Rain, Rain, Go Away!

In an effort to spread my love of baking among the Yelp community, which I am very vocal member of, I decided to host a bake-off.

The gist of the event was that people interested in baking would participate by bringing their homemade baked items to a pre-determined location in, oh say Central Park, and we would all compete for "prizes."

I was very excited because the turnout for the event exceeded my wildest expectations. And then it rained all week.

And on the day of the bake-off.

So I was naturally incredibly angry at the weather (futile, but necessary) and also at a loss as to what to do with my pre-baked goods. I made two batches of my Grapefruit Yogurt Cake in mini-cupcake format.

Luckily I have brothers. And neighbors. And co-workers.

What I am hoping is that my next attempt will actually be more than just an attempt.

Stay tuned!

Frozen, not stirred.

Lame James Bond pun aside, making ice-cream is just as labor intensive, if not more so, than baking a cake.

The recipe is simpler, but the process requires a lot more patience. So when I finally decided to use natures bounty of berries (strawberries) to make some ice-cream, planning went into this endeavor.


A day in advance, I had to freeze the ice-cream attachment for my KitchenAid and make sure that it was properly covered so that there is no contamination from other items in the freezer. Next, I had to make sure to find a simple enough custard based ice-cream recipe. And what do you know? Epicurious had one, which of course I modified. Modification in the sense that I used lemon extract instead of lemon rind and I didn't add the chilled macerated strawberries to the semi-frozen custard mixture, but rather some fresh frozen strawberries I'd been saving for a while.

The addition of the frozen strawberries actually helped the custard mixture set-up better, because in previous ice-cream making experiments it had turned to mush after adding stuff to the custard base.

And here's what else I learned - custard based (or French-style) ice-cream is moons and stars better tasting than American-style. It's also a lot fattier, so eat in moderation.

Enjoy!