Triple- Layer Ice Cream Cake

I know I have been posting lots of ice cream posts lately, but exactly a week after my nephew's, Toby, turned one, it was his brother's turn, Nathaniel (although we call him by his Chinese name). It is definitely one of the busiest weeks full of family's birthday, two more was coming just a little over a week after that. His birthday was actually a month ago and yes it took me this long to post it.

Children are usually sold on the cake based on the decoration, they need to be colorful, cute, or has a theme according to the child's liking, but not for this nephew. While he definitely would appreciate well-done decorated cake, he would care more about how it tastes. Yup, he's definitely a foodie, he's been trained well :D.

When I asked him what he would like for his birthday, without thinking, he replied "ice cream cake!" "Why?", I asked. "I love ice cream and I want pineapple!". Well, he surely knows what he wants and good for me too as I don't have to think so hard on the cake :). Pineapple is his absolute favorite flavor of anything, even when it is made with pineapple flavoring, he still loves it. Since the sound of pineapple ice cream cake sounds a bit boring to me, I proposed to him to make a three-layer ice cream cake instead and he agreed as long as there's pineapple flavor in it :). He picked blueberry for the next layer and anything up to me for the third one, easy peasy.

Making ice cream is easy, but it is very time consuming, mostly on the waiting for the ice cream bowl to be frozen. I need to freeze the bowl for 24hrs before using it for the next batch so that it's completely frozen. I bought the pineapple a few days earlier to let the fruit to fully ripen before making it into a delicious sorbet. The birthday dinner was supposed to be on Saturday night, but when making the last batch of ice cream, I ran out of time and just use the ice cream bowl only after 12 hours freezing it. I guess it wasn't so good of an idea because the bowl was not frozen enough, causing the ice cream batter to never thicken. So I had to start all over again, and freeze the bowl for another day, the dinner had to be postponed to the following Sunday.

This cake has a layer of vanilla sponge cake as a base, blueberry ice cream, pineapple sorbet, and black raspberry vanilla ice cream. The last layer sounds fancy, but it wasn't really. I had a tub of vanilla ice cream ready in the freezer and since I ran out of time, I decided to melt it and re-churn it, then swirl the black raspberry jam into it. It didn't turn quite like a swirl, instead it's just mixed all together, oh well.

I learn some things while making this cake. To be honest, I've never pureed fresh blueberries before and when I did that and strained it, the puree becomes like a jello with unappetizing color. I didn't know what went wrong as I was expecting a bright purple hue, but what I got was far from that, so I froze it expecting that the texture and the color will get better. After a few days, I strained it again and it wasn't much difference than before freezing, but I only used the purple liquid coming out. I bought a bag of frozen blueberries after that and cooked it with a little sugar and lemon juice before pureeing it all together. The color was much much better, it was actually what I was looking for! the texture wasn't jello-y anymore. So, no more pureeing fresh blueberries for me in the future. Same thing happened with black cherry a few months ago though but that's different story :). Oh well, you learn something new everyday and I'm glad I learned this.

Since I've always have difficulty decorating ice cream cake, chocolate is always the best option and that's what I used. The original idea was to wrap the whole thing in white chocolate while forming some sort of "flower" in the middle. It looked pretty in my head, but of course it's different in reality. I used parchment paper to wrap the whole thing and I wish I had an extra hand or two to help me do it, since the parchment paper is pretty flimsy. The resulting finish looked like it has "plastic bag" look to it. I filled the middle with raspberries for the color to pop and dust some powdered sugar.

The cake certainly doesn't look like a child's birthday, it looked like an adult cake instead of children cake, but this nephew is a bit different anyway. He might turn eight this year but he's a lot more mature than his age. I can talk to him seriously as if he's an adult, I can ask his opinion, I can ask him to accompany me. He LOVES reading and math is his hobby, yeah go figure. Of course he's still a kid too at heart, he can be a pain sometimes, but he's a good kid. The parents (a.k.a my brother and his wife) let him pick which restaurant he wanted to go. We weren't going all out, it was just a simple family dinner with my other brother's family. And guess what he picked? He picked Texas Roadhouse steakhouse! I'm not complaining with his decision though, in fact I'm very pleased, hehehe.....

