Sweet Milk Ice Cream

Here's a recipe for ice cream that tastes like the kulfi we are used to eating in India. This recipe for Sweet milk ice cream is from King Arthur catalog. It is one of the few recipes that I made the same day I saw it.

Fortunately I had all the ingredients on hand and the ice cream base came together in no time, though I had to wait overnight to freeze and make the ice cream. This recipe is made from a predominantly milk base instead of a custard base (with eggs) but it is creamy and almost gelato-like. The tapioca starch takes the place of the eggs to stabilize the base, lending it a rich, creamy texture to the finished ice cream.

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Butterscotch Ice Cream with Almond Praline topping (Eggless Recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 41: Week 1/ Day 1
Theme: Summer Specials
Dish: Butterscotch Ice Cream with Almond Praline topping (Eggless Recipe)

We are starting another edition of blogging marathon today. Can't believe we are almost at the mid year mark and before we know it, it will be holiday season and a brand new year again. Hmmmm... time sure is flying. Coming back to the present, we have been enjoying nice warm temperatures for the past couple of days and hopefully this weather is here to stay.

My theme for this week is 'Summer Specials' and for the first day I have a sweet and cool ice cream. I think it was my sister who once asked for a ice cream with nuts and I started looking for recipes online. One of the search led me to Sruthi's Part time chef blog and her butterscotch ice cream got me with her amazing clicks. I made the ice cream right away.

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Mocha Ice Cream (Eggless recipe)

It looks like Summer has almost come to an end (bahhhh). Good things pass way too quickly and this summer flew past at rapid speed. Didn't do anything fun to mention with the husband travelling most of the season. I guess the only fun thing that my son did was to learn swimming :-)

I want to post some of the summer recipes that I have in drafts before the season ends. I made this Mocha Ice cream from King Arthur flour site in June, around the beginning of Summer. It is very simple to put together and even my 5 year old loved it.

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Milk Chocolate Ice Cream

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Kid's Delight - Summer Special
Dish: Milk Chocolate Ice Cream

Day 3 of Blogging Marathon# 30 and today's kid approved Summer treat for Chef Mireille's Kid's Delight: Summer Special event is this cool and creamy Milk Chocolate Ice cream. This is a very decadent dessert, perfect on a sunny day (or any day for that matter). 

I've been making eggless ice creams for quite sometime now and I've had good success with it. But this recipe uses 4 egg yolks. I had frozen some egg yolks after using the whites in making Strawberry birthday cake for 2 little girls who share the same birthday. As I was looking for recipes to use up the frozen yolks, I found this recipe for Milk Chocolate Ice cream on Annies- Eats. The recipe sounded amazing and the pic was too tempting, so I gave it a try and the resulting ice cream was super creamy and delicious.

After visiting Annies Eats I realized that July is National Ice Cream month. 3rd Sunday in July (that is the 21st of this month) is declared as 'National Ice Cream Sunday'.

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Split Level Pudding

It's the final day of the Blogging marathon and I had so much fun making and eating all these yummy Holiday/ Weekend special dishes. I wanted to make something sweet for the last day with the whole milk and cream I had in the refrigerator. I had rice pudding in mind, but didn't think that I had enough time to make it on a weeknight. 

When I saw this Split level pudding recipe in Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From my kitchen to yours", I decided to give it a try. Also my son has been pestering me to make pudding for a while, so went ahead and made it yesterday night.

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Rasmalai for April ICC

I couldn’t participate in the last two ICC’s but this month’s challenge was too delicious to pass on. When Srivalli announced Rasmalai for this month’s ICC, I was dancing with joy, just with the anticipation of eating freshly made yummy rasmalai right at home.

I could care less for the dust in the attic or the long growing weeds in the front yard or the umpteen numbers of boxes that need to be unpacked before we can see at least take a step in the basement. I forgot about all the chores for about 2 hours this past weekend to make these soft snowballs and the end result was so sweet and delicious that it was all worth it.

Have to thank Lavanya for the recipe and Srivalli for choosing it for ICC. I can see this dish being made in my house many many more times. So without further ado, here’s how I made them.

Adapted from Lavanya’s & Show Me the Curry recipes.
Ingredients:
For the Snowballs (Paneer balls):
Whole milk – 4 cups (1 liter)
Vinegar – 3tbsp
Sugar – 1 cup
Water – 5 cups

For the Ras:
Whole Milk – 4 cups (1 liter)
Sugar – ¾ cup
Saffron – pinch
Ground Cardamom – ½ tsp
Nuts – 2tbsp, chopped (I used chopped pistachios)

Method:

• First make Paneer – Bring milk to a boil in a heavy bottomed sauce pan. At this point, add vinegar and stir. When milk starts to curdle, immediately turn off the heat.
  
• Drain into a clean cheesecloth (I used my husband’s kerchief instead), pour cold water to remove the vinegar. You can save the whey water for future use, but I let it go in the drain—I’ll save it the next time.
  
• Hang the cheese for about ½ hour to drain out any excess water.
  
• In the mean time start making the ras: In a large non-stick pan, boil milk until it simmers down to half the volume, takes about 45minutes – 1hour. Rub saffron with few drops of milk and add to the milk before boiling.
  
• Now is the time to make the snowballs: I followed the tip from the lovely ladies at Show me the Curry and kneaded my paneer in the food processor. I pulsed for about 1 minute and the paneer came out just perfect, soft & smooth.
  
• Roll paneer between both the palms to make the balls and make sure they are as smooth as they can be with no cracks. Keep aside.
  
• In a pressure cooker, take 5 cups water and 1 cup sugar; stir until sugar dissolves. Slowly drop the paneer balls and let them cook for 1 whistle. Turn off the heat and exactly after 5 minutes, set the cooker in the sink and pour cold tap water to cool the cooker.
  
• When cool enough to handle, remove the now puffed up paneer balls into a container along with some sugar syrup. Let cool.
  
• In the meantime finish the ras: When the milk cooks down to about half, add sugar and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Finally add cardamom and chopped nuts.
  
• To assemble: When the paneer balls are cool enough to handle, gently squeeze out the sugar syrup and put them in a serving bowl. Pour ras on the top and refrigerate for at least 2-3 hours. Enjoy!!

Gulab Jamuns for Indian Cooking Challenge

When Srivalli chose gulab jamuns for this month's Indian Cooking Challenge, I was kind of excited and nervous since I have never made them from scratch before and was expecting a total failure with exploding jamuns in oil. The good news is they didn’t explode but the bad news is my jamuns got a tad bit harder after frying which I assume is because of the excess amount of flour I added to the khoya.

Ok let me back up a little bit and tell you the whole story. I chose Alka’s recipe for my Gulab