I Scream You Scream Part 1.5

So its nearly 3am and i cant sleep so I decided to blog. The other day I decided to try another recipe from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. I decided to make Salty Caramel Ice Cream. This recipe is definitely not for beginners. One part involves making caramel, which can be tough if you really don't know what you're looking for. A few seconds too long on the stove top could burn it too much and leave you with a bad taste. I really wanted to take a picture of how it should look, but I didn't cuz I didn't want to mess up and start over again. Anyway...back to making ice cream. This time I had all the ingredients and decided to follow the recipe. Everything went according to plan. I whispered "yes" to myself...like how we all used to when we got an answer right in grade school. Right before I put in the ice cream machine, I (like any chef would do) decided to taste it. It looked great, smelled great, but the taste was kind of off for me. It wasn't as sweet as I'd like it to be. "Oh well...no turning back now" I said to myself. Flavors change with temperature of the food. I just tasted "room temperature" cream and not "ice" cream. Even after it was done churning in the ice cream maker it still wasn't ice cream yet. I had to let it freeze for a bit, so I went to the gym to burn off the calories I was about to put back on. Not gonna lie, but it looked pretty good. I got really excited when I scooped it, cuz it scooped really well. Whispered another grade school "yes" to myself. Now on to the taste, and surprisingly enough it tasted better then the "room temperature" cream. I got the burnt taste from the caramel and the sweetness right after. I still thought it could be sweeter, but thats just me. I also didn't get any saltiness, which kinda upset me. I'm a huge fan of sweet and salty snacks, and I just didnt get enough sweetness and saltiness from it. Oh well!! I'm just happy that it scooped like ice cream this time. I plan on making every ice cream from this book to get a better understanding of the science into making this frozen treat. Hopefully after that I can open up a Blackbeard's Creamery. Pics below.

I Scream You Scream Part 1

Hello all!!! This is my first blog and I'm not really sure how this all works, but here goes nothin. Ice cream...love it. Homemade ice cream maker...like it. Ice cream that comes out of the homemade ice cream maker...ehh not so much. Don't get me wrong...I've made really delicious ice cream from my ice cream maker, but it doesn't always come out the consistency that i want it to. Everything looks great but once i start to scoop out the final product it always ends up being harder anticipated. Still very scoop-able, but its not the soft, fluffy, creamy confection that i was hoping for. But I think i found the solution...key word think. Recently I bought Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, and this book really schooled my on how to make homemade ice cream. I've been reading this book every night to understand the artistry of ice cream and today at work i decided to make ice cream on a whim. I decided to make the sweet potato ice cream with toasted marshmallows, and in typical Blackbeard style I "followed" the recipe. Meaning that I used the closest thing possible in place of the needed ingredient...60% of the time it works every time. Sweet potatoes were replaced with purple yam (which the books said was ok), molasses was replaced with just more brown sugar, and homemade vanilla bean marshmallows were replaced with store bought marshmallows. I did add vanilla bean to the ice cream batter. Everything was smooth sailing, until I took the milk and yam mixture out of the blender. It looked pasty instead of creamy, but i went on with it anyway, and the final product was again not the soft, fluffy, creamy ice cream i hoped for (but it still tasted pretty awesome). Womp womp. Maybe i should've added more milk or cream so it wouldn't have been so pasty...or maybe next time I'll just follow the directions LOL. Pic below.