We cut the cake near midnight on Sunday after we came back from the restaurant. We were so full, there wasn't any desire to eat a cake but for some reason, everyone had a slice. I guess ice cream cake is not so filling or rich afterall, it was like a palate cleanser or some sort. I take it that my nephew loves his cake so much (and the other family member) as the cake disappears the next night and there weren't many of us in the house. We don't usually finish a cake in a short period of time, heck we barely have an appetite for cake when we finished dinner at 10pm and that happens quite frequently. So, Happy 8th Birthday my beloved nephew!

Pineapple Sorbet
adapted from Grand Livre de Cuisine by Alain Ducasse's Desserts and Pastries

1000 g pineapple pulp
240 ml water
240 g sugar
30 g atomized glucose
6 g (1 1/2 tsp.) sorbet stabilizer

• Cook water, sugar, stabilizer, and glucose to make a sugar syrup. Let cool.
• Stir in pineapple pulp
• Cool to 39 F (4C), let sit and process in the ice cream maker

Note:

• My pineapple was really sweet so I don't really need much sugar, adjust the sweetness to your liking.
  

Blueberry Ice Cream

250 ml heavy cream
125 ml whole milk
75 g sugar (see note)
3 egg yolks
350 g blueberry puree (cook the blueberry slightly with lemon juice and some sugar if the blueberries are not sweet)

• 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
• Add the blueberry puree, mix well. You can use more or less puree, suit your taste.
  
• Refrigerate overnight, and process in an ice cream maker

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
I'll post it on another post since I'm planning to make another simple dessert using this ice cream :)

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
  

Strawberry Ice Cream Cake and Max's 2nd Birthday!

I hope you haven't gotten tired of seeing red in this blog just yet, because I still have more coming :).

Do you remember this little boy? It feels like it was just last week that he turned one year old, can't believe how time flies really fast, makes me feel not to take time for granted. Well, this little boy now turns two and he is definitely one of the cutest boys I've ever known. He's so bubbly, seriously, he loves to smile and you can see it in his eyes. His eyes are smiling with him everytime, and I can't help but to smile each time he's doing it. You will love being around him, makes you want to hug, kiss, more hugging and kisses, and more. He is so gentle with babies, unlike most kids, he is so precious indeed and when he does his little dance, I always feel like spanking him (jokingly and gently of course), it's cuteness overload.

Our family (me and my brothers' family) is very close to Max's family and we have been so blessed to know them. They've been one of the greatest blessings in our life, they've been such a huge help too with the kids when we needed them, I could go on and on without getting tired.

When Kiki, Max's mom, reminded me that Max's birthday was coming up, I was so unprepared. I completely forgot about it with all the things that are happening lately, it seems so hard to remember things anymore :(, thanks for calendar in my iPhone that I can pretty much keep up with things.

If there's one thing that little boy loves other than his parents, it would be his strawberry. Yup, he adores strawberry ever since he was so little (he still is), whether it is super tart or sweet, he'll gulp them down in no time, no joke. The parents have to limit his strawberry intake or else he would finish a whole pound in one sitting. Unlike other kids, Max doesn't like sweet stuff, or more specifically cake or dessert, he's starting to develop his fondness toward ice cream in the past few months though. So when I asked K, what Max wants for his birthday, K suggested strawberry ice cream cake, and who am I to argue?

