TWD Nutella Swirl Ice Cream

Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu decided on Vanilla Ice Cream as this week's TWD recipe. Check out Lynne's blog for the recipe.

Vanilla ice cream is such a fun base to play with. For today's treat I decided to add nutella (about 1/2 a container) and some finely chopped toasted hazelnuts (about 1/2 cup) to my ice cream. I added the nuts to the base about 4 minutes before it was done churning. Once it was fully churnned I folded in the nutella.



It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that this ice cream was beyond delicious. There is just no way nutella, hazelnuts and vanilla can go wrong (unless of course you're allegic to nuts).

Spicy Guiness Mustard

In my opinion mustard is an underrated condiment. It's uses are endless; sandwiches, vinaigrette's, marinades, meats and fish all benefit from mustard. I even had mustard ice cream at Taylor in NYC (though not sure that was my favorite mustard application). I love all types of mustard, but spicy, grainy mustard's are my favorite. I was excited to see this recipe on Saveurs website.

Anything made with Guinness scores big with me, so I went to Penzey's and picked up some brown mustard seeds to make the spicy Guinness mustard. This recipe was a breeze to make. You combine Guinness, red wine vinegar, spices, sugar and mustard seeds in a bowl and let it sit out for 2 days.





After two days process it for about 3 minutes in a food processor.





That's it. Funny, if you combine all the time I spent "making" the mustard, I'm sure I've spent more time on occasion trying to open a bottle of commercially sealed mustard.




This mustard is delicious. It's complex with a nice spicy kick which will mellow out over time. I'm sure I'll come up with some interesting ways to use mustard, so stay tuned.

Olive Oil Madeleines

Pretty? Yes

Easy? Yes

Best Ingredients? Yes

Tasty? Not so much



I really want to like everything I bake, but sometimes there's no love to be found. I found a recipe in this month's Gourmet for Olive Oil Madeleines. The recipe came from Eleven Madison, so I was pretty sure I would love it. They baked off perfectly. Beautiful bubble on the bottom and just the slightest color on the "shell." They looked perfect. Flavor wise they were bland, bland, bland; which was shocking because I used an amazing olive oil from Lebanon and the zest of two lemons. I think this recipe could work if I wanted to make a "spiced-up" madeleine, but for the time being; I use my stand-by madeleine recipe.

Sofra Eye Candy

We're having so much fun at Sofra with seasonal fruits and veggies. Here are some recent photos from the bakery.

Blueberry tart



Persian spice donuts



Market tart with Sienna Farms broccoli and sumac



Pate a choux donuts:



Chamomile Umm Ali with nectarines and almonds



Blueberry sweet cheese tarts



Croissants



Bee sting




Insiders view of pastry display

TWD Blanc Manger

Susan of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy selected Raspberry Blanc-Manger as this week's TWD recipe.

I loved the idea of this cake, but the end product was a bit lack-luster. Two things I did that I won't do again. I used natural almonds which created a non-blanc manger. Second, I make the cake in VT, and I accidently grabbed a 10" cake pan instead of an 8". The resulting cake was really thin, maybe only 1/2" tall. I would like a taller cake next time. I did love the contrast between the tart raspberries and creamy almond mousse. I found myself only eating the sections that had both raspberries and cream.



I love the idea of a go-to no bake summer dessert, so I'm going to try this again soon. Next time I'll infuse my cream with thyme, and I will use a smaller cake pan and blanched almonds.