Ice Cream Ireland

For this week’s column in the Irish Times (in today’s issue), I decided to write about our multicultural staff, especially in our Killarney shop (photo below of some of the team). As part of the piece, I included this recipe for Polish ice cream, given to me by our Killarney shop manager, Sylwia. The test batch was very tasty, if you like fruit and nuts!

Bakaliowe Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 5 egg yolks
• 1 3/8 cups cream
• 1 1/8 cups milk
• 1/4 vanilla bean, cut lengthwise
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup dried fruits
• 1/2 cup almonds and other nuts

What to do:

1. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale yellow.
2. Bring the milk to a simmer. Remove from the heat.
3. Beat the milk into the eggs and sugar in a slow stream.
4. Pour the mixture back into pan, add the vanilla bean and place over low heat.
5. Stir until the custard thickens (around 70C).
6. Immediately remove from the heat, and place in the refrigerator until cool.
7. Remove the vanilla bean.
8. Stir in the fruits and nuts.
9. Whip the cream and fold into the mix.
10. Freeze using a domestic ice cream machine, or cover and place in the freezer.

Technorati tags: Bakaliowe, ice cream, Polish, dessert, recipe, Irish Times

With raspberries in season, a great topping for ice cream is raspberry coulis. It’s tart and delicious and dead simple to make!

Murphys Raspberry Coulis

Ingredients:

• Small punnet (125 gm) raspberries
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

What to do:

1. Combine all the ingredients in a blender or food process and puree until smooth.
2. Pass through a fine sieve using a rubber spatula or the back of a wooden spoon until only the seeds are left.
3. Discard the seeds.
4. Enjoy!

Yield: 150 ml coulis

It will last around 3 days if refrigerated, but I suggest you eat it straight away!

Technorati tags: raspberry, lime, coulis, sauce, recipe

Fructose is a sugar found in fruit among other things, and is often recommended for diabetics because it has a very low glycemic index (GI). It is three times sweeter than normal sugar (sucrose) and has a slightly different taste - a little fruity or acidic.

I must say that there is mixed research on the health benefits of fructose. In fact, there are those who consider it quite unhealthy. Perhaps it’s like many things - use it in moderation.

What I do know for sure is that fructose can be caramelised. I’ve been playing around with it, and it makes an extraordinarily beautiful and tasty caramel sauce. It’s very, very sweet, so definitely use very small amounts of it, especially if you’re diabetic!!!

If you want to make it, here’s how:

Fructose Caramel Sauce

Ingredients:

50g powdered fructose (I bought an organic box of it from my local health food store)

150ml apple juice

What to do:

1. Put the fructose in a saucepan and shake it so it’s evenly dispersed.
2. Pour 50ml of the apple juice over it and cook over medium heat.
3. When it starts to brown, start stirring, and continue stirring until it turns a deep honey colour.
4. Immediately remove from the heat and stir in the rest of the apple juice.
5. It will still be very hot. Let it cool.

That’s all! Enjoy!

Technorati tags: fructose, caramel, sugar free, diabetic, diet, recipe, dessert

I realise that juice pops and frozen bananas are not, strictly, sugar free. Fruit does have sugar in it (fructose), although not refined. For those for whom fruit sugar is a problem, and for something slightly more adult, you can try making pops from coffee and tea. The flavour comes through quite well, and you can use your favourite sweetener if you feel it needs it. Herbal teas can work quite well (the photo above is a rose/licorice tea), but brew them quite strong!

Back to juice pops - I wrote in my previous post that the kids in our family loved them. On the right is the proof - a photo showing my brother, sister and I enjoying them on a summer day in upstate NY.

Our favourite flavour was grape, but since my mother was usually faced with melted grape pop-stained clothes, she pushed us toward orange!

Technorati tags: tea, pop, sugar free, diabetic, diet, frozen, dessert

Another quick and easy sugar-free iced option is frozen juice pops (lollies). This one really brings me back to my childhood. I have many memories of hot summer days that involve these treats. My mother was really into natural foods and organics, and although we were never weaned off ice cream, she tried to keep our sugar intake down by making these. We ate them quite happily indeed.

What’s really brilliant is that you can choose a juice that you (or your little ones) like and make the frozen equivalent. It’s hard to go wrong with that!

I found a form for the pops in my local hardware store, and nothing could be easier in terms of making them. Simply pour the juice into the form, insert the stick, and put it in the freezer. Within a couple of hours, you will have a wonderfully refreshing frozen snack.

It’s definitely worth buying the good stuff here or using fresh juice. There are many delicious organic juices that you can find in health food shops. In any case, the taste will reflect the quality of the juice, and clearly if you add a juice mix that has sugar in it, it will not be sugar-free!

My favourites were and are:

• Pomegranate Juice
• Orange Juice
• Grape Juice (red grapes)

Technorati tags: juice, pop, sugar free, diet, frozen, dessert

 I have written about trying to come up with sugar-free ice cream alternatives here and here. It’s been a challenge to which I return from time to time. A few days ago in our Killarney shop, I met a family with an 8 year old girl, Shona, who was recently diagnosed with diabetes. It has given me another push.

