I always keep frozen bananas in my freezer. In fact, I just picked up an entire basket of maybe 10 pounds of bananas for a dollar just yesterday and am right stocked up for whatever or whomever might require a vast quantity of bananas. I like to leave them in the peels, I don’t think it’s too much trouble to thaw them a minute to slice them off, but I know a lot of people peel them, freeze them individually and store them in resealable bags. To each their own.

The flesh of frozen bananas smooths out and gets very creamy, so even bananas alone can be pureed for a pretty satisfying and luxuriously ice cream-like consistency. Which is why I was a little disappointed in the texture of this ice cream flavor I tried to concoct because I overestimated the bananas ability to keep things creamy by themselves once everything had frozen. Freshly churned the texture was amazing though, and the taste just like what I’d wanted for a banana bread flavored ice cream.

I sweetened this with dulce de leche because it has a mellow caramelized flavor I figured would work better than trying to devise a brown sugar solution. Okay, for the sake of transparency, this was really more or less thrown together to satisfy a specific craving. But honestly, I think if this were more of a custard base, the texture of this would’ve been perfect and I’d have no complaints, so I’m posting it anyway. Ha ha!

Banana Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

• 3 cups whole milk
• 1 1/2 cups dulce de leche
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 ripe bananas, frozen
• (optional) 1/4 cup walnuts
• (optional) 1/4 cup chocolate chips

1. Heat the milk with the dulce de leche in a pot until the dulce de leche has dissolved completely. Remove from the heat and stir in the salt, cinnamon and vanilla extract. Chill in the refrigerator until cool.
2. Blend the chilled mixture with the frozen bananas and then churn in your ice cream maker until it reaches a soft serve consistency.
3. Mix in walnuts and chocolate chips, if using, and continue to churn until it reaches a firm consistency. Eat immediately because you know you want to.

My neighbor and I went to Costco awhile back and she picked up a bunch of sour cream for some sort of dip she was making for a party. Well, several weeks later, she still had a liter of sour cream that had gone unused and foresaw it going into the garbage soon, so it ended up in my fridge instead. I turned half of it into this delicious “back to school” cake and I’m still deliberating on the fate of the rest of it. Scones, perhaps?

This cake is borderline too moist, if such a thing could exist, with a rich chocolate flavor. Licking the bowl of residual batter is like a nice and airey chocolate mousse. With the exception of the icing, the cake is not overly sweet, which is something I really appreciate. My lovely wife did the decorating job of this cake or it would look particularly humble. I think a dollop more salt in this recipe would make for a better contrast, but the original recipe for the cake itself, found on Epicurious, tends to disagree with me.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

• 1 1/2 (180g) cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup (60g) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (225g) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/3 cup (250g) light brown sugar
• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 6 ounces (180g) semi-sweet or dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup (60g) unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups (325g) icing sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the rack positioned in the center. Grease and flour two 9″ round cake pans, tapping out excess flour. You can also use one 9″ cake pan and bake the cake longer, slicing it in half to make the layers, or an 8″ and 9″ cake pans to have tiered levels, as I did.
2. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking soda and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the sour cream, water and vanilla extract and stir to combine.
4. Incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well. Divide the batter between the two pans and smooth the tops of each cake. Bake until a toothpick can be inserted into the center of the cakes and come out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before turning onto cooling racks to cool completely.
5. To prepare the icing: Melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler (a heat-resistant bowl atop a small pot of hot water will suffice), stirring until smooth.
6. Remove from the heat and stir in the sour cream and vanilla, then whisk in the icing sugar until you have a firm and spreadable icing.
7. Spread a thin layer of the icing on the bottom layer of the cake and top with the other cake layer. Spread the remaining icing over the surface of the cake and dot with decorative rossettes, if desired.

The only reason I bought an ice cream machine was so that I could try to make flavors that I couldn’t get anywhere else. There is a long list of these flavors somewhere in the backburners of my mind and hopefully I’ll get around to both remembering and experimenting with them all.

This wasn’t one of those flavors. This was just an experiment I decided to concoct after we made entirely too much popcorn for watching a movie this weekend. I’m slowly plodding along to try the cereal milk ice cream I set my sights on when this machine first came into our kitchen and figured that all that popcorn would reduce considerably if it was also soaked in milk.

Well, it did. You can fit an awful lot of popcorn into a bowl of milk. Once all that puffed air is removed, it’s hardly larger than the kernels that originally popped it. I remember hearing about impoverished settlers eating popped corn and milk as a breakfast cereal. Although puffed rice and puffed wheat stuck around, I guess people just preferred the taste of corn pops and went that route instead. That’s more or less what I thought this would taste like, which is a tad ironic as it was a departure from soaking corn pops in milk to make a cereal milk ice cream to begin with.

A popcorn ice cream by itself didn’t sound quite as appetizing and as a flavor boosted one, so I decided to add more “Cracker Jack” flavor with peanuts and caramel. I actually think Cracker Jacks are flavored with molasses/brown sugar syrup instead of caramel, but inspiration doesn’t have to necessarily be so accurately depicted.

The roasted nuttiness of the popcorn flavor combined with peanuts and caramel had a surprising effect. That is, it tasted very much like a creamy, frozen Payday bar. Anyone who enjoys the salty-sweet combination of a Payday bar will surely enjoy this ice cream.