Max would be more than happy with just plain ice cream covered with strawberries, his eyes always lit up whenever he sees those red jewels, but I decided to make homemade strawberry ice cream. I'm never a fan of store-bought ice cream really, mostly because it is too sweet, and the taste is not as real as I would like, and so I decided to make homemade ice cream despite the crazy schedule. This is gonna be my first time making it, so I wouldn't promise it would be perfect, good thing it was for Max who will eat anything strawberry, be it good or bad, perfect victim I say :)

I bought a box full of ripe strawberries at the farmers' market the week before, hulled, washed, dried, and froze them. If there's one thing I learn from experience and not from book, it would be that frozen berries have deeper color and stronger taste if you puree it. This is true mostly for raspberry and strawberry, which is another reason why I love freezing fruits at its peak. I did use some fresh raspberries for mousse, sauce, coulis before but the color is somewhat pink and not deep red color like the frozen ones would produce, it also has some "raw" taste to it, which is great in fruit tart, or for decor, but I prefer the deeper taste and color for puree.

I used the basic custard recipe from the previous green tea ice cream cake (with different method), added some sugar and strawberry puree until I was happy with the taste. Most strawberry ice cream recipes I saw uses vanilla (bean, extract, or paste) to flavor the custard but I omit this because I want the taste to be pure strawberry, not strawberry-flavored vanilla ice cream. I ended up using quite a bit of puree to get a strong strawberry flavor and pretty pink hue. A squirt of lemon juice would probably brighten up the flavor too, but I didn't have one at that time, you can try it if you want. I also have some sponge cake in the freezer so I used that instead of making another one. The dome-shaped has two layers of sponge in it (8" and 6"), while the other one has only one 8" round cake in the bottom.

One great thing about making ice cream or frozen desserts for that matter (among other great things of course) is that you can add anything you like to the base, you can use mint or any other herb (lemon-thyme, lavender, etc), you can combine ingredients, you can mix some flavor, add this and that but still have a good result, it's very forgiving. I added roughly chopped strawberries into the leftover ice cream after assembling the cake to enjoy on its own too.

I made two ice cream cakes, one is for Max's birthday and the other one I was planning to bring to a housewarming party at a friend's house. The one for housewarming didn't quite make it there because we lived about an hour away. I stopped at my brother's house on the way to take a picture really quick but it was melted (as you can see in the picture). A quick trip to the freezer didn't seem to help either as it was so hot in the house. I guess I wasn't very smart in deciding what to bring to the party this time :(. So, it was my brother's luck that I had to leave the ice cream cake there for him and his family as I wouldn't possibly drive another 40 minutes with semi-melting ice cream in my car.

Anyways, Happy Birthday dear Max, wishing you another blessed year ahead and many many more and may you grow to be a man with faithful and humble heart and that you will be a great blessing to others just like how your parents is, we love you :)

I'm off to LA this weekend for Disneyland for the first time. Yup, my first time ever after 9 years living in CA. I know, I know... but for some reason I've never had the urge or passion to go. I'm never been a fan of disney, cartoon, or deathly roller coaster ride anyways. While all of my other friends are super excited about the Disney, I'm a lot more excited of eating good food :), so we'll see if I can bring the kid in me this weekend. Have a good weekend and see you all next week!

Strawberry Ice Cream

500 ml heavy cream
250 ml whole milk
200 g sugar (see note)
6 egg yolks
1000 g strawberry puree
a squeeze of lemon juice (optional)
chopped strawberries (optional)

• 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
• Add the strawberry puree, mix well
• Refrigerate overnight, and process in an ice cream maker
  

Note:

• My strawberries were very ripe and sweet, adjust the amount if your strawberry is just so-so or not very sweet.
• If you're adding chopped strawberries, add it when the ice cream is almost done
  

Green Tea Ice Cream Cake

July is usually one of the busiest months for me. Apart from the fact that it's summer and I'm crazy about all things summer, it is also the month with so many birthdays. This particular friend of mine knows exactly what he wants for his birthday and that is a green tea ice cream cake, heck he sent me a reminder a few times starting from 3 months before his actual birthday, I couldn't even pretend to forget even if I want to.

