ice cream

Much to my surprise, my post about prosciutto ice cream was featured in a Huffington Post article and slideshow about “weird” ice cream flavors. I am, of course, thrilled to be mentioned, but I’m having a hard time classifying any of the flavors featured as weird. The tomato-basil isn’t that different from my tomato sorbet, [...]

The birthday cakes of my youth were simple affairs: you chose either chocolate or vanilla cake, and then either chocolate or vanilla frosting. The resulting four possible cakes were well within the skill set of any mom, although presentation values varied widely across households. We were always able to overlook non-parallel layers and patchy icing [...]

Two years ago I attended José Andrés’ Harvard lecture on hydrocolloids. He showed this video from his research kitchen as an example of the practical applications of various gelling agents: That video has remained stuck in my head, due both to the clever ideas presented as well as the food porn quality. It came to mind [...]

Ice is the enemy of ice cream. More specifically, large ice crystals are the enemy, which create a grainy, crunchy texture instead of the smooth, creamy consistency you expect in good ice cream. I usually don’t manage to keep a batch of homemade ice cream around long enough for ice crystal formation to be a problem, [...]