Category Archives: Ice Cream

Salted Honey Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches

I consider Honey Cake to be the Jewish equivalent to Fruit Cake. It’s always served at Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) celebrations but no one really likes it.

Honey figures prominently in Rosh Hashanah menus as it symbolizes our desire for a sweet new year. The choice of honey was brilliantly explained on the website torah.org with this insight:
“A bee can inflict pain by its sting, yet it also produces delicious honey.  Life has this same duality of potential. We pray that our choices will result in a sweet year.”

But nowhere is it written that honey must be baked into a cake. This year, Salted Honey Gingerbread ice Cream Sandwiches are on the menu. I’m a rebel.

Watch how they come together.

The cookie stamps I used are from Nordic Ware. Rolling the cookie dough in granulated sugar prevents the cookie from sticking to the cookie mold. You could certainly just bake the cookies without the bee themed stamps, but I couldn’t resist.

I tested out this recipe this summer and I wrapped each ice cream sandwich individually in plastic wrap and stored them in the freezer. We quickly discovered that the frozen cookies become rock hard making the sandwiches really difficult to eat. So in the recipe, I suggest you cut out the ice cream circles and store them a baking sheet wrapped in plastic wrap in the freezer. Assemble the sandwiches, with the room temperature, soft and chewy cookies, just before you want to eat them.

The addition of the salt to the honey ice cream keeps it from being cloyingly sweet. The spicy chewy ginger cookies are a perfect match for the sweet honey ice cream. Wishing you all a sweet and healthy new year.

Click here to print recipe for Salted Honey Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches.

Strawberry Rhubarb Swirl Ice cream

It’s no secret to regular readers of this blog that I adore rhubarb. That being said, I was shocked to discover there are 18 rhubarb recipes in the archives of my blog! I love the tartness that rhubarb brings to desserts. It’s a great way to achieve flavour balance in desserts, keeping the sweetness at bay.

Local rhubarb does not really arrive in Ottawa until early July and right now I am awash in a sea of rhubarb. Because I no longer have a garden (I’m in a condo now), my son planted a rhubarb patch in his backyard for me for Mother’s Day a few years ago. Rhubarb is a prolific perennial. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

This ice cream is a vanilla base with roasted strawberry-rhubarb compote mixed in. Roasting is an excellent way to boost the flavour profile of fruit. Mix 1.5 cups of halved strawberries, 1 cup sliced rhubarb and 2 tablespoons sugar together on a sheet pan, and roast it in a 350°F oven for about 15 minutes, until the fruit is tender. Mash the fruit with a potato masher until it becomes a chunky sauce. Chill the sauce while you make the ice cream.

If you find yourself with a plethora of rhubarb, slice it and freeze it. Then all winter long you can roast it with frozen strawberries and spoon it over your morning yogurt. It makes winter more bearable.

I used the basic vanilla ice cream recipe from my Cuisinart Ice Cream recipe book. It’s an excellent base for all kinds of flavour mix-ins. The strawberry rhubarb mixture gets swirled in once the ice cream is churned but still soft.

Feel free to serve the ice cream in cones or if you want to make a special sundae dessert, serve it in pretty glasses with this Salted Pistachio Crumble on top. I’m all about texture. Save some of the strawberry rhubarb juice to drizzle on the sundaes.

Click here to print recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Swirl Ice cream with Salted Pistachio Crumble.

Cara Cara Orange Buttermilk Ice Cream

The truckers have finally left Ottawa . Russia has invaded Ukraine and the world feels like a very scary place right now. Ice cream might not be the first thing you think about making in late winter, but the world seems a bit upside down right now, so I vote for winter ice cream.

I don’t normally comment on world events on this blog, but it feels wrong to go about business as usual and not acknowledge what is happening. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of the Ukrainian nation. If you’re looking for ways to show your support, the Globe and Mail published an excellent list a few days ago. And if you’re looking to educate yourself a bit more about the conflict and understand a bit of the history of this region, I highly recommend these podcasts by Today Explained.

Back to the regularly scheduled program. Do you guys know about Cara Cara oranges? I feel like they don’t get as much attention as they deserve, because of their more flamboyant cousin, the Blood Orange. Cara Cara oranges are a bit more bashful, but, in my humble opinion, much more delicious than blood oranges. While they look like a regular navel orange on the outside, inside, their flesh is a lovely pink colour. They’re sweeter and less acidic than a regular navel orange. They have a delicious “berry-like” flavour. They’re only available for a few short months each winter.