It was simple enough that I actually wasn't worried about it. One of the hardest things I encountered when making cake for other people is to decide what cake to make, so many choices, so many combination, but yet only one that's supposed to be the right one, it's sort of the same as finding your soulmate... in a way (cheesy I know). So this time, I was so glad that I didn't have to go through that phase. The cake coincidentally falls into the theme of the month of July, National Ice Cream Month, how perfect!

Now, believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever made an ice cream cake. The reason? hmm.... I don't know, maybe I thought ice cream cake is just a boring cake with layer of sponge cake and ice cream alternating, nothing interesting? Besides, I don't normally eat that many frozen stuff due to my sensitive teeth, so it never occurred to me that making ice cream cake can be a challenging project especially if you're making your own ice cream.

It may look simple, but there were actually a lot of consideration going on to make this cake happens. Since this is my first time making an ice cream cake, I wouldn't know if the ice cream would be able to stand on it's own if I put it around the cake, would it melt under California heat, how do I decorate ice cream cake? The last question might be the most challenging one, I am so used to use fruits to decorate cakes, especially in the summer but I don't want the cake to be frozen if I decorate with it. Chocolate would be a good thing to use but again, it is so hard to work with chocolate during summer, unless you have a temperature-controlled kitchen. I did use white chocolate to decorate the sides, which was pretty messy too, but I've always wanted to brush something on chocolate and I'm loving the look of it.

There wasn't many interesting layer in this cake, I used two layers of matcha chiffon cake, and two layers of green tea ice cream. And since texture is so important to me, I was planning to put a layer of Valrhona crunchy chocolate pearl in the middle but it got left out! I was so in a rush to finish the layering before the ice cream melted and became a mess everywhere that by the time I finished the last layer, I remember the chocolate. It was too difficult to scrape the layer off to put the chocolate in, so I gave up that idea although I still think it would make a pretty awesome addition with the added crunch.

The green tea ice cream cake however, was delicious by itself! I used a recipe from "The Perfect Scoop" by David Lebovitz, it's pretty much a basic vanilla ice cream cake with addition of matcha. Luckily, the recipe makes enough for 8" round with enough leftover to enjoy on its own. I'm not usually a fan of matcha everything just because often times, I would buy a matcha cake or matcha ice cream that taste anything but matcha. Some of them have a fake or cheap matcha taste, some of them look so green but the matcha flavor is hardly there. I did however tasted a really good matcha ice cream in a cafe a few weeks ago with strong matcha flavor and was in love with it. I added a few more tsp of matcha powder than what the original recipe calls for and I think it's just perfect.

I'm submitting this green tea ice cream cake post to Matcha Madness event hosted by Catty for the month of July. You can go over to her site after the event ends to find out how mad people playing with matcha and you'll be surprised to find so many matcha goodness out there.

Green Tea Ice Cream Cake
Yield: one 8" round cake

Green Tea Chiffon Cake
4 eggs (separate the yolk from the white)
100 g sugar (divided)
75 g cake flour
10 g green tea powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
50 g milk
50 g vegetable oil

Green Tea Ice Cream
adapted from "The Perfect Scoop"

500 ml heavy cream
250 ml whole milk
150 g sugar
6 egg yolks
6 tsp green tea powder (original: 4 tsp)

Decoration (optional):
Heavy Cream, whipped
Matcha paste (made with matcha powder and a little water to form a paste)

• To make the chiffon cake: Preheat the oven to 350 F and prepare two parchment-lined 8" round pans
  
