Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Hey blog people! So I guess when I said I would be baking more often now that the wedding is over, I think I underestimated how difficult it would be to get back in the swing of real life after almost 2 weeks in a tropical paradise.  Sigh. 

But!  Worry not, I have some fun cookies up my sleeve which I will share in the coming days, for now, I give you my first experiment with frozen desserts, which go great with baked desserts. so it made it on my cookie blog. I've been drooling over the Salted Caramel Ice Cream that my foodie friend Wilcox blogged about some months ago, and decided I would give it a try.  Check out her post on the subject here: http://morecheesemorechocolate.com/2010/05/28/salted-caramel-ice-cream/

Ingredients:
2 cups whole milk, divided
1½ cups sugar
4 tablespoonssalted butter
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 cups heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
3/4 teaspoon vanilla


 First off, set up an ice bath with 1 cup of your whole milk and set it aside for later use.  Then spread your sugar out in a large-ish sauce pan and heat on med-high until it starts to caramelize.  Stir it around until its nice and smooth and caramelly :)

 Once the sugar is all melted, remove it from the heat, and stir in your butter and cream until smooth.  If the sugar starts to harden again, place the saucepan back over a low heat.

 Pour a little bit of the mixture in with your egg yolks, and beat until its nice and smooth.  The add the eggs and 1 cup of the milk (not the ice bath milk) and cook until the mixture thickens over medium-high heat.

 Finally, strain the warm custard mixture into your ice-bath milk, and stir until you have a creamy delicious looking custard.

Yum.

 Then you have to chill it for 8 hours.  Except I got impatient and only chilled it for like, 4 hours.  And it was just fine. I'm always skeptical of long "chill" times.

Finally, it's time to bust out the handy dandy ice cream maker I received from the fabulous Collins family at our Bridal shower.  This thing is pretty awesome.

 All you  have to do is freeze the bowl overnight, and then press "on."  Ice cream making for dummies.

 Let it churn until it has thickened to your liking.....

Then into the freezer to firm up.  We enjoyed this with an apple pie that my sister baked for us, which I neglected to photograph. Rats.  Anyway, this stuff is deadly.  It was actually described recently as F*$@ing Bomb. 

Make some!  You won't regret it!

Orange Buttercream Sandwich Cookies

Hi Folks! Now that I am back from the honeymooon and happily a DiStefano, its definitely time to get back into baking-gear!

The boys headed up to the hunting cottage last weekend to do some work on the floors, so I thought I would whip up something new for them. I had some frozen white chocolate sugar cookie dough leftover from the wedding.....

But since they were all PRESENT at the wedding I wanted to do something a little different with the dough. Who doesn't like a sandwich cookie?

So I baked up around five dozen little cookie circles, and whipped up a quick batch of buttercream frosting. I had some OJ and orange extrat on hand, so I went with a quick Orange buttercream recipe:

Ingredients:

1/3 cup butter, softened

3 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp orange extract

2-4 tablespoons orange juice

To make this frosting, simply blend together the butter and sugar, slowly at first to prevent a powdered sugar explosion. Then add in your liquids and blend until you have your desired texture.

Then it's time to spread the frosting on the cookies, and taste a little of course.

These were yummy, but VERY rich.

Happy Baking!