I’m starting to piece together a European trip for sometime in the relatively near future – perhaps this winter or early spring 2008? On the list include visiting a friend in Munich, a friend in Kosovo, and spending some quality time here. Anything else I should do in that neck of the woods?
What's been on my mind lately? Read on...
After the Craft Day ice cream came out closer to sorbet, Pamala was motivated to do some reading about milk, cream and half & half online; she pointed me to this list of dairy products and their fat content.
The blackberry ice cream recipe calls for 2½ cups of heavy cream and 1¼ cups of milk (unspecified type). This yields a mixture that’s 23-26% milkfat. We used half & half alone, which is just 12% milkfat. That definitely explains why our ice cream was more like sorbet. Definitely not a failure, but lesson learned.
The Soapbox race on Saturday was a total hoot. We had a couple thousand people come see our car, with maybe 10,000 watching the race. Thanks to Dan for taking some photos, including a slightly out of focus sequence of our spectacular crash. We didn’t win, but we’ll definitely make the highlight reel.
We made more ice cream yesterday at craft day. This blackberry recipe came out somewhere between ice cream and sorbet, as we used half-and-half exclusively (rather than a majority of cream as the recipe states). We also reduced the sugar considerably – to about half a cup – and it came out perfectly.
The ice cream maker made its debut yesterday when I made some cardamom-vanilla ice cream. I modified the recipe a bit, increasing the yield to about a quart. Came out quite well, if a little on the sweet side. I used a little less than a quart of half-and-half, four egg yolks, and about 2/3 of a cup of sugar. Next time, I’d use about 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of sugar. The texture is excellent, though, and the cardamom and vanilla go well together. Next on the list is blackberry.
Before I got laid off, I put together an entry for the company to compete in the Red Bull Soapbox Race that’s happening in Fremont this weekend. They went ahead and built the car, and we’re racing it on Saturday (I’m part of the skit & helping to push the car). You can see my original sketch here (team name: Din & Tonic). If you’re in town, come check out the race (and bring earplugs), and look for pictures here afterward.