• Whisk the egg yolk and 25 g sugar until it becomes a little pale.
• Add the milk and the oil and whisk well
• Combine together the flour, green tea powder, baking powder, and salt and sift them. Set aside.
• In another bowl, whip the egg whites until frothy, then add the remaining 75 g sugar gradually and continue whipping until it forms a glossy stiff peak
• Add the flour to the yolk mixture and whisk well
• Fold in the egg white in addition (about three), making sure there is no big lumps of meringue and don't overfold either.
• Divide the batter between the two pans and bake it for about 20 minutes or until done.
• Let cool until ready to use
• To make the green tea ice cream: Combine the sugar and the milk in a saucepan and bring it to simmer
• In a large bowl, combine together green tea and heavy cream, whisking lightly, then put a strainer on top. Don't overwhisk it as you would have whipped cream instead
• In another bowl, whisk the egg yolk and temper it with the hot milk, return it back to the heat
• Heat the mixture to about 85 C on a gentle heat, stirring non-stop
• Once the mixture reaches the temperature, take it off the heat on pour in over the strainer.
• Whisk the cream+milk mixture vigorously until the matcha powder dissolves (it will be frothy)
• Chill thoroughly and churn in the ice cream maker.
• To decorate: Whip the cream and the matcha paste
• Cover the cake with the matcha cream and decorate.
• If you decided not to use the whipped cream to cover the cake, you can also cover the cake in green tea ice cream just like a mousse cake.
  

Note:
I followed the method stated in the recipe, but personally, I would do it differently next time. The matcha powder is harder to dissolve in a cold liquid. Even after you added the hot milk mixture, the matcha didn't dissolve completely. I whisked the mixture for quite a while until most of the green tea has dissolved and I warmed it a little.

I think it would be better to use the normal "creme-anglaise method":

• Combine the cream and the milk together in a saucepan and bring it to simmer
• Meanwhile, whisk the yolks and the matcha powder, and temper it with the hot milk
• Bring it to 85C, stirring constantly
• Strain to remove any lumps (if any) and chill thoroughly
• Process in an ice cream maker
  

4th of July BBQ and Trio of Sorbet

I know 4th of July is over three weeks ago, but I just can't let the occasion pass without any sort of contribution to the event.

When summer rolls around and the hot weather started to soar, all I can think of is BBQ, BBQ, and BBQ, with cold drinks or cold desserts to fight the heat (don't get me started on the fruits). After a slow transition from Spring to Summer, we finally got a feel of what real Summer in California is. The temperature rises to maybe low 90 under the sun, which might be nothing compared to other states, but yeah it was pretty darn hot, but perfect for BBQ!

It's like a tradition to have a BBQ on 4th of July, American way and I was so ecstatic about this. You see, we usually buy ready-grill stuff at Costco or just marinated Korean beef/pork, but this time I wanted REAL BBQ. We made most of our own food this time (well, mostly). So here's the rundown of the menu:

Entree:
- baby-back ribs
- chicken kebab with red onion and bell pepper
- marinated pork (YUM!)
- three different kinds of sausages (store-bought)

Sides:
- roasted-garlic mashed potatoes
- grilled asparagus
- different kinds of chip and tortilla with salsa and artichoke dip
- grilled corn with mayo, lime and parmesan cheese

Drinks:
- mango and orange punch
- sodas

Dessert:
Trio of sorbet (pineapple, strawberry, and white peach)
Fruits (watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon)

It wasn't too hot that day, in fact, it was perfect. We had the BBQ at our house and the way our house is facing, it's cooler in the evening, the sun moves to the front part of the house. We got a warm weather with slightly cool breeze.

I was so excited about the dessert (read: the sorbet) because I think it was the perfect choice. The days were so hot that you're craving something to fight the heat. It happened that I was on a frozen dessert making frenzy after making the previous sorbet. Given that July is a National Ice Cream Month, this makes it even more perfect! I opted for three kinds of sorbet this time, strawberry (made on a previous post), white peach, and pineapple.

I really love the flavor of white peach, it's fragrant and subtle. I tried to use it in a cake once but I don't think that was a good idea, the flavor was so subtle that it gets lost easily among other flavors. So, sorbet was the perfect choice as it capture the pure flavor of the fruit. The only thing I wasn't too satisfied about was the color. I used white peach and it gets discolor rather fast. It turned brown within seconds after peeling, I wish someone can tell me how to keep the white color of the peach. I saw some blogs posted their white peach sorbet with pretty pink color (I'm dying to be able to get that color), or clean white.

