Trio of Treats

Banana-riffic!

Okay folks. I am so in the swing of this thing! The saucepans, rubber spatulas, and bowls are piling up the sink (sorry hun!) but I am on a roll. In the past 3 days I made 3 different flavors. If it didn’t take 22 hours for my ice cream maker to be ready to go I’d be buried in dishes. They’d be on the floor. I’d be making flavor after flavor after flavor. 

 

Banana Candy

I started with Roasted Banana. Have I mentioned my banana obsession? No? Well it’s real. It all starts with roasting bananas with brown sugar and butter, which in effect, candied the banana pieces. Beyond that... it permeated the apartment with an unmistakable banana smell. The perfume of it was fantastic. It was all I could do to not eat the candied pieces as they came out of the oven. They were just banana/toffee/perfection. I blitzed the bananas and blended it well with the other ingredients. I let it cool over night in the fridge. After dinner the next night, I whipped it into the maker and it came out just extraordinary. The ice cream was dense, rich, sweet and wonderfully banana-y. I mean the strongest most concentrated banana taste I have ever tasted. I mean it makes sense... when you roast something it concentrates the flavor... but it was so unexpectedly intense. It was so rich though that really… 3 spoonfuls was all I could eat. 

Tidal Wave of Flavor

Today, we had a little potluck in the office and for my contribution I thought I'd make the Aztec Hot Chocolate. I decided to modify it slightly because a friend of mine at work is not a fan of heat in her food... so instead of several tablespoons of chile I mixed in a combination of chile, ginger, nutmeg and an extra dash of cinnamon. I think I added a tad too much booze however because the mixture didn’t quite freeze up in the mixer. I poured it into a freezer bowl and hoped for the best (to make it look nice and let people know what it was I placed a whole Mexican cinnamon stick on the top before I froze it.)

Ghirardelli Goodness

I shouldn’t have worried about the texture, it came out just perfect. People seemed to really like it-- it was also on the table with a homemade Cuban flan and many people had the brilliance to mix the two. This recipe made a larger amount of ice cream than any others before. It made enough for two batches really. Yay!

 

After the success of the Aztec Chocolate I decided to grab more cream on the way home today and give another flavor a try. I decided that 2 chocolates down… it was vanilla time. Now I revere vanilla as the exotic, luscious, complex, very non-boring ingredient it is. I went for the Philadelphia Style Vanilla Ice cream.

I took it one step further and chopped up some

Madagascar

chocolate (I was using

Madagascar

vanilla after all) to throw in to make a chocolate chip.

Again, like the Aztec chocolate this batch didn’t freeze and fluff up in the maker. I’m guessing that this is due to the lack of egg. The vanilla flavor is really nice. I love seeing the bean specks nuzzled up to some really great dark chocolate. It’s in the freezer ‘ripening’ right now but I have to say, if the 10 spoon licks I snuck were any indication… this is gonna be a good batch!

Gorgeous! 

Enjoy!

Erin

Comments

[Barbara]

And they were both "heavenly!"
Thank you. You are the Best!

[EB]

You are SOOOOO welcome! I'm glad you liked them!!!

[Bea]

I will have to do this my next time in SF! Looks fun!

[EB]

Hi Bea-
It really was fun. I think out of towners will get a lot more out of it than I did too.

Take Care-
EB