Cinco De Mayo Dessert! No Churn Dolce de Leche Ice Cream with Coconut Ganache
Dolce de leche has got to be one of the greatest things of all time. It’s a very simple idea- take sweetened condensed milk and caramelize it- whoever thought of it was a very, very clever person.
BUT whoever realized that instead of painstakingly stirring a pot of sweetened milk without burning it, you could just put a whole can in a pot of boiling water and leave it for 3 hours, and when you return the insides will have turned from white to auburn, and the taste will have changed from sweet milk to the richest caramel you could ever hope to know? Well that person was straight up genius.
Periodically, if I know I’m going to be home for 3 hours, and I’m feeling uncharacteristically organized, I pull out a big pot and make some dolce. It’s the sort of thing that makes everything feel a touch nicer- basic chocolate cookies? Sandwich some dolce in the middle. An end of the evening coffee? Stir in a spoonful of the good stuff. A bowl of vanilla ice cream? Drizzle some of this on top for a totally decadent dessert.
Or better yet- put it in your ice cream.
The blogosphere has been going crazy for a couple months now with this revelation that you can make fabulous ice cream without an ice cream churner- all you do is whip up some cream and condensed milk and throw the whole thing in the freezer. But, if you happen to have some dolce kicking around in your cupboard, you might as well use that instead.
This is truly one of the simplest things I think I’ve ever made. And the texture of this ice cream is unreal. Unreal.
Most ice creams that don’t use a machine tend to get icy quickly, to get so hard it’s difficult to scoop them, and to lack that smoothness of really good ice cream.
I’m not even kidding you- this has the texture of soft serve. A week later, it still had the texture of soft serve. It is soo smooth.
The only possible thing that might make this better, is if you made a ganache with coconut milk and poured that, while it was still warm, over top of your ice cream. It is the perfect way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and also most nights of the week.
So here is how you make this, and you should probably make this right away.
Um, I have an ice cream maker and I’m pretty sure I’m going to try this anyway.
Very excited to read on scoutmagazine.ca today that Earnest Ice Cream will be opening up a parlour and cafe very near me, very soon! It’s going in the former Outpost Cafe location at Fraser and King Ed. I always meant to try that place, and didn’t actually know it had closed.
I already had every place in the ‘hood to get Earnest scoped out- this could be dangerous.
npr:
I reblogged this because I was enchanted by one of the middle pictures of a white cake with a red berry centre and whipped cream on top. Clicked it and it turned out to be Pioneer Woman- solid! It’s a very interesting recipe for a hollowed out angel food cake filled with jello and strawberries, and iced with whipped cream. Intriguing, but I’m too lazy to try it. Just give me angel food cake with berries and cream on the side.10 Fabulous Mother’s Day Spring Desserts
NOM! — tanya b.
Twins drift on raft in lake water in front of medieval castle in Sirmione, Italy, July 1968.Photograph by Joe Schershel, National Geographic
~ Seagers Egg Flip, 1953
via historyworld
“Wine - eggs - sugar. That’ll flip away the flops and make a new woman of you!”
Olive Oil Banana Bread with Pecans and Chocolate
When you work at a high end restaurant you have to have everything available at all times. I once worked at a restaurant that required me to make ceasar dressing from scratch every 3 days in case someone came in and ordered a caesar salad, a dish that was assuredly not on the menu. This always struck me as a bit wasteful, but that’s the way it is in fine dining. You have to be prepared.
A couple of years ago, when I worked at a high end resort, it was the exact same, but much trickier because, as we were on a remote island, you had to order everything in advance and usually in huge quantities. One such thing was bananas. They weren’t on the menu, but if someone wanted a banana with their yoghurt in the morning we had to be prepared. I think we were asked twice in 6 months for a banana.
The real problem with this was that we could only order them in in 20kL boxes.
So every two weeks 20 kilos would come in, and somehow I was in charge of dealing with them. Lord knows why.
Fact: I hate bananas. Like, seriously, truly hate bananas. I hate their texture, I hate their taste, and I hate the way they smell. They are, indesputably,the worst fruit.
My theory on this hatred is that I got strep throat to often as a kid, and as such had to take too much banana flavoured liquid penicilin. But that is just a theory, and I know people who loved that medicine when they were little. I was not one of those people.
So when I realized that part of my job description was to cook up something with that many bananas every, well, let’s just say I was less than pleased.
But here’s another fact. I love cooked bananas. Everything I hate about them raw becomes a totally different thing when they are cooked up. When they are mixed with sugar and flour and scented with cinnamon they are just about the best things ever.
I have made a lot of banana breads in my life, so many when I was at the resort in fact, that at the end of the season everyone on staff (all 60 people!) got to go home with a banana loaf that I had frozen. It was a bit nuts.
I’ve made ones with chocolate, ones with nuts, ones with icing, ones with crispy bits of brown sugar in the center. But I had never tried making it without butter, until now. I’m never going back guys. Olive oil is the perfect tamer for banana bread.
This is my new standard banana bread recipe, it is the moistest, softest, most beautifully flavoured banana bread I have ever made.
With a harbor view, a teataster samples from cups spread upon a table in Baltimore, Maryland, September 1964.
Photograph by Bates Littlehales, National Geographic
