Sour Cream and Honey Ice Cream with Walnuts

The sun is shining! It's time for ice cream! Instead of buying it, why don't you make it yourself?! This one even works without an ice cream machine!

Recipe:
(Original recipe in German on www.saison.ch)

60g walnuts, coarsly chopped
120g runny honey
400g sour cream ("saurer Halbrahm")
1dl cream

Put the walnuts into a frying pan with about 1/4 of the honey and heat it up until they are caramelized. Pour onto a baking sheet and let cool. Put some of the nuts aside for decoration.

Mix sour cream with the honey and the walnuts. Beat cream until stiff and fold into the batter. Freeze for about 4 hours. If you don't have an ice cream machine, you should stir the ice cream well with a fork about every 30 minutes or so (about 4 or 5 times).

Take out of the freezer about 15 minutes before serving.

Daring Bakers' Challenge: Ice Cream Petit Fours

Hey everyone! I'm back from Sicily and I can't wait to show you some pictures and tell you all about the best food I've ever eaten! But first, I'm happy to share my second Daring Bakers' Challenge which I prepared shortly before I went on holiday.


The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

I decided to go for the Ice Cream Petit Fours. First, I made the ice cream. I chose a recipe for a coconut saffron ice cream from Nicole Stich's book "delicious days". That went all well, whereas the brown butter cake was a little more complicated. I have never browned butter before and I burned it the first time. The second time, I watched the pan like a hawk and I probably took it away from the hot plate a little too early but I figured that was better than burning it again. When browning the butter, it gets a nutty smell which I really like. It gives the cake a very special and delicious flavour.

I made both, a white and dark chocolate icing for the petit fours. The decoration was a spontaneous idea. I found some red sugar flowers in my cupboard and I thought that would look nice together with the gladiolus blossoms. The gladiolus was a present from my friend Danny and I thought that I might as well put it to good use before it began to wither.


I decorated some of the dark chocolate petit fours with meringue crumbles and cut them in halves so that one could see the inside. After the first few shots, I arranged them together with the gladiolus blossoms again because I thought it looked too bland without some colour.


After the photo session, I ate one of the petit fours right away :-) they make a very nice little dessert together with a coffee. I really liked this challenge! Thanks to Elissa for the ideas and the instructions! (Get them here by the way!)

Daring Bakers' Challenge: Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake

I'm so excited to show you all my very first Daring Bakers' Challenge:


The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

When I first saw this month's challenge, I was a bit frightened and basically already sure that I was going to have some difficulties with that one. I hate making sponge rolls and I have destroyed many of them when trying to roll them up... plus, I have never made ice cream before. I've been wanting to make my own ice cream for a long time and I was never entirely sure whether it was a good idea without an ice cream machine.

I put the challenge off until last weekend and when I finally got started, it went so well from the beginning, that it got more and more fun! The instructions can be found here by the way. I changed some minor things however. My rolls are without cocoa, but I added that to the cream filling instead. The chocolate ice cream and the fudge sauce are made according to the instructions. I jazzed up my vanilla ice cream with a dash of cinnamon and some peach (cut into very little pieces).

To my big surprise, I had no problems with the rolls at all! I'm still totally happy about this and thanks to Sunita and her challenge, I am definitely going to make sponge rolls again because actually, I like them very much, only I thought I was too clumsy to make them :-)

I like the fudge sauce too, very easy to make and yummie! I'm thinking about making that again to decorate other dessers. The ice creams turned out fine as well. I have some leftovers of the vanilla-cinnamon and peach ice cream. This is going to make a nice dessert on its own one of the next days!

I invited my mum and her boyfriend over for cake and coffee on Sunday and we ate almost the whole cake then and there. Everybody really liked it and I am proud of my first challenge that turned out to be quite successful.

I'm still so thrilled about these rolls!!! Check them out:








Thank you Sunita for a super fun challenge!