The difficulty in making a sugar-free ice cream naturally (and I won’t do it any other way) is that diabetics need low-fat as well as sugar-free (at least according to all the medical advice I have received). That makes it very, very hard, at least in my experience, to make a commercial product both tasty and viable.

We haven’t given up on it, but in the mean time, I though I’d pass on a few sugar-free frozen desserts that are easy to make at home, extremely yummy, and free of, or very low in, refined sugar (sucrose). Not all might be appropriate for every diet - I know that bananas are quite high in fructose, but that’s where I’ll start. I will also pass on an ice cream recipe or two in the coming days.

Frozen Banana Pops 

My mother often kept frozen bananas in the freezer for us when we were small, and we loved them! It’s a great treat that won’t have a little one bouncing off the walls from a sugar high.

Making frozen banana pops is simple:

1. Peel a ripe banana.

2. Cut it in half.

3. Push a plastic spoon or lolly stick into one end.

4. Put it/them in a freezer-safe dish and stick it in the freezer for a few hours.

That’s it! You can serve them straight from the freezer, and they will disappear quickly.

If you want to take it a step further, melt some bittersweet (70%+) chocolate (generally quite low in sugar if the quality is high) or good quality dark diabetic chocolate, pour it on a shallow plate and roll the frozen pops in it (see top picture). Do the rolling quickly as the chocolate will harden on immediately! Now you really have a special treat…

Technorati tags: diabetes, diabetic, sugar free, diet, frozen, dessert

I made one of the tastiest things I have in a while - Cajeta. Similar to Dulce de Leche, this Mexican treat is made by reducing goat’s milk with cinnamon and sugar until it caramelises.

The recipe I used was out of Rick Bayless‘ excellent book, Mexican Kitchen. The result was thick, creamy, and utterly delicious.

In fact, I have never made anything from that cookbook that wasn’t fantastic (as long as I could get my hands on the ingredients, which isn’t easy in Ireland!)

If you want to try it, there is a recipe here or here.

We ate it mostly over vanilla ice cream (see right), and it disappeared pretty quickly, I can tell you. Ausra, from our Dingle shop found an excellent use for it - a Cajeta Latte - a Mexican twist on a caramel latte. Yum!

Technorati tags: caramel, cajeta, recipe, goat’s milk, cinnamon, dessert

I promised a little while ago to post the strawberry and sage ice cream, which is pretty much sold out in the shops by this point, but anyway, here it is!

Murphys Strawberry and Sage Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1 cup Sugar

5 Egg Yolks

1 3/8 Cups Cream

1 1/8 Cups Milk

1 Strawberry Sage Coulis Recipe

What to do:

1. Make the strawberry and sage coulis (recipe here)
2. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale yellow.
3. Bring the milk to a simmer. Remove from the heat.
4. Beat the milk into the eggs and sugar in a slow stream.
5. Pour the mixture back into pan and place over low heat.
6. Stir until the custard thickens (around 60C).
7. Allow the custard to cool.
8. Whip the cream until you have soft peaks. Do not over-whip!
9. Fold in the custard and coulis.
10. Freeze using a domestic ice cream machine, or cover and place in the freezer.

12 Servings

Note: To pasteurise the eggs, heat the custard to 73C and keep at that temperature for three minutes. Use a cooking thermometer, though, and keep stirring! If the custard goes any higher than 76C, the eggs will scramble. Immediately cover and place in the freezer until cool.

Technorati tags: strawberry, cream, sage, ice cream, recipe, Irish

I have written about Sweetbank Farm several times, the fruit farm in Wicklow. Well, we have just received our first fruit from them - trays of luscious strawberries.

It’s good timing, because I’ve had strawberry and sage on the brain for a while now.

I’ll get around to making ice cream from it, but I started by making a coulis, which can be used as a sauce for many different desserts. It’s an easy recipe, and I was eating it over vanilla ice cream within 15 minutes of starting out!

Strawberry and Sage Coulis

Ingredients:

300g fresh, ripe strawberries
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons sugar
2 fresh sage leaves

What to do:

1. Rinse and hull the strawberries.

2. Put them in a food proccesor or blender and pulse two or three times. You don’t want a puree here! Just break them up a bit.

3. Chop the sage leaves in to fine pieces. (If you use dried sage, use about a half teaspoon).

4. Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pan and cook over low heat for about 10 minutes. Don’t bring it to the boil. Cook it slowly simply to infuse the strawberries with the sage.

5. Serve hot or cold over ice cream or with another dessert.

Technorati tags: strawberry, sage, coulis, sauce, ice cream

One of my favourite ice cream flavours that we make is our “Caife” - Kahlua Espresso with Chocolate Shavings. Coffee cuts sweetness and makes a great adult ice cream. In addition, the alcohol makes it even smoother, and the chocolate shavings provide a bit of chocolate that melts on the palate with the ice cream. I do hope you like this as much as I do!