Floral Ice Cream

I don't tend to like a lot of single use kitchen gadgets, but one that I will never regret buying is my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. I love ice cream! Being able to make my own and experiment with different flavours is something I really enjoy.

I wanted to share this recipe, because it is so versatile, and it is unlikely you'd ever find these kinds of flavours on the shelf in your local grocery store. You don't even really need to make it with flowers - really any herb or spice blend you wanted to infuse into the cream would be great. I don't think this would be an ideal method for making fruit flavoured ice cream, though. 

My photos in this post are doing a bit of time travelling back to when lilacs were blooming. I had planned to post this recipe in the spring, but somehow it got left behind. I decided that just because lilacs in particular were done there was no reason this recipe couldn't still be shared. You can make this recipe with any edible flower you like the taste of (here's a handy list of edible flowers), and they can be used fresh or dried. 

The first step for making your ice cream, is to infuse the cream with the petals. I used two cups of heavy/whipping cream and two cups of whole milk. Cram in as many flowers as will fit, and heat the mixture gently for about half an hour. After that you'll move the cream to the fridge and leave it to cold infuse for 24 hours. The next day you strain that and use it as the base for your custard.

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Floral Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Heavy Cream
• 2 Cups Whole Milk
• 3 Cups (approx) Edible Flowers of Choice
• 1 Cup Sugar
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1-2 drops food colouring (optional)

Takes Two Days, serves 4.

Instructions

1. Combine the cream, milk, and flowers in a pot on the stove and allow to infuse over medium heat for about 30 minutes. After this allow to cool, and then transfer to the fridge to continue to cold infuse overnight.
2. Strain the flower infusion, and return to the stove on medium heat. Add the sugar.
3. Crack the eggs into a separate bowl and beat with a fork until homogenous. Very slowly - stirring constantly - pour some of the hot cream mixture into the beaten eggs to temper them. Return the pot to the stove, and then add the tempered eggs and vanilla (and food colouring if desired - lilacs do not impart a lot of colour when cooked, so I added some colour to make it look more appetizing). Continue to cook on medium heat, but do not allow the mixture to boil. You’ll know the custard is done when it has thickened to the point where it coats the back of a spoon, and you can easily draw a line through it with your finger.
4. Transfer the finished custard to the fridge to cool and age for at least over night or up to two days.
5. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions. For my machine it makes soft serve immediately, but for a more “scoopable” texture put in an airtight container in the freezer for a few hours until you like the consistency. Enjoy!

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Foraging in Winter: Snow

It can be hard to be a forager in the winter when everything is covered with snow.  The earth is dormant, so there is not much obviously available to eat.  The day I stumbled upon Bless This Mess's recipe for snow ice cream, I knew that I had to try it!  (Can I also just say how much I love the fact that they have a family cookbook?  Definitely something to aspire to leave as a legacy for my own family!)

I still get a little thrill every time I see snowflakes falling.  I feel a little like Lorelai from Gilmore Girls: snow is special.  The morning my son was born I looked out the window and upon seeing the feathery crystals tumbling out of the clouds I thought 'wouldn't it be lucky for him to be born today'? 

Before you start thinking I am too crazy, understand that where I did most of my growing up it barely ever snowed.  Sometime - usually in early January - we would get our week of winter and that would be it.  There are only a handful of winters in my memory that actually yielded enough snow to be worth mentioning, and that was usually for only one day or so.  Now living in Kamloops, the fact that we actually have obvious seasons is refreshing.  Although this winter has been particularly snowy - even temperate Vancouver has been covered in white several times - I still think snow is magical, and the idea of making ice cream from it just puts it all over the top.

I have to preface these photos by saying that my snow was not as good as it could have been.  It was freshly fallen that morning, but the temperatures warmed up that afternoon and it got a bit of an icy crust on the top.  I was wondering if I was going to get a chance to try again with better snow since it was looking like the temperatures were going to continue rising, but as I am typing right now there is a huge storm outside that is set to continue all day tomorrow so it looks like I will get my chance! 

For my attempt, I riffed off of the Bless this Mess recipe, but made less since I was only making it for myself.  I also only had table cream for my dairy, but I would like to try again with evaporated milk like she did.  Regardless, it was actually pretty tasty, even if the texture of mine was a bit more like a vanilla sno-cone than ice cream due to the icy layer that had formed when the sun came out.  The dinosaur sprinkles were also obviously 100% necessary.

Is it still snowing where you live?  Go out and try this!  You'll have a lot of fun.

Summer Recap

We really love ice cream.  This is a roundup of some of the places we tried this summer!

Of course we had to take Little Forager to his first Stampede!

This year marked our third Ribfest in Riverside Park.  This was one of the first things we went out to do when we moved to Kamloops, and now we always make a point of going.  It's become almost like a little Kamloops-iversary celebration for us.  Misty Mountain is our personal favourite of all the ribbers, since we really like beef ribs, and they have the best sauce.

Little Forager has grown up so much already.  It is hard to believe that his first birthday is coming up in a few months.  This summer we discovered that the absolutely loves swings.

He's already so big, but still looks small in this huge room in the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Later that summer we got a chance to visit Mr. Forager's family on their ranch in Saskatchewan.  Little Forager absolutely loved meeting the horses.

It was great to have some time with them since we are not able to make the long trip out there as much as we would like.

Stretching our legs during the ride home.

This year I actually had some success with growing beets!  This has been a goal of mine that for some reason has never been realized.  This mix of different types of beets from Westcoast Seeds was a huge hit for me this year!

We made our first (and last) visit to the Golden Ears Fruit Stand.  We were sorry to learn that it was closing down due to the highway expansion.

This summer was the most incredible year for fruit.  Many people were blessed with overabundance and felt the need to share with us.  We did not turn it down!  I also picked up a steam juicer from the fruit stand that was closing down and made a whole lot of grape juice from free grapes!  I am now excited to try to juice many other types of fruit.  It has become one of my favourite ways to process fruit!

We are now ready to welcome fall and all it entails!

Eating Foraged Food - Lilac Ice Cream

So for some of us gathering lilacs can be either a wild, urban, or backyard foraging project.  In my area they are finished, but I think in some places - in Canada at least - they are still blooming.  If I am too late feel free to try this with other edible flowers.  I am going to be collecting some wild rose as soon as possible and trying this recipe again.  Where I live, it seems like everyone has lilacs in their backyards, but the plant has also naturalized to some extent and you can find the purple blossoms of syringa vulgaris dotting the ditches along roadsides.  Their fragrance is sweet, but their beauty is fleeting.  I think the blossoms only last for a couple weeks in their full glory. 

Our friends have the most lilacs I have ever seen in one yard and they grow so many varieties.  I almost missed out, but before all the blossoms were gone they sent us home with three shopping bags full of them!  I posted earlier about some of the things I made with them, but I felt this ice cream deserved its own special post. 

I had a dream to make some lilac ice cream.  I am not sure where I got the idea, but it was probably when I realized I had way more lilacs than I knew what to do with and I started madly googling what I could do with them.  I have been experimenting with my own ice cream recipes for quite a while, but with limited success.  It is so hard to get the consistency right!  I read up on message boards, checked other recipes, and troubleshooted until finally I stumbled upon David Lebovitz's recipe for vanilla bean ice cream.  I had seen a few specific recipes for lilac ice cream, but they didn't look like they would solve my problems so I gave this one a try, but instead of infusing the milk with a vanilla bean, I used about a cup of lilac blossoms. 

Finally!  Success at last!

I think I have found my new go-to ice cream recipe.  My next plan is to try some other flavours.  I won't post the recipe since it isn't mine and the only alteration I made was very small, but I seriously recommend trying this one if you are looking for a good basic ice cream recipe.  It is so important to have good ingredients though.  I am grateful to have access to good milk and cream in our local supermarkets, and gorgeous backyard hen eggs from a neighbour.  That seriously makes all the difference.  Don't skimp on the quality when it comes to eggs and dairy - you'll notice right away!

Do you have a favourite ice cream recipe or flavour?  Let me know in the comments!