Lime and Black Pepper Ice Cream

Almost caught up now... I combined a couple recipes from Chef, Interrupted to create Lime and Black Pepper Ice Cream. I had a bunch of limes and some cream left over from my housewarming party and I thought, hey, you never see lime ice cream. Lime sherbet, sure. I really enjoyed the black pepper ice cream from this past summer and wanted to try that again. I figured it would make a good base for another flavor.

I'd consider this project to have been semi-successful. I do think the flavors went well together; you get the acidic hit of lime right off the bat, with the pepper just at the end of a taste. Unfortunately, I think I went a little overboard on the lime. After a few bites, I'm done. I think with a little more pepper and a little less lime, it would be perfect. I'll be trying it again sometime.

Do you like the pint containers I found? I had to go all over town, and the Internet, looking for them. I think they're actually for takeout soup, but whatever. Also, I'm pretty proud of that microplane picture. I think I'm finally starting to use some color in my photos.

Cinnamon Sour Cream Muffins

More backlog postings... this one actually took me a couple tries to remember what book it came from. Fortunately, I caught the corner of the book in the picture. Good ol' On Cooking, my culinary school textbook. Aw, I just noticed that a new edition is out. Does that mean my knowledge is officially out of date? I can't be taking out another student loan every time they update the book.

Anyway, I took a sour cream muffin recipe from the book and mixed up some cinnamon and sugar to swirl into the batter. In the picture, you can see all the assembly steps. A scoop of batter, a spoonful of cinnamon filling, another scoop of batter, and a sprinkling of streusel topping. Love the various-sized mechanical ice cream scoops for measuring out batter, btw. Highly recommended.

Ginger-Lime and Chocolate-Peanut Butter cupcakes

Second backlog posting... my housewarming party, featuring ginger-lime cupcakes and chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. The cupcake recipes are basic yellow cake and chocolate recipes from Cook's Illustrated magazine. They worked out really well, so I wrote them down and taped them to the inside of the baking cupboard in my new kitchen. I figure anytime I need cupcakes I'll have a basic recipe to consult and tweak. The yellow cupcakes were augmented with a Ginger Lime Cream Cheese frosting from the very fun Cupcake Bakeshop blog. Tons of great ideas and recipes there, if you're ever in the mood to make something unusual. The chocolate cupcakes got a dollop of peanut butter swirled into the batter of each one and were topped with a basic cream cheese frosting with just a bit of chocolate extract. In the pictures, you can see them go from ingredients, to freezer storage, to final serving in my new cupcake tower on my new dining room table in my new place. I made about 6 dozen cupackes for the party, which turned out to be way overkill. I still have a few left in my freezer, two months after the fact.