TWD – Caramel Swirl and Coconut Macadamia Ice Creams

Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu chose this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, vanilla ice cream. When the recipes were announced, I thought the bookends of the month, the first and last recipes, were a natural together. I planned to make the Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies and serve them with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Then peer pressure took over.

I started thinking, what will my fellow TWD-ers do with this recipe? It’s practically a blank canvas, and Dorie’s playing around suggestions encourage us to take off in many directions, including mix ins and swirl ins. I could have done one of those, but I had to do something different so that maybe you would stop here and go “Wow! Look what Leslie did with this! I never thought of making it with sriracha.”

OK, maybe not that different. So I decided to make my caramel sauce (recipe to come), which is ridiculously easy, and swirl it in after the ice cream chilled some.

I made this ice cream on the same day I made the brownies. The high that day was 102, we don’t have air conditioning, and I appreciated this one didn’t require turning the oven on.

Until I decided toasted macadamias and toasted coconut would be perfect compliments to the rich vanilla base. The oven went back on.

The custard base was super simple. The star players were heavy cream and whole milk with a vanilla bean (its vanilla caviar, as Gail Gand would say, stripped out and added to the mixture). Egg yolks added richness and stabilized the mixture; the custard was cooked until it thickened slightly. Once cooled, the custard is churned in an ice cream maker.

As I poured the churned mixture, still soft and bursting with flecks of vanilla, into two separate containers, I put aside the dasher to taste once the ice cream was safely in the freezer.

Oh. My. I wanted to climb in the freezer and be with it, it was that good. Better, yes indeed, than the Bouchon vanilla ice cream I made a few years ago. So good, I didn’t want to serve it with the brownies. Or add anything that would take away from its pure vanilla flavor. But I did.

The caramel was swirled in after the ice cream froze for a half hour. I may have been a little heavy handed with the caramel, but I knew the vanilla base could stand up to the aggressive bite of the bitter caramel sauce.

Then I chopped the toasted macadamias and added them and the toasted coconut to the other half of the base. Mix lightly and back in the freezer for both flavors.

Then wait. Waiting is hard.

Sneak a bite…

After tasting the caramel swirl, I knew the coconut macadamia could never live up to it. The caramel was rich and almost bitter from being taken practically to the edge of burning before the cream was added. No namby pamby sweet caramel for me. It lends a complexity that the vanilla plays up without competing with it. This ice cream is some of the best I have ever eaten.

Sneak a bite of the other flavor…

Impossible. The saltiness of the macadamias (which I accidentally left in the oven a bit too long, until they were brown) and the sweet toasted coconut with the rich vanilla backdrop made a flavor as subtle and complex as the caramel was in-your-face.

Not to overstate it, but this recipe blew me away. As written, it’s the very best vanilla ice cream you could ever hope to eat or make. But when you let your imagination carry you away, it’s transformed from the star to a supporting role. Your flavors can shine because the foundation is solid.

I never thought I could make great ice cream, but Dorie has taught me I can make a lot of great things. All it takes is the right teacher, and letting your mind wander until you find the flavors that speak to you.

If you’d like the recipe, check out Lynne’s blog. Or better yet, buy the book. We’re cooking from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. It’s filled with amazing, fun and even some challenging recipes that will increase your baking repertoire.

TWD – Caramel Swirl and Coconut Macadamia Ice Creams

Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu chose this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, vanilla ice cream. When the recipes were announced, I thought the bookends of the month, the first and last recipes, were a natural together. I planned to make the Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies and serve them with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Then peer pressure took over.

I started thinking, what will my fellow TWD-ers do with this recipe? It’s practically a blank canvas, and Dorie’s playing around suggestions encourage us to take off in many directions, including mix ins and swirl ins. I could have done one of those, but I had to do something different so that maybe you would stop here and go “Wow! Look what Leslie did with this! I never thought of making it with sriracha.”

OK, maybe not that different. So I decided to make my caramel sauce (recipe to come), which is ridiculously easy, and swirl it in after the ice cream chilled some.

I made this ice cream on the same day I made the brownies. The high that day was 102, we don’t have air conditioning, and I appreciated this one didn’t require turning the oven on.

Until I decided toasted macadamias and toasted coconut would be perfect compliments to the rich vanilla base. The oven went back on.

The custard base was super simple. The star players were heavy cream and whole milk with a vanilla bean (its vanilla caviar, as Gail Gand would say, stripped out and added to the mixture). Egg yolks added richness and stabilized the mixture; the custard was cooked until it thickened slightly. Once cooled, the custard is churned in an ice cream maker.

As I poured the churned mixture, still soft and bursting with flecks of vanilla, into two separate containers, I put aside the dasher to taste once the ice cream was safely in the freezer.

Oh. My. I wanted to climb in the freezer and be with it, it was that good. Better, yes indeed, than the Bouchon vanilla ice cream I made a few years ago. So good, I didn’t want to serve it with the brownies. Or add anything that would take away from its pure vanilla flavor. But I did.

The caramel was swirled in after the ice cream froze for a half hour. I may have been a little heavy handed with the caramel, but I knew the vanilla base could stand up to the aggressive bite of the bitter caramel sauce.

Then I chopped the toasted macadamias and added them and the toasted coconut to the other half of the base. Mix lightly and back in the freezer for both flavors.

Then wait. Waiting is hard.

