Key Lime Pie Ice Cream

I recently became the owner of an ice cream maker. A close friend decided to move out-of-state (sad) and needed to get rid of some inventory (less sad). Since he was not interested in bringing small appliances, I took it off his hands on his last night in Chicago. A few days later, I was searching for ideas on what to make for my first machine-made ice cream and came across the concept of key lime pie ice cream. Though it sounded complex, it didn’t look daunting at all– there were only a few ingredients listed on recipes such as the ones here and here. It took less than five minutes to prepare, and even though it was simple it was a tad bit more interesting than using the chocolate or vanilla recipes that the instruction manual provided. I also had some leftover shortbread from a previous baking session, so I added that in for a “pie crust” feeling. Bottom line: this is an uncomplicated recipe that was taste-tested and heartily approved by my friends.

Prep: 3 minutes
“Cook”: 1 hour – half an hour to refrigerate, half an hour in the ice cream maker
Yield: about one quart of ice cream

Ingredients

• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 3/4 cup lime juice
• 1/2 cup shortbread, graham cracker, or sugar cookie pieces, roughly crushed

Instructions

1. Combine the whole milk, heavy whipping cream, sweetened condensed milk, and lime juice. Mix until everything is well-combined.
2. Let the mixture chill in the fridge for about half an hour, or until it gets cold.
3. Add the mixture into the ice cream maker!
4. Once it has been churned for about half an hour or is at the right consistency, stop the machine and scoop the ice cream out into a different container.
5. Hand-mix in the graham cracker or cookie pieces.
6. Continue to freeze once the mixture is out of the ice cream maker.

Ginger Milk Pudding

One of my friends has of been late going through a pudding making phase. She’s shown me quite a few ideas of things we could try together, but a few days ago we settled on attempting ginger milk pudding. Sugar, ginger juice, and milk are all the ingredients one needs for the traditional Cantonese dessert. Our take included a lot more ingredients and was melded with American tradition since we had some technical difficulties. On an afternoon filled with trial and error, we finally found a combination that worked. The first time when we used the initial three ingredients, it didn’t set. Maybe the milk wasn’t hot enough? Neither of us had a kitchen thermometer, so we couldn’t tell. Luckily, we were able to thicken it with cornstarch. And while that turned our seeming failure into a success, I have a feeling that the consistency of this pudding is probably very different from the original kind because of that additional ingredient. Regardless, we thought it was tasty and I wanted to share the fruits of our labor.

Prep: 20 minutes
Cook: 20 minutes
Yield: 10 servings

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound fresh ginger
• 6 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 cups milk
• 1/4 cup coconut milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• dash of cinnamon and nutmeg

Instructions

To prepare the ginger:

1. Peel the ginger –using a spoon for this works so well you’ll never want to use another technique again.
2. Roughly chop and add the ginger to a food processer so it gets broken down into smaller pieces.
3. Juice the pieces though a hand-held squeezer, but save the pulp.

For the pudding:

1. In one bowl, mix together cornstarch, salt, sugar, and one cup of milk.
2. Prepare a double boiler (a heat-safe bowl that fits snugly over a pot of boiling water).
3. While the double boiler is heating up, combine three cups milk, the ginger juice, and the pulp in a saucepan. Put it over medium-high heat to scald the mixture.
4. Once it scalds, turn the heat to low. Slowly mix in the bowl of cornstarch and milk into the saucepan of scalded milk and ginger, stirring constantly.
5. Strain the mixture into the bowl over the double boiler and let it cook for 10 minutes, still stirring occasionally.
6. Add the vanilla, coconut milk, and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg. Make sure everything is once again thoroughly incorporated.
7. Once the pudding is finished cooking (it should be viscous) pour it into desired bowls or molds and press plastic wrap on the top so it does not develop a film. Chill for an hour.
8. If you want more ginger flavor, you can add more juice or even ginger powder, but be sure to not overdo it or else the pudding will be very spicy!

Shortbread Cookies & Limoncello Icing

Happy New Year! The holidays have been pretty disruptive to my schedule, but in a good way. There’s friends and family to catch up with and warm weather to bask in when I go back to California. Now that I’m back in Chicago and bracing myself against 3° temperatures, it’s time to get back on track. I know January is all about focusing on resolutions to eat healthier, but what about embracing moderation– having your dessert and enjoying it too? Extremes are no fun. So, whenever I go to a potluck or bring goodies to friends, I always indulge and make something on the sweeter side.

For this year’s festivities, I made plain shortbread cookies and coated them with a zesty limoncello icing to amp up their tastiness (actual lemon zest optional). In the process, I learned that the “short” in shortbread does not refer to size but rather structure– in “short” baked goods, there is a large amount of fat in the dough, making it quite rich and giving the baked good a crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth texture. My original inspiration for making these cookies came from here. I added more sugar, but if you want a plainer cookie, use the half cup sugar instead of three-fourths cup sugar for two cups of flour.

Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 12-14 minutes
Yield: about seventy 2×3/4 half inch pieces

Ingredients

For the cookies:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour

For the icing:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tsp limoncello
• 2 tsp lemon juice

Instructions

1. Cream butter and sugar. Stir in vanilla, then flour, adding in one half cup at a time. The dough will be very sandy! Don’t fret, when the butter melts in the oven, the dough comes together to form a non-sandy cookie.
2. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
3. As the oven is preheating, line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mold the dough so it lies as a flat rectangle with a half-inch thickness.
4. Bake the cookie dough for about 12 minutes, or until lightly browned on the edges.
5. After the dough is out and left to cool for a few minutes, cut the dough into small (or however large you want them) rectangles.
6. For the icing, first combine the limoncello and lemon juice.
7. Slowly beat in the powdered sugar to create a smooth consistency.
8. Spoon half a teaspoon’s worth of icing onto each cookie. Once that dries, spoon on a second layer.

