
I gave a taste of the final product to my husband
who thought it had white chocolate in it
then to a friend a few days later
who guessed peaches.

The flavor is pretty mysterious
and while it is not my favorite
my friend and husband loved it.

Would I make it again?
Not for myself.

It tastes of yogurt
but to me it is more a yogurt-flavored ice cream
and not a frozen yogurt.

I would like to have tasted more of the yogurt and cayenne.

Flavor is quite a personal thing
but the fact that there wasn’t a note about having excess ingredients
or ideas of what to do with them
(make a sorbet, swirl the melon into the yogurt for breakfast in the morning, feed everything to your baby!)
rubbed me the wrong way.

I’m not dumb (all the time);
I can figure out what to do with extraneous food
but it would have been nice to see something mentioned in the recipe header.

To circumvent that whole problem
Bauer could provide more exact amounts
with measurements in cups or weight.

My medium is not her medium is not Tiny’s medium.

I have two more recipes I’ve picked out to blog here
both of which I’m quite excited about.

One calls for fruit
so based on my experience with this recipe
I’ll be sure to either get ‘smalls’ for ‘mediums’
or prepare Tiny for another interesting lunch.