Sneak a bite…

After tasting the caramel swirl, I knew the coconut macadamia could never live up to it. The caramel was rich and almost bitter from being taken practically to the edge of burning before the cream was added. No namby pamby sweet caramel for me. It lends a complexity that the vanilla plays up without competing with it. This ice cream is some of the best I have ever eaten.

Sneak a bite of the other flavor…

Impossible. The saltiness of the macadamias (which I accidentally left in the oven a bit too long, until they were brown) and the sweet toasted coconut with the rich vanilla backdrop made a flavor as subtle and complex as the caramel was in-your-face.

Not to overstate it, but this recipe blew me away. As written, it’s the very best vanilla ice cream you could ever hope to eat or make. But when you let your imagination carry you away, it’s transformed from the star to a supporting role. Your flavors can shine because the foundation is solid.

I never thought I could make great ice cream, but Dorie has taught me I can make a lot of great things. All it takes is the right teacher, and letting your mind wander until you find the flavors that speak to you.

If you’d like the recipe, check out Lynne’s blog. Or better yet, buy the book. We’re cooking from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. It’s filled with amazing, fun and even some challenging recipes that will increase your baking repertoire.

TWD – Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

I thought about skipping this one. I’m not a huge fan of white “chocolate,” and I was afraid it would taste of white “chocolate,” but I decided I could always pawn it off on my unsuspecting coworkers. I learned a lot with this dessert:

1. Always unload the dishwasher, then load the dishes in the sink before baking.

2. Shortcuts aren’t.

3. Dorie’s cookie sheets are larger than mine.

4. Don’t separate egg whites into the mixing bowl to save time. It doesn’t.

5. Do laundry, or bake. Not both at the same time.

6. Pick a recipe. Make it. Then pick another. Repeat. Don’t do them all at the same time.
7. Trust Dorie.

Onward to the dacquoise. If you live in earthquake country as I do, it’s important to make this recipe on a day that you plan to be at home for a while. The meringues bake for 3 hours, and in California, it’s never a good idea to leave the house while the oven is on. I’m not saying I’ve never violated this rule, but you’ve been warned.

I only had extra large eggs since that’s what my CSA gave me, so I checked the handy table in the back of The Cake Bible and learned that one large egg white weighs 30 grams, so I started cracking eggs and putting the whites in the mixing bowl (which I placed on the scale-saving time and saving dishes!) Then, on the third egg, I must have whacked it extra hard and the yolk broke, polluting the whites in the mixing bowl, as well as the mixing bowl itself. Pause, unload dishwasher, put dirty dishes in dishwasher, wash mixing bowl and dry it. Oops, the laundry is done and needs to be attended to. Come back, separate the eggs (each into a ramekin – coincidentally no yolk breakage this time.) Draw three 12×6 rectangles using two pieces of parchment paper…err, I don’t think so. Fortunately, I was using the back of a sheet pan to do this since parts of my counter top were off limits (stains on my new-guaranteed-not-to-stain-for-10-years granite are being treated), because I could tell right away that two 12×6 rectangles weren’t fitting on one of my sheet pans. I use sheet pans instead of cookie sheets, so I just put one rectangle on each of three sheet pans. Are you still with me?

At this point, I was questioning the wisdom of making this recipe. But I had bought unsweetened coconut, white “chocolate,” and already sacrificed almost a dozen eggs, so I was committed.

With stencils drawn and sheet pans dried, I prepared the dry ingredients in the food processor, then beat the egg whites and cream of tartar, adding powdered sugar when they reached the soft peak stage. The dry ingredients were gently folded in, and the meringue was divided between the sheet pans. I had to improvise to keep the parchment from rolling up before I got the meringue spread out.

After three hours, the meringues were done and after they cooled, I covered them with parchment, made the white chocolate ganache and went to bed, planning (with my usual mix of optimism and idiocy) to complete the dacquoise the next morning and take it to work for my coworkers to enjoy. This plan wasn’t as insane as it sounds, since all I had to do was whip the ganache, cut the pineapple (I bought prepackaged fresh pineapple at Trader Joe’s) and broil it. What could go wrong?

M. is on a business trip and he Skyped me from the road thinking I might want to talk to him (which I did, but can’t we do it after I finish assembling my cake…?) Needless to say, I halfway paid attention to him while I assembled, frosted, layered the pineapple, etc., pausing occasionally to ask him if he wanted to see it. I’m sure he was asking himself why he left an important meeting to call me if all I was going to do was babble on about my dessert.

It actually didn’t look half bad:

I put it in back of the car and headed off to work. Halfway there, I heard the sickening sound of my tote bag (with my lunch, coffee mug, a yogurt, box of crackers, etc.) fall ON TOP OF the dacquoise. I pulled the car over and opened the back of the car and could have cried. My beautiful dessert was a misshapen shadow of its glamorous self. It was largely intact but obviously had cushioned the fall of something heavier.

When I served it at work, you wouldn’t believe how many people commented on how it looked, as in, how good it looked. Nobody said “That’s a strange shape” or “Why didn’t you smooth out the frosting?” They oooed and ahhed and politely waited for a small piece. And then a hush fell over my coworkers, except for the occasional “Mmmm.”

The white chocolate that I vilified? It and the cream created a light cloak for the crisp and chewy meringues. The pineapple, lightly charred with the caramelized sugar, flavored the whole dessert. The almonds weren’t detectable, but lent a subtle crunch to the meringue.

Once again, I learned lesson #7. Trust Dorie. Trust her palate. Trust her instructions. Trust her sense of the impact a simple but elegant dessert can have over a room of people, holding out their plates expectantly, holding their breath until they take that first bite.