Coconut gelato

A rare original recipe by yours truly, this might be the quickest and easiest ice cream ever. In an experimental yet lazy mood, I combined elements from a Sherry Yard coconut gelato and a David Lebovitz coconut ice cream (custard) recipe, and made my own---I suppose it can be called gelato, though I'm still fuzzy on the details of the difference between that and ice cream. At least it isn't custard, and so requires none of the fussy yolk-tempering and ice-bathing and all that. It also uses no cream (in a sense), only half-and-half. I like to have a way to use up those cheap (relative to cream) half-and-half quarts which none but the largest, most caffeinated household could possibly use up before spoilage if it's only being used for coffee--and as far as I know, half-and-half has no real culinary identity apart from its relationship to coffee. Poor half-and-half. Anyway, this stuff looks like and has the texture of fluffy white snow, only it tastes about a thousand times better.

Coconut gelato
3/4 c. unsweetened coconut flakes (if all you can find are sweetened, that's fine)
2 cups half-and-half
3/4 c. sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
2 Tbsp. dark rum

Toast the coconut flakes in a small skillet over med-low heat til just brown around the edges, then combine in a saucepan with the half-and-half, sugar, and salt. Warm the mixture and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, cover, and let steep about 45 minutes.

Pour the mixture through a strainer into a quart-sized measuring cup. Press on the coconut flakes to extract all possible liquid, then reserve and refrigerate or freeze for some other use (like garnishing this gelato) if desired. Stir the coconut milk and rum into the measuring cup. Chill several hours until very cold, then freeze in your ice cream maker.

Even with my Cuisinart canister thoroughly chilled, this was very soft right out of the machine, so I would count on the finished product needing a couple of hours in the freezer to solidify a bit before serving. (After three days it has remained scoopable directly from the freezer, unlike many other ice creams I make, which have to sit out for a few minutes.)

Chocolate-mint tuiles; blackberry-lime sorbet

This was technically not my first time making tuiles, but I'd rather not revisit the utter failure that was my previous attempt. Different recipe, different time. This week, since I had a couple of egg whites sitting in the fridge, I decided to try Sherry Yard's chocolate-dipped tuile recipe (from Baking by the Yard). I ended up filling the tuiles instead with a whipped chocolate ganache flavored with the tiniest bit of peppermint extract (I've learned the hard way how potent it is). I daresay it worked, though my whipped ganache recipe was a little guess-y.

I was probably a little crazy to take on tuiles this week, with temperatures keeping around 95: after the tuiles have baked (about 4 at a time) you open the oven door, set the baking sheet on it, and work with them that way so they stay warm and malleable. Then you do the other three batches. After each batch you have to wrap the cookies quickly around the handle of a wooden spoon (they're hot of course) so that they hold their characteristic shape. I have pretty callused/heat resistant fingers, so this wasn't too hard. Shaping is one of the top 5 things in the kitchen that tend to provoke my temper---I'm clumsy and don't follow written directions as well as pictures and/or videos---so I was surprised that these went so smoothly. The one hitch was that I didn't bake them long enough; scared by her warning that overbaking makes them difficult to shape, I didn't let them go longer than the indicated time even though they weren't quite golden brown, so the cookies never really crisped up. I'll remember that next time, and there will be a next time---this is a great way to use up whites left over from custard-based ice creams, and it doesn't involve finicky whipping! I'll take a hot kitchen over egg whites that refuse to whip right any day.

For the ganache filling, which I piped in with a makeshift pastry bag, I used about 2 oz. of Trader Joe's 72% dark chocolate and 1/3 cup of heavy cream, with a tiny splash of mint extract and maybe 1/4 tsp. vanilla. You just chop the chocolate, heat the cream in the microwave at intervals of 30 seconds til hot, then pour it over the chocolate, whisking til smooth. Add the extracts, put it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, then take it out and whip it with a mixer til light and fluffy. This results in an interesting texture that dissolves in your mouth instantly. Very tasty.