 

 

Three Ingredient Chocolate Almond Milk

Who can believe that 2017 is almost over? Not me– I’ve never been good at adjusting to the end of the year. Now that everyone is in a Christmas countdown mode, Thanksgiving seems like a distant memory even though it happened less than two weeks ago. I’ve always found it hard to transition into the new year, especially when there are so many hopes pinned to the future. Maybe next year I will stick to my resolutions, or maybe it’s the year that we actually enact effective climate change legislation. While the first is something I am fully in control of, the latter desire feels mostly out of my control. When things feel too overwhelming, I’ve been making this chocolate milk to calm down. I always have these three ingredients on hand, and the act of making myself a simple drink soothes me. I just put everything into the cup I want to use, so I make even less of a mess. If you make your own almond milk or prefer a different kind, just make sure it’s unsweetened.

Prep: 3 minutes
Cook: 0 minutes
Yield: 1 serving

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 tbsp honey
• 1 cup unsweetened almond milk

Instructions

1. Add the cocoa powder and honey into the cup you’re going to drink from, and stir to combine. The cocoa powder and honey will not be fully combined, but this helps to get rid of the cocoa powder lumps.
2. Add one tablespoon of the milk and milk until a cocoa-honey paste is formed.
3. Pour in the rest of the milk and mix well.

Apple Strawberry Oat Bars

Stress baking usually happens when I have an overabundance of an ingredient on the verge of going bad, therefore making me more stressed knowing that it needs to be used in the next few days (or less!). My current dilemma was that I hadn’t polished off all my Jonagolds procured from apple picking a few weeks ago and that there were two cartons of strawberries that needed to either be eaten or remade into something else just as tasty. So, what else was there to do but combine them as a baked good? I looked to see what else I had around– of course there was flour and sugar in the pantry, but with oats, I instantly thought of fruit bars. No, not the kind you would want to consume on a long hike, but more of a dessert bar thanks to of all the butter that’s used. And that butter is worth it–these are so good! I couldn’t stop eating them, and needed to give them away to friends as soon as I could. It was this recipe that got me started. In my version, the crust was a lot thicker on top but it might have been because I used a smaller pan– what I did was take a circular 9×9-inch pan and pack the mixture into a 9×5-inch rectangle using wax paper. I also used more apple than strawberry, changing the ratios. And a sprinkle of cinnamon made things just right!

Prep: 15 minutes
Cook: 40 minutes
Yield: 12-15 bars, depending on bar size

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 7 tbsp butter
• 1 cup finely diced apple
• 1/2 cup finely diced strawberries
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Instructions

1. Melt butter. Combine rolled oats, flour, brown sugar, and salt.
2. Pour melted butter over oats and flour and incorporate until everything is well mixed.
3. In a separate bowl, combine apple and strawberries and lightly mash to incorporate the two.
4. Layer a pan with wax paper. In the prepared pan (I used 9×5 measurements), pack in half of the oat mixture. Add the apples and strawberries next, then sprinkle the cinnamon, sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice over it.
5. Top with the remaining oat mixture, and pat everything down to make sure it will stick together.
6. Bake for 40 minutes, making sure the top is lightly browned. Once out of the oven, let cool completely before cutting into bars. If it seems to be falling apart, leave in the fridge for at least an hour to firm things up.

fruity oat goodness!

Flax Egg Banana Bread

When life gives you overripe bananas, you make banana bread. But have you ever faced the mild dilemma of having bananas at peak mushiness and not having any eggs in the kitchen? And you don’t feel like going to the grocery store? Well, if you have flax lying around, you can stay in and worry about picking up those eggs another day. All you do is whisk ground flaxseed and water together, let it sit for a few minutes until it becomes a bit gelatinous-looking, and then it’s completely usable for all your baking needs. It seems that some people heat the mixture up, which might give it more of a runny egg-like consistency, but I’ve never done that step and my baked goods have turned out fine. This is one step closer to making it a vegan-friendly bread– the next steps would be to substitute the butter and make sure the chocolate chips are vegan as well. (Also I know this is my second out of seven recipes that focuses on replacing eggs but I love eggs! I eat them all the time so I run out and then need to find other things that can act as substitutes.)

This is one of the easiest quick breads to make and also has a high approval rate amongst friends and family. I love banana bread and grew up eating homemade loaves thanks to my mom. We would always have a few overripe bananas lying around, and that was her go-to solution since we didn’t want to just throw them out. Sometimes she would add walnuts, or chocolate chips, or both, and then throw powdered sugar over the loaf once it was out of the oven and ready to be eaten. The recipes that inspired me for this one come from here and here.

Prep: 20 mins
Cook: 60 mins
Yield: one 9×5 inch loaf of bread

Ingredients

Wet

• 2 tbsp ground flaxseed
• 5 tbsp water
• 3-4 bananas (more bananas will yield a moister bread)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Dry

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2/3+ cup chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Combine water and ground flaxseed. While waiting for it to settle, mash the bananas.
2. Beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add the mashed bananas, vanilla, and flax egg to the creamed butter and sugar and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon until the mixture is uniform.
5. Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
6. Fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, being careful to not over-mix things.
7. Fold in the chocolate chips. Save a few to decorate the top, if desired.
8. Pour the batter into a greased 9×5 inch loaf pan and bake for an hour. You can insert a small knife or toothpick to check that the center is done by seeing if it comes out clean.

For a bit of extra decadence, feel free to top a slice with powdered sugar once the bread has cooled.