The pineapple however was a request from my little nephew. He loves pineapple (I mean, who doesn't?), and as I mentioned before, we share the same love for sorbet over sweet ice cream (disclaimer: he hasn't tried homemade ice cream that's why). He kept asking me when I would make it everytime he saw the two pineapple sitting on the counter to ripen. He was beyond happy when I finally made it and he kept coming back to have a bowl of the soft-serve pineapple sorbet while it's still churning.

The three sorbet turned out really good. I mention about how good the strawberry sorbet was in the previous post, the strawberry flavor was so strong and fresh, the white peach is subtle with floral taste, the pineapple was so good that it was just bursting with flavor when you put it in your mouth, it was that good. One thing I noticed though, the texture of pineapple sorbet was different than the other two. I used the same recipe, adjusting the amount of sugar for each one, and the amount of puree depending on the sweetness of the fruit. It wasn't as compact as the other. I'm not complaining though, but just curious. I flipped through the same book and it has different recipe for pineapple sorbet, hmm.... curious why it has to be different.

For the next few days after the BBQ, me nephew kept asking me for the three sorbet for his dessert after dinner. I have a feeling he will grow with a fine tastebud :)

It was a relaxing and fun time surrounded by family and close friends, really good food; we played game and we even had a small firework in the backyard! Talking about back to the past, reminded me when I was still a kid.

Strawberry Sorbet -- recipe here
White Peach Sorbet -- same recipe as strawberry, but reduced the sugar to 100 g
Pineapple Sorbet -- same recipe as strawberry, but I used about 1000g-1200g of puree instead

Strawberry Obsession: Strawberry Shortcake, Strawberry Sorbet and Strawberry Lollipop

I'm in some sort of strawberry madness lately, as you can tell by all three strawberry desserts in one post. Everytime I go to farmers' market almost every Sunday, I try so hard not to stop by my favorite strawberry stall, I even try not to stare! But when you see bright red color in the corner of your eyes, you just gotta look, and that's very dangerous as I can hardly contain myself from tasting a sample and ended up buying it. It happens everytime, classic. Does it happen to you too? Please tell me that I'm not weird :(

But anyways, here I am, always overloaded with fresh juicy strawberries almost every week. Ever since we went strawberry picking last time, I kept thinking of how to make the best out of the strawberry season this year, and that's when I started writing my list of things to make this summer. At least now I can be glad and proud that I can cross two out of a hundred items (and still growing) on that list.

Started out with strawberry shortcake. If you notice, I make strawberry shortcake every year at the peak of strawberry season. I think this is one of the best ways to highlight the sweet strawberries at its finest. I'm not talking about the all-American strawberry shortcake which is made with flaky scones, but I'm talking what most people referred to the Japanese-style strawberry shortcake, which uses soft genoise or sponge cake instead of scone. Strawberry plays one of the most important role in this dessert, and that it has to be sweet. There's nothing more horrifying that eating strawberry cake with sour strawberries.

I like to use orange liqueur such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier with my strawberry shortcake as I love the combination of strawberry and slight orange taste in the background. Many people use Kirsch as well, but I am not particularly a fan of it, it's all a matter of taste.

Before I'm moving on the sorbet subject, I have a confession to make. I own some cookbooks (or dessert books), not so many, but there a couple of them (I should take a picture of them sometimes), but I rarely or almost never followed any recipe from them. I don't know, I've always been put off in trying one of their recipes because I'm afraid that I won't like them or the recipe is just too lengthy. Most of the cookbooks that I own (or all of them) are the kinds that have a very long recipes page with multiple different components, a lot of them has some bizarre ingredients that I've never heard before or the ones that would cost me a fortune.

If I have to choose between ice cream or sorbet on a hot summer day, I would probably opt for sorbet. I don't eat frozen stuff that often (I have very sensitive teeth), but when I do, it has to be good. Sorbet is also one of the best ways to bring out the best flavor of the fragrance of the fruit, so simple and so pure.

