Food Friday: Chocolate Nice Cream--SO GOOD!!!

 Nice creams are so good.  At least, so far there has not been a nasty one that we have made.  This time I am following the recipe by Krocks in the Kitchen.   More or less.

The PACC version of Chocolate Nice Cream is so similar to the one Krocks in the Kitchen made.

Chocolate Nice Cream

1 quart freezer bag of frozen banana chunks
1/4 cup Hershey's cocoa
1/2 cup plant milk (I used Chocolate Almond Milk-the last box we are going to buy!!!  Too many nasty things in it, though it does taste better than many of the bad-for-you plant milks [because of the extraneous stuff that is in them].)

This time I brought the bananas (and strawberries) out of the freezer and let them begin thawing.  Eventually I decided I wanted chocolate ice cream instead of strawberry ice cream since I had eaten not even one bite of non-vegan items including not oil or fats of any kind, SO...chocolate ice cream. Anything chocolate is such a treat!

In the blending jar of a high speed blender place the cocoa powder and the plant milk.  Pour in the slightly-thawed banana chunks, put on the top, insert the tamper, and begin blending.  It took me about 80 seconds but I should have gone a little longer and tamped better because there were two pretty small banana chunks at the bottom at the end of the 80 seconds.  Well, they are in the freezer now!

Using a smallish ice cream scoop, I pulled out two scoops for each of us and put in a freezer container the remaining ice cream. I could really have eaten ALL the rest of the ice cream myself (if I had fought off Dear One who liked it pretty well himself!!!) but, since I am seeing the doctor tomorrow morning and want to have a nice blood reading, I refrained.  Tomorrow we can eat it for supper...

This is the ice cream after sitting a few minutes on the counter while I cleaned up the kitchen.  So good.

If you don't have a high speed blender, this can be done in a food processor.  You really MUST let the frozen bananas or other fruit thaw for about 10 minutes.  No less or it won't work...I already blogged about that some time in the last month or two.

Enjoy your own creations!  So delicious.

Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Ice Cream for Breakfast!!!

Today we had ice cream for breakfast!  And I feel totally virtuous about it...

This had no added sugar.  No added fat.  No added salt.  This had a LOT of flavor.

Several years ago we were at Britta's house for Book Group.  When it came time for refreshments after a great discussion,  she got out some frozen fruit plus a couple other things that I have since forgotten.  Forty-five seconds later she had some fabulous ice cream.

Well, we did the same thing today with a little variation.

Quick and Easy Ice Cream

2 cups frozen mixed berries and pineapple from Costco
1 cup fresh strawberries.
1 cup milk

Put the milk in the jar of a high-speed blender.  Add the strawberries then add the frozen fruit on top.  Blend it until ice cream.  It will take less than a minute.  You may need to use the tamper to get all the fruit into the blades.  You also may need to add more milk, a tablespoon at a time.

To make this creamier,  instead of the fresh strawberries add a couple of frozen bananas that you chunked up before freezing.

This was so quick and easy and so delicious...and it was all fruit.  If I had had some almond milk open, I would have used that instead of the dairy milk.  It is hard to believe how delicious and refreshing an ice cream with no additives can be.  Yummy!

Try it!  You will like it.  It may be the thing that gets you saving for a high-speed blender.  That first ice cream was what got me really thinking about making the high speed blender a reality in our family.  It only took about four years to get there after Britta's ice cream...

Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches!

Departing dinner this time was going to be really easy for us to help with.  We always make the desserts as it pleases everyone to have homemade desserts.  This time we decided on homemade ice cream sandwiches.

Remember those Gooey Butter Cookies I put in the freezer?  Well, we used those for some of the cookies.  Sister J made her famous chocolate chip cookies.  We got vanilla ice cream to go with the chocolate chip cookies and Tillamook Mudslide ice cream for the butter cookies.  (I had never heard of Tillamook Mudslide ice cream before our Spanish tutor mentioned it to me. He said it was fantastic.  He was right!)

Nope!  Not a Tillamook ice cream salesman, just a happy customer....

So on the Friday before the Tuesday departing dinner we went to the Mission Home and set up ice-cream-sandwich-making shop on the pingpong table in their garage which was right next to the freezer.  We put one cookie down bottom-side up,  put on a scoop of slightly softened ice cream and flattened it out somewhat with a dinner knife, then placed another cookie right-side up on top. We wrapped some of them in deli paper and some we left unwrapped, then put them into the freezer.  We think people will really like them.