Caramel Corn Ice Cream

• 6 cups popped popcorn
• 2 cups whole milk
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup dextrose (white sugar may be substituted)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup roasted and salted peanuts
• 1/4 cup caramel sauce or dark corn syrup

1. Soak the popcorn in the milk, pressing down as necessary to submerge all of the popcorn. Leave the popcorn in the milk for half an hour, then strain and discard the popcorn.
2. Heat the milk in a heavy bottomed pot over medium heat until scalding, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, dextrose and salt.
3. Whisk a few tablespoons of the scalded milk into the beaten eggs to temper them, then gradually whisk in the remaining milk until it has all been incorporated.
4. Pour this mixture back into the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until it has thickened. Remove from the heat immediately and pour into a clean bowl. Cover with plastic wrap touching the surface of the custard and chill overnight, or for at least 8 hours.
5. To prepare the ice cream, place the prepared custard in the bowl of your ice cream machine and churn until it has developed a soft serve consistency. Fold in the peanuts and caramel sauce and eat immediately, or freeze in an airtight container for up to 3 months.

I used a commercially prepared caramel sauce for this because the quantity I needed wasn’t substantial, but making your own caramel isn’t very hard. Simply take 1 cup of sugar with a few tablespoons of water and bring it to a boil in a large, heavy bottomed pot. Once the water evaporates, the sugar will begin to caramelize, at which point you must pay close attention to prevent it from burning. When the sugar begins to take on a darkened hue (about 340 degrees, if you have a candy thermometer handy) immediately remove from the heat and whisk in 6 tablespoons of butter, then 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Be careful as it will rise substantially with the additions. Let the sauce cool to room temperature before using.

There are several reasons why I haven’t done much baking recently. A major contributing factor is that it’s been summer, and having the oven on even long enough for a batch of cookies is completely undesirable. The motor of my electric mixer petered out right before the summer as well, which is a major hinderence since I’m not apt to cream butter and sugar by hand. As the temperatures have been cooling off slightly and my motivation for the sweeter-spectrum of things has picked up with stone fruits coming in season, I decided to buy myself a new electric mixer.

There’s been a lot of innovation in this whole electric mixer industry, I discovered, as I did a bunch of research on my new purchase. I was skeptical of the new digital technology as I was picturing a useless touch screen with no other benefit, but after reading a lot of reviews, I decided this was definitely the way to go. There are numerous benefits to this, but basically not only does it enable a “soft start” feature which won’t throw flour all over the kitchen, but it helps maintain a consistent amount of force to what you’re mixing by correcting for the resistance, something that you wouldn’t get with the normal transistors. I’m very happy with this new mixer, which I’ve been playing around with for several hours now. The model I bought is the PC digital one, because I pretty much swear by the PC line of anything kitchen related for its price and quality.

I’m always on the look out for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. This was an adaptation of David Lebovitz’s salted butter chocolate chip cookies and I must admit, they would’ve been much better with the addition of nuts, like he suggests. Still, it got me motivated to pick up some fleur de sel, which is a delicate sea salt that is just really nice to sprinkle on foods and desserts for a certain panache. The fleur de sel seemed to melt into the batter a bit more than I expected, so I think if I were to redo this I’d just sprinkle it on top as the cookies came out of the oven, but you can taste the different-saltiness of the grains when you bite into the cookie, so all is not lost.

Double Chocolate Cookies with Fleur de Sel

• 1 stick unsalted butter (115g), room temperature
• 2/3 cup (110g) brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (100g) sugar
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cup (180g) flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel
• 3/4 cup (100g) dark chocolate, chopped
• 3/4 cup (100g) milk chocolate, chopped

1. Cream together butter and both sugars, then mix in the egg and vanilla until smooth and creamy.
2. Sift together flour, baking soda and both salts and mix into the wet ingredients.
3. Fold in the chopped chocolate until well combined and then chill until firm.
4. Preheat then oven to 350 degrees with the rack positioned in the middle.
5. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll the dough into 24 one inch round balls and place on the baking sheets, pressing down with your hand to flatten.
6. Bake until lightly browned around the edges, about 12-15 minutes. Cool slightly before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Shannon went through a brief phase where she wanted to start a specialty cupcake catering business. I say a brief phase, even though I know it’s still in the backburner of her mind, because she has yet to actually make or decorate a cupcake and the idea dawned on her almost a year ago. I bought her “Hello, Cupcake!” for Christmas and she loved it, but we just never got around to making anything from it. The reason is a combination of me having a next to zero tolerance for sweets and mostly being unwilling to buy a muffin tin in large part because of that.

I’ve had the cupcake cups in the cupboard for seemingly years now and recently stumbled upon them again. That’s not really the nicest story, as I had to do a rigorous cleaning, sanitizing and recompartmentalizing job as our pantry became infested with Indian meal moths, but hey, it wasn’t all bad, because now I’m making cupcakes. Of course I wouldn’t use that as a sales pitch to anyone, “I just cleaned out my cupboard because of a moth infestation – sample?”

For someone that doesn’t particularly care for cupcakes, I found these surprisingly edible. For the icing, I used up some leftover creme fraiche (which I’ve started keeping on hand as more or less a staple for scrambled eggs or what have you) and crumbled some granola on top because it seemed like it needed a finishing touch. Nothing particularly artsy, but nice enough, I think. No complaints anyway.

Cupcakes and Frosting

• 1 stick (125g) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2/3 cup (125g) sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup (90g) self-rising flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons (7g) baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons creme fraiche or sour cream
• 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• icing sugar to taste
• 2 tablespoons whole milk
• 1/4 cup granola

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the oven rack positioned in the center. Fill a 12 cup muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar. Then, add the eggs, one at a time, then the milk and vanilla, whisking until smooth.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and mix into the wet ingredients.
4. Divide the mixture evenly into the cupcake liners and bake until lightly browned, about 15-20 minutes.
5. While the cupcakes are cooling, whip together the butter, creme fraiche and vanilla with enough icing sugar to make it taste sweetened. Adjust the consistency with the milk, if necessary. Spread on the cupcakes and sprinkle with crumbled granola.