Also this week I tried a David Lebovitz recipe (The Perfect Scoop) I've been eyeing for a while: blackberry lime sorbet. I don't usually get too excited about sorbet---yay, it tastes like fruit with all the nutritional value (painstakingly) strained out---but this combination sounded compelling. It did not disappoint. I'm fairly in love with this sorbet. Unapologetically tart, it has the perfect balance of sweetness, is a gorgeous, appetizing color, and somehow feels more substantial than a mixture of fruit puree, sugar syrup, and lime juice. (Lots of lime juice.)

I couldn't bear throwing out all the seedy pulp strained from the blackberry mixture, so with the blender already out I threw it in with about a cup of plain whole milk yogurt and about 3 Tbsp of fresh mint. It doesn't hold a candle to the sorbet recipe, but it makes a nice texture contrast, as shown below, and was a decent way to use up the pulp. Leftover tuiles, which I (re)crisped in the oven first, were a perfect foil. This photo is bad, because you can barely see the gorgeous dark purple sorbet sneaking through my attempt at granita on top.

This is the mixture before freezing:

desserts of late

A couple weeks ago I checked out a cookbook by pastry chef Sherry Yard after hearing her name thrown around favorably. I tried two recipes out of it, both incidentally involving coconut.

The first was the coconut gelato. I was really psyched about this one, and was hoping for something amazing after I spent about 30 minutes babysitting the coconut milk I was reducing on the stovetop---there was no time indication given in the recipe (Cook's Illustrated has definitely spoiled me there), so I didn't know if I was going extraordinarily slow or if that was about right for reducing 2 cups to 1 cup, but I didn't want to turn up the heat and scorch it. Anyway, I used Chaokoh brand coconut milk, which is usually my favorite, but this time, there was some kind of off flavor going on in the background which I smelled as soon as I opened the cans, and naturally that flavor transferred into the gelato. I have no idea what was going on there. I made a point of not saying anything to M about the weird flavor I tasted, and I think he's had it three times now without saying anything other than "this is good." Maybe my tastebuds are in a funk. (I've heard about pregnancy affecting your sense of taste, so let me head off any suspicions of that sort by assuring my readership that this is not the source of the problem.) I'd be willing to try this recipe again. It's certainly very pretty in its pristine whiteness---looks just like snow.

The second recipe had me a little disappointed, but probably because I had very high expectations here as well. Sherry described how she would eat frozen Mounds bars at the beach growing up, and introduced the recipe as her take on that candy. Maybe Mounds bars have evolved since whenever Ms. Yard was growing up, but the Mounds bars I know (and unfortunately love) are not quite...this. Which I knew before making the recipe: it consists of a thin, very lightly sweetened shortbread base, with a refined chocolate ganache poured over the top. Hardly the super-sweet gunky coconut and who-knows-what-else fillng wrapped in "dark" chocolate that is a Mounds bar. Anyway, part of what had me so excited to try this recipe was the revelation that you can make a chocolate ganache using entirely coconut milk (rather than cream). Chocolate and coconut are two of my very favorite flavors. Unfortunately it seems that when you have them in equal amounts, the chocolate well overpowers the coconut flavor, as was the case here. I sprinkled sweetened coconut on top and cut them into bars, which I'm storing in the freezer. Last night I had one (okay maybe three) after they chilled in the fridge to set the ganache and they were pretty good. I would definitely add a pinch of salt to the shortbread, and if I could get my hands on coconut extract that would also probably help a lot with bigger coconut flavor in the ganache. I'm certainly not complaining about "having" to eat the rest of these over the course of the next few weeks (okay maybe days).

Surprisingly, my favorite dessert I've made this week was a creation all my own. And oh so sophisticated. It goes like this:
1 sleeve (about 12 cookies) ladyfingers
1/3 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp. dark rum
1/4 whipped cream, well chilled
1 Tbsp. confectioners' sugar
1/8 tsp. vanilla extract
1 oz. dark chocolate, slightly warm

Whip the whipped cream to soft peaks, then add sugar and vanilla and whip to stiff peaks. Set aside.

Mix together orange juice and rum in a shallow bowl. Briefly dip 6 of the ladyfingers in the mixture (2-3 seconds per side), then transfer to a small dish. Smear half the whipped cream over the cookies. Use a vegetable peeler or grater to shave half of the chocolate over the cream. Repeat with remaining ingredients. Chill for at least a couple hours.