Hot Weather vs Ice Cream

The weather has been extremely hot the past few weeks. Not just in the day but throughout the night too. It can be so unbearable at some point that it spoils my mood and not just mine. I see a change in my husband's mood too. It's just so distractingly hot and humid that you do not want to go out, you do not want to get close to anybody fearing to get hotter and you just wanna bathe like 5 times a day. Nooo, I am not exaggerating. Welcome to Singapore everyone!

Well, because of the weather, it has inspired me to make ice cream with the leftover egg yolks that I have. Why do I have that many egg yolks?? It's because I kept getting rainbow cake orders the past few weeks and all my filling and frosting is my favourite swiss meringue buttercream. Hence, the unused yolks. I wish they sell egg whites in a carton just like I saw in Sweetapolita's blog. That would be so useful and less wasteful. But I tried searching for it at supermarkets here but to no avail. Maybe I should try Jason's or Marketplace. However, it would not be worth the money to buy it given the price of my cakes. 

Yeap! Ice cream! The hot weather make you wanna dip into any cold dessert available. I felt so good eating a cool silky, soft beancurd yesterday. It was like the nicest thing when the weather is so hot. Why am I digressing to beancurd now?

Anyways... I had leftover yolks, leftover vanilla sugar, almost-expired chocolate orange. I decided to make an Orange Chocolate Ice Cream. I stole some oranges from my mom, just to take the zest of it actually. :) So, it's not technically stealing. I just took some parts of the fruit which she won't be eating anyway. The chocolate came from my sister who bought it when she went overseas, I forgot where. She bought so many flavoured chocolate but didn't eat it and abondoned it for the longest time. Some of them were really nice and tasty and you couldn't find it in Singapore. But it has a low melting point; melts easily in our weather. What couldn't be better when all my favourite ingredients added together.

I actually put aside 8 egg yolks. I made 2 batches of vanilla ice cream and divided it to make 2 different ice cream. Since, I already made a refreshing ice cream, I decided to make a more flavourful kinda savoury ice cream for the other one. That's how I  always decide on my 2 scoops of ice cream. One chocolatey or flavourful, the other have to be contrasting where it has to be refreshing. 


I went to buy a small bottle of peanut butter and blackcurrant jam. I kinda foresaw that putting spoonfuls of peanut butter just like that would make the ice cream cloying. Unfotunately, I was tired and running out of time to make peanut butter caramel sauce. So i just dump spoons after spoons of peanut butter into it. The ice cream looks really good though. True enough, it was definitely very very cloying. Well, I learnt my lesson. Hopefully I can finish the ice cream. 

 

The recipe for the basic vanilla ice cream is:-

Vanilla Ice Cream

4 egg yolks

75g/3oz/6tbsp caster sugar (I used vanilla caster sugar)

5ml/1tsp cornflour

300ml/1/2pint/1 1/4 cups semi-skimmed (low fat) milk

5ml/1tsp vanilla extract

300ml/1/2pint/1 1/4 cups whipping cream

1 vanilla pod (optional)

1)  Keep the ice cream bowl in the freezer for at least 15hrs. (If you're using KA ice cream bowl.)

2)Heat the milk over low heat until almost boiling in a saucepan. 

3) Whisk the egg yolks, sugar, cornflour together in a medium size bowl. 

4) Pour 1/4 of the hot milk over the egg mixture and whisk simultaneously so as not to cook the eggs.

5) Slowly pour the remaining milk in while whisking slowly. Then, pour the whole mixture into the saucepan. 

6) Cook over low heat until it becomes thick and smooth. Do not boil it. 

7) Add the vanilla and let mixture cool.

8) Store the mixture in the fridge for at least 8hr

9) Beat the mixture in the ice cream maker for about 15-20min at Speed 1 until it becomes melted ice cream consistency. 

10) Put whatever topping you want into the mixture in the last 5 min of the mixing. (You can also fold in the toppings of your choice by hand. Much easier for me.)

Here's to the sunny weather in Singapore!

Romantic

What is your favourite romantic comedy? I'm a sucker for romantic comedy. My favourites are usually played by Sandra Bullock; like While You Were Sleeping or/and Two Weeks Notice. Yes, it's more exciting to watch action movies but I wil never get sick of watching romantic comedies and some chick flicks. I love A Walk to Remember alot. Never fails to make me cry. I like A Cinderella Story just because I like Hillary Duff and that tall guy.. He's so hot! Ok, I like tall guys. hahaha.. But don't ever ever give me Twilight! I HATE that pale guy and that expressionless girl. BLeargh~

Lately, I've been receiving quite a number of anniversary cake orders. Okay, maybe just 3 anniversary orders so far.. And it just brought back all the feel good romance movies.. Weird rite.

I've been hooked to Pinterest and I keep seeing all the great cakes other bakers are making and I'm really inspired by them. You should join Pinterest and you'll enter a whole new world, seriously.

The first anniversary cake I made was a rainbow cake with chocolate buttercream as requested by the customer. I decided to make a Ruffles cake. I really love this design. It's so sweet yet has a vintage touch to it. Perfect for an anniversary! I used Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I love the silky smooth look of smbc and the not overly sweet taste of it AND it goes very well with this Ruffles Design.

The good thing about doing this design is that I don't have to be so stress about how to make the cake look so smooth. Another advantage is that I love to pipe. The top reason is I LOVE the design! The cons is that it uses quite an amount of frosting but it's not that much actually but more than what you will use if you were to smooth the smbc over the cake. 

Coincidentally, the next anniversary cake is also a 3rd year. Since I was given a freedom to decide on the decoration, I really wanted to the rose swirls cake. I didn't want any wordings to spoil the cake and there would be no space for wordings anyway because the swirls will be all over.. I custom made a tag to write the words.. And here is it is.. 

 

I'm glad that the customer chose to stick with white because it looked so pure and elegant. Again, perfect for an anniversary! She wanted a red tag.. I really love it. Maybe I'll do a smaller swirls next time so that I can make 3 layers of swirls and in ombre. That would be so cool!! 

 

 Till the next anniversary! :)