Chocolate Ice Cream

Since I've made the household endure multiple batches of ice cream with not-their-first-choice flavors, I agreed to make a batch of regular, plain old chocolate ice cream. I used a recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. The base for this ice cream came out silky smooth, and it churned beautifully. It's ripening in the freezer now, and it was not a hardship to scrape out the canister of the ice cream maker to test the final product for quality control.

Banana Butter Pecan Ice Cream

Summertime, and the living is easy, unless you are a banana, in which case you are bound to be overripe in about 3.5 hours. A happy coincidence of overripe bananas and a link to this recipe (thanks to my Aunt Joan--yes, I do follow the recipe links!) gave me an excuse for another batch of ice cream.

First note: This recipe makes a lot of ice-cream base. I had to churn it in two batches.

Second note: I didn't follow the recipe as printed. I sauteed the chopped pecans in the butter and salt. Also, I heated the cream and brown sugar, then pureed the bananas in the blender with some of the warm liquid. I then rewarmed the cream, tempered the egg yolks, and proceeded with the rest of the recipe. After churning both batches of the base, I folded in the toasted butter pecans. It all turned out just fine and is a great twist on traditional butter pecan ice cream.

Ganache Cookie

As a public service, I would like to call attention to one of the finest sandwich cookies I've ever had. It's a Ganache Cookie and is available at the Bakery Normand in Northampton, Mass. The sandwich consists of three thin sugar cookies layered with an orange-spiked ganache. The top cookie has a streusel-like topping, and the exterior of the sandwich is rolled in chocolate. If you find yourself in or near Noho, it's worthwhile to stop at the Bakery Normand for a Ganache Cookie.