Happy Trails For Us: My Reluctant Blog

The Sunday Slow Bakers were coming to the end of the road, so to speak, when someone (thanks Jerry) had the briliiant idea to make ice cream for the rest of the summer, and recommended a book, The Perfect Scoop by David Leibowitz. I am apparently not just reluctant about creating this blog, because while I love ice cream, my first inclination was to pass on this, since I had a great fear of a) eating too much ice cream and b) having to buy an ice cream maker, when I already have no room on counters or cupboards for any more "things".

After reading more and more enthusiastic comments for this project, I came to think well, why not, I do have time this summer and why not learn something new. I do not mess around; the next day I went to Costco and voila, I have a new toy, er, piece of kitchen equipment:

And then I ordered the book on Amazon. Reluctance turns quickly into action.

When the book came, I opened the ice cream maker box and decided to try out one of the recipes, even tho the Slow Scoopers were still Bakers. I thought a test run (or two) would be a good idea. I decided to make Lemon Ice Cream from the book, a fairly simple recipe using relatively few ingredients. The flavor was good, but the mixture did not churn into what I thought it should be, and we decided that perhaps the bowl insert had not chilled long enough in the freezer - it had been longer than recommended but I had only put it in that morning. We ended up freezing it in a container, so it was ok, not great.

Forward to yesterday, when I decided to give it another try.The insert had been frozen now for several days, and I thought I would try to make a sorbet. Very simple - strawberries, suger, water and a few teaspoons of fresh lemon juice (I already had citrus juice saved from the weekend baking project). I pureed the berries with the sugar, water and juice, strained it and put it away to chill. After dinner, I took the insert from the freezer, put it into the machine, poured the puree in the bowl and turned on the machine. After 25 minutes I looked in the machine, and wow, this was the right texture. The extra freezing did the trick. The sorbet was delicious and I quickly shared it with the neighbors (fear of eating ice cream, see above). As a matter of fact, I put some on a last slice of the Citrus Polenta Cake - great flavor combo, lemon and strawberry.

My Strawberry Sorbet:

Slow Scoopers began as a summer fling, but we have had more people join in and now it looks like we will be making ice cream until November! This is going to be fun.