If you have an ice cream maker, (I have and love this one) this is a really simple recipe to put together. Mix orange zest, juice, sugar, buttermilk and cream together and pour into ice cream machine for about 20 minutes. Transfer to a covered container and freeze for a few hours.

The buttermilk gives the ice cream a nice tangy flavour that really complements the sweet Cara Cara oranges. Scoop it into a cone or bowl or get fancy like me and hollow out some orange halves. The best tool for removing the inside flesh is a grapefruit spoon. It’s one of my favourite kitchen tools. I also use it for scraping out the stringy bits of squash after you pull out the seeds.

I garnished with some dried orange slices from this Etsy shop. They arrived so quickly and in perfect condition. They would look beautiful on a Cara Cara Orange Pound Cake too!

Turtle Ice cream

The inspiration for this ice cream came from Turtles Chocolates. Creamy caramel and crunchy pecans coated in rich chocolate. Mmmmmm, I love turtles. When I told my husband I was creating Turtle Ice cream, he had no idea what I was talking about. Clearly, his mother did not have a candy drawer in the living room where she “hid” the chocolates that were meant for company.

Of course that drawer was a magnet for my sisters and I. We’d try to quietly sneak chocolates, but the drawer had a brass knocker handle that would clunk every time we opened and closed the drawer. The variety box of chocolates would be filled with half-eaten cherry and cream filled chocolates. All the nut and caramel ones were gone. My mother would be so embarrassed and angry at us when she went to serve the chocolates to company. Ah, sweet childhood memories!

Turtles were the most coveted box in the drawer and it was always filled with empty candy cups. For my version of Turtle Ice Cream, I started with a base of salted caramel ice cream from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book, “Rose’s Ice Cream Bliss.” You will need an ice cream machine to make this recipe.

The blogosphere is awash with quick, no-churn ice cream recipes. Essentially, no churn ice cream does not contain eggs, and relies on sweetened condensed milk to thicken the ice cream. The big draw to most of these recipes is that they do not require an ice cream machine. You just mix the ingredients and freeze. Sound perfect until you taste the ice cream. No matter what flavour you add, I find that the sweetened condensed milk overpowers everything. Plus, it has a strange texture. I don’t understand the appeal.

Rose’s recipe is extremely detailed and fool proof. She walks you through all the steps and explains why things work. I’m a big fan. Her first book “The Cake Bible” is the most dog eared book on my shelf. Published in 1988, it has stood the test of time.

I dipped the top of the sugar cones with melted chocolate and rolled it in toasted pecans, because we’re fancy here at saltandserenity. Plus, it makes a pretty picture. It’s all in the details.

To the base of salted caramel ice cream, I added buttered toasted pecans and chunks of caramel candy. You can make your own caramel candy, or just buy the Kraft caramels and cut them into quarters. For the chocolate, I envisioned ribbons of hot fudge sauce rippling through the ice cream. I made a simple hot fudge sauce and layered it through the ice cream before freezing. Then I drizzled on some extra after scooping.

Mocha Almond Fudge Swirl Ice Cream

One of my strongest childhood memories, is spending Sundays with my dad. He would take me and my sisters out for the day to give my mom a break. In the summer it would be swimming and then dinner and ice cream. In the winter, it was usually a movie, dinner and ice cream. I recall seeing Mary Poppins 7 1/2 times. The 1/2 was because my little sister threw up and we had to leave.

Dinner was usually at the Copper Kettle. We’d always have fried chicken in a basket. I fondly remember the little packets of honey that we’d open with our teeth, and drizzle all over the chicken and fries. After dinner, we’d go to Bresslers Ice Cream at Bayview Village. That was when Bayview Village was a strip mall, and not the fancy place it is now.

Everyone had their favourite flavour of ice cream. My sisters ordered strawberry (Jody), bubblegum, (Lynne), and maple walnut (Faith). My baby sister (Bo) was too little to come and my baby brother (Jay) wasn’t even born yet! I always got two scoops, chocolate on the bottom and pistachio on top. My dad always got pistachio. He loved all nuts.

When I was a teenager, I discovered Jamoca Almond Fudge Ice Cream at Baskin and Robbins. I adored the deep, slightly bitter coffee flavour, balanced by ripples of chocolate fudge sauce. And the little pop of crunch when you’d bite into a nugget of almond was easily the best part for me.

Thanks to my friend Brigitte, I have recreated this iconic flavour at home. The base coffee recipe is hers. I added swirls of hot fudge sauce and toasted salted almonds. It comes together really quickly. Store-bought fudge sauce will totally work, but it only takes a few minutes to make your own. My favourite recipe is from Deb.

Extra hot fudge sauce and almonds are totally optional, but highly recommended!