Lemon Buttermilk Sherbet

With the buttermilk leftover from the spice cakes, I got to make another recipe I've been hanging onto for a few weeks... Lemon Buttermilk Sherbet from David Lebovitz's last email newsletter. It's hard to make something bad with buttermilk. This was a lot easier than the ice cream I've made before; just mixing everything together and freezing in the machine. With ice cream, you have to cook a custard, usually with eggs. I like how you can see the little bits of lemon zest.

Buttermilk Spice Cake

Buttermilk Spice Cake from Dede Wilson's first wedding cake book. This is one of the test recipes for the wedding cake. I liked it. I probably would increase the quantities on the spices next time. The batter was really thick, but it rose to a very nice texture. I made two small cakes to freeze for a taste-testing later and used the extra batter to make cupcakes for a coworker's birthday. Did a quick cream-cheese frosting for the cupcakes.

Brown Sugar Cookies

Got the new Cook's Illustrated last week and it had a great-sounding recipe for Brown Sugar Cookies. Who doesn't love brown sugar? And who doesn't love cookies? Will had just supplied me with some dark muscovado, a fancy high-end brown sugar grown on the island of Mauritius "on soil rich with volcanic ash." We decided to turn this recipe into an experiment to compare the dark muscovado to standard grocery store brown sugar. We split the recipe in two and did half with each kind. You can see in the pictures below that the dark brown sugar and the cookies made with it actually look pale next to the muscovado. The difference in the final product was substantial. The muscovado cookies had a lot more complexity of flavor; all kinds of weird spicy notes. The brown sugar cookies had a much simpler, sweet flavor. I much preferred the muscovado sugar cookies, but a lot of my friends thought the flavor was too much. I might try cutting it a bit with regular white sugar in the future, but I don't know if I can ever go back to regular brown sugar again.