When I was looking for a sorbet recipe, I have a few recipes I can try with very similar ingredients from French magazine and from one of my cookbooks, but I finally settle on the later, which is from this book. The picture of the sorbet looks so smooth and has a great texture, but it has some unfamiliar ingredients such as atomized glucose and sorbet stabilizer. This is one of my favorite books together with this and this. The book explains what each ingredient is and what their role is in the sorbet, love it! Luckily, one of my favorite baking sites carries it! I had to order it twice because I missed one ingredient the first time, but now that I got them, I'm all set to go.

The resulting sorbet turned out to be so delicious! It's all I've ever wanted in a sorbet, strong flavor, great texture, just perfect! It's like strawberry explosion in your mouth, just pure and intense strawberry flavor. The strawberries you use need to be tasty, I won't recommend making this using winter strawberries, even in California. I had to make two batches of this sorbet because my nephew loves it and he constantly asked for it. He and I share the same preference in frozen stuff, sorbet over ice cream. I was going to save the sorbet for dessert for something else with other sorbets I'm going to make (more on that later), but I just can't say no to my nephew when he "begged" me for it on a really hot California day. So, I decided to make more using my last fresh and frozen strawberries I have, I guess it can be considered as another Spring Cleaning? :)

So, what's up with the strawberry lollipops? Umm... nothing really. I just thought that they look so cute on a stick :), don't they?

Strawberry Shortcake

Sponge Cake:
4 whole eggs
4 egg yolks
100 g sugar
80 g cake flour, sifted
60 g melted butter

Filling:
100 g mascarpone cheese, room temperature
50 g sugar
250 g heavy cream
Cointreau or Grand Marnier (or Kirsch)
fresh sweet strawberries, sliced (set aside some whole ones for decoration)

• To make the sponge cake: Preheat the oven to 350F and lined two 8" square pan with parchment paper
  
• Beat the eggs (whole and yolks) with the sugar on a med-high speed until the mixture is very thick and pale (ribbon-stage)
• Incorporate the flour in three addition and fold carefully as not to lose too much air
• Fold in the melted butter until well-mixed
• Divide the batter between two prepared pans and bake it for about 20 minutes or until done.
• Let cool on a wire rack
• To make the filling: Combine the mascarpone cheese, sugar, heavy cream, and liqueur, and beat until it forms a semi-stiff peak but still has its shine. Use it immediately
  
• To assemble: Put one layer of cake on a base and spread the filling on top.
• Arrange the strawberry slices and top it with the other cake.
• Spread another thin layer of filling on top and decorate all you want
• If you don't have enough filling for the top layer or to decorate it with, just simply whip fresh whipped cream with a little sugar (you can add liqueur if you want).
  

Strawberry Sorbet
adapted from Grand Livre de Cuisine: Alain Ducasse's Desserts and Pastries

750 g strawberry puree
60 g atomized glucose
120 g sugar
80 ml water
3/4 tsp sorbet stabilizer

• Put the water and atomized glucose in a sacepan and bring it to a gentle boil.
• Mix the sugar and the sorbet stabilizer, and add it to the water mixture and bring it back to a boil.
  
• Let cool completely (you can put this mixture in a fridge overnight)
• Mix the cool syrup with strawberry puree and let it the mixture "mature" in the fridge for 24 hrs
• Churn it in an ice cream machine

Note:

• The book says to mix everything (except the strawberry puree) without boiling them first. I boiled mine to dissolved the sugar.
  
• The book also suggests another alternative, which is to boil all ingredients to a certain temperature, and cool it for 24 hrs before churning.
• The mixture needs to sit for a long time to let the stabilizer develop its role, but I also read a few other recipes (not from the book) which only matures the sugar syrup overnight and churn it immediately after being mixed with the puree. Some doesn't even require maturing, just mix and churn.