Mascarpone Ice Cream Two Ways: Peach and Raspberry Swirl

I don't realize how I have abandoned this blog for two weeks! so much for wanting to update more, but I have good reason this time other than the usual excuse I gave, which is bake, work, and more bake. My friend found a really good deal to Hawaii last week, but we had to go in like two days after. We found the deal on Tuesday, bought the ticket for 10 people who signed up on Wednesday noon, and off we went on early morning Friday. It's surprising how spontaneous we can be at times :).

The vacation was so much needed and Hawaii, Honolulu to be exact, is such a beautiful place. The first thing that came to mind when we landed was how similar the island is to our home country, Indonesia, with American influence of course. I love the warm beaches and its breath-taking views and all the water activities. You've got to love how laid-back people are, it's like they have all the time in the world. Love those snow-cones, passion fruit and guava-flavored desserts (my all-time fave), and let's not talk about those hunky guys ;). I love how people in Hawaii start the day early (just like in Indonesia), I woke up around 6-7 in Hawaii and the sun was already up and you can hear all sorts of busy sounds in the street. I love my walk in the morning to get a cup of Kona coffee in a nearby store, oh how I miss the slow pace there. When I came back home, it was still pitch dark at 6am, even 7 (maybe not as dark), but you can clearly feel the difference.

The view on the highway on the way to north-shore

Now that I'm back to the fast-moving life and all the activities that comes with it, I have to catch up on my routine, doing my blog-reading round and see what I've missed on Tastespotting and Foodgawker, replying lots of email, catching up with work. I was welcomed back to California with rain, in fact, it's been raining for a few days now. It's been really cloudy and sad here (can't you tell I miss the sun? :D), but anyways....

I know Summer has officially ended and Fall is happily getting its way out here, but I still have so much items on my Summer list that I haven't get a chance to do, such as this one (and many many more). It's like secretly hoping that even though Fall is officially here, but I just have that tiny tiny hope that the Summer temperature would stay a little longer. I still see lots of peaches, nectarines, and strawberries in the market, which always makes me smile everytime, but I know that they won't be here long enough for me to get through all my list and my usual Summer-fruit freezing time.

Leaves are starting to turn red here and there, the wind is breezy, rain falls here and there, and I started to find myself waking up early in the morning because it's too cold and ended up curling up under my blankie. I started to close the window again at night because it's getting really cold at night. I am so used to let it open in the Summer time as I love the gentle breeze in my room and especially the smell of that fresh air in my room, but I guess it is almost the time to back in Winter mode. I saw lots of chocolate post, pear and apple goodies popping up on multiple blogs already.

Just to celebrate the season, or more like hanging on to the Summer a little longer, I decided to make more ice cream in the middle of the birthday month crazyness when the temperature was a bit warmer a few weeks ago. Mascarpone ice cream to be exact. Some of you might have already known my love toward this one ingredient and I especially love the combination of mascarpone and raspberry such as in this one and I want to recreate the same taste in the ice cream form.

I made one batch of basic ice cream and added a full 8-oz tub in it, then divide the batter in half, one for peach, and one for raspberry swirl. I feel like I have never given yellow peaches a fair share of its beauty in dessert form or anything at all, I barely eat it fresh. I always opt for the white type because I think it's sweeter and more fragrant. Other than that, I think what contributes the most to my hesitation towards yellow peaches is the canned peach. I am not a fan of those canned yellow peaches and back when I was still in Indonesia, we didn't have fresh peaches and all we know about peach is the canned one, and I think it tasted horrible. But before the season really ends, I decided to give these yellow peaches another chance and bought a whole basket of gorgeous yellow peaches in the farmers market. It was actually a lot better than I thought it would be, it was so sweet and juicy and I just couldn't turn it down, very different than the canned version (duh!). Although, I did try and bought a couple from grocery store, it looked ripe to me and fragrant too, but they weren't sweet at all, kind of tasteless and so mealy. So, I'll stick with my farmers' market for my source of fruits.

I blanched my peaches briefly to loosen the skin and the color was just gorgeous, I couldn't help but just taking a shot even though some parts are bruised from me squeezing it, but the color was just so vibrant and bright!

Talking about a farmers' market find, I also bought half a case of raspberries, my favorite berry of all time! I didn't have the chance to play a lot with it this summer because I thought I still have a few months to go, but I just couldn't resist getting some in the market. I froze 98% of them because I knew that I won't have time to do anything with them soon and we all know how fast raspberries go bad, although my mind was completely full of ideas when I saw the sweet sweet berry. I used a little of the berries to make the swirl for this ice cream.

To me, the taste of peach is subtle and it's hard to make it stand out, even after I put a huge amount of peach puree in it, making the mascarpone taste somewhat disappear. It's definitely peachy and I also put some cubed peach as well, but for some reason, the flavor is not very bold, unlike the raspberry one. It's not the ice cream though, it's just yellow peach in general, I guess peach is better in it's original form rather than processed into something else (in this case, it's ice cream). I barely taste the mascarpone in the peach version as I put a lot of puree in it. However, I love the raspberry version! You can never go wrong with mascarpone and raspberry anyway, LOVE IT! These two will always be one of my favorite flavor combination.

There are still a couple of frozen treats I want to try, but hopefully the warm temperature hangs long enough for me to make all of them, juusssttt a little longer :).
Mascarpone Ice Cream (peach and raspberry swirl)

500 ml whole milk
250 ml heavy cream
150 g granulated sugar
6 egg yolks
8-oz mascarpone cheese

• Combine the cream, milk and sugar in a saucepan and bring it to a gentle boil
• Meanwhile, break the egg yolks and whisk it until it blends well
• Temper the egg yolk and the milk mixture, and put it back in the saucepan.
• Bring the mixture to 84C over low-medium heat, stirring all the time
• Remove it from the heat and strain it to avoid any lumps
  
• Cool it until it reaches room temperature (or almost to room temp).
  
• Add the mascarpone cheese and stir well. This is the base of the ice cream
• For peach: Add about 500 g peach puree to half of the ice cream
• For raspberry swirl: Make a raspberry coulis from about 75 g raspberry puree and some sugar (depending on the sweetness, I didn't weigh mine). Heat the two together until the sugar dissolves, let cool and set aside.
  
• Refrigerate the ice cream batter overnight and process in the ice cream maker
• For peach: Add some chopped peach in the final ice cream and churn for a few more seconds to mix
• For raspberry swirl: Layer the ice cream and raspberry coulis alternating in the container (swirl it with spoon). Don't add the coulis in the ice cream maker as the churning will make the raspberry sauce to be incorporated completely and makes the ice cream pink instead of swirl