There was one chocolate chip cookie and one butter cookie left.  Sister J insisted that I take them both so I made an ice cream sandwich when I got home and put it in the freezer.  The next day I gave half of it to Dear One.  It was really good.

Ice cream sandwich frozen and ready to split with Dear One.

Messy ice cream sandwich ready to wrap and freeze.

The ice cream was lop-sided when it froze.  It still tasted good.

You don't have to use homemade cookies.  Any cookies will do.  Just soften the ice cream a little bit then put it between two cookies.  Yummy life indeed.

Food Friday: Salt and Straw and Waffle Cones

One of our stops on our trip to downtown Portland was a place Sister J really wanted to show us.  It is called Salt and Straw.  It is an ice cream place.  It has many unusual flavors of ice cream.  In May they had lots of floral flavors.  They allow you up to six sample spoons full.  I tried the Rhubarb Crumble and the Lavender Honey.  A big thumbs up on the Rhubarb Crumble.  Thumbs way down on the Lavender Honey.  Yucky!  Dear One and I settled on safe chocolate choices.  He got a two-scoop cone; I got one scoop. It was plenty.  It was also plenty of moolah!



Going into the store after an almost one hour wait in line(!!!!!) I planned on getting my ice cream in a "bowl"--actually a paper cup.  However, when we got in there, still waiting in line, I watched a young man make the waffle cones.  There were four waffle irons that he kept going.  Very impressive.  That changed my mind: a freshly-made waffle cone did not seem something to miss.

This was the line...across the front of the building and all the way down the other side, plus all the way down the inside of the building.  Fortunately there were some nice benches to sit on outside while waiting.

 This is the waffle-cone-making station.  Bad picture as you cannot see the waffle cookers but..

This was my cone with one bite taken out of the ice cream.  The ice cream scoop is about the size of a small tennis ball.  It was $5.10 plus $1.00 for the cone.  Very tasty.

Food Today: Quick Strawberry Ice Cream

Last summer our book group met at Britta's house.  Sometime before Book Group Britta had purchased a Blendtec blender.  That night at Book Group Britta made for us some fresh-tasting strawberry ice cream.  In forty-five seconds flat!

That ice cream was so fresh-strawberry luscious, so very delicious, that I began to long for a Blendtec blender.  When I looked at the cost of one, I knew it was beyond my capabilities to buy so I tried tamping down that desire.

For years we have had a Bosch mixer and at some point in the last two or three years we finally purchased the blender jar for that mixer.  I used it for making mayonnaise and smoothies for breakfast but that was about it.  When I looked at the horse power of the Bosch mixer and at that of the Blendtec mixer, I thought I would give the Bosch a run for its money.

Having gone online to find the recipe that Britta used, I was ready to make ice cream when the occasion came up.  That occasion was last night.  My brother was diagnosed a week ago with a large brain tumor.  My sister came to spend time with him from her home far away in the South. 

The day for our brother's surgery finally came (after twice being scheduled but with emergencies, his was re-scheduled) yesterday.  My sister's  son and daughter-in-law coincidently came from New York state yesterday. 

After a long day of waiting and anticipating, the surgery was over, (very successfully, according to the surgeon), and we went home.  My sister had purchased pizza and calzones for us to eat as the supper hour passed while still waiting, so when we got home we were not starving but some people were edgy for sweets.

My nephew's wife encouraged him to use a box of brownie mix (which was left over from the Oreo Peanut Butter Cupcakes from a couple of weeks ago) and make a batch.  She also thought ice cream would be fabulous on the brownies. THAT was my occasion to try out the Bosch with quick ice cream.

Pulling out the Bosch from the pantry I set up to make ice cream while everyone else was reading and the brownies were baking.  After putting the ingredients into the blender jar, I set the machine at low, then medium, then high.  By the time it was on high for a few seconds it started to make a grinding sound so I thought I should stop it instantly. I did.

When I pulled the blender jar off the machine receptacle and opened the cover, it looked like ice cream.  I was sure there would be big chunks of the strawberries down in the jar.  THERE WERE NOT!!

There was only delicious lovely luscious fresh-tasting strawberry ice cream in less than a minute!  Next time I am going to try blueberry ice cream and see if it is as good.

This is what was left over:

Strawberry ice cream made in the Bosch blender jar.

We had plenty of ice cream in our dishes, a couple of us only took small amounts, and there was enough left over for two more dishes.  We will make it again.

The recipe is posted on Grammie's Kitchen and Bedtime Stories.