OMG a Recipe: the Fast, the Furious and the Frozen

When the Prime has a food-related bee in her bonnet, she goes Wasabi-Wild. I had made ice cream before, but a somewhat faulty ice cream churner paddle had prevented me from making more homemade delights. Finding out the paddle's defective crack wasn't enough to keep us from making frozen dessert goodness was the green light for my Fast and Furious Ice Cream Madness.

Peanut buttery vegan goodness with critter-friendly ice cream! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I know making ice cream isn't difficult. It's downright easy, it just requires a bit of time and patience in between steps. But once you get into the groove and get used to the time needed to make frozen delights, it easily becomes an obsession towabds trying new flavorc and combinations every week. It started out with beer ice cream for me. I was developing a beer-flavored ice cream recipe, and I had a basic frozen custard recipe, which consists of: 3 cups half and half or cream, 1 cup of sugar and three eggs. That's pretty much it. Vanilla extract is optional, depending on the flavoring, and the sky's the limit for adding new ingredients to modify it. You have to heat up the custard to about 170 degrees to make sure the eggs are cooked but not scrambled, and you strain the mixture to get rid of any eggy bits, but once you add whatever extra flavoring or fruit of your choice and let it cool, it goes straight into the ice cream maker and then into a container to finish off in the freezer.

Coffee you can eat with a spoon - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I started out with a reduction of a Scotch Ale for the beer ice cream, then made a coffee-flavored ice cream with leftover coffee. I moved into frozen yogurt territory, mixing frozen berries with yogurt and milk -- that actually froze up so hard, the paddle couldn't turn, so it took some elbow grease to scrape it out. An excess of buttermilk and fresh blueberries led me to try a blueberry/buttermilk combination which ended up being like a berry cheesecake ice cream (yes, please!), and I even dared to tread into the vegan domain of soy ice cream for some visiting friends who are lactose intolerant. I was happy to say that the soy milk set up just fine, no weird separations or especially large ice crystals. I made a peanut butter soy ice cream, using the peanut butter as the fat content that the eggs would have normally supplied for the custard. For the base vegan custard, I went with the basic recipe from Post Punk Kitchen. The resulting dessert ended up being a favorite, as scoops of the peanut butter ice cream, drizzled with a bit of chocolate sauce and plain peanuts, with a dash of salt to kick up the savory, was a home-run dessert hit.

Like a berry cheesecake, but frozen - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I'm enjoying how flexible the base recipe is, whether it's dairy or vegan-ized. I'm already thinking of new flavor combinations to try with different ingredients like lavender, ginger, honey, mint, and maybe... just maybe... I'll creep into the realm of savory ice creams. Blame it on Iron Chef, but like I said, when this Wasabi has a bee in her bonnet -- look out!

Weapons of Brain Freeze destruction! - Photos by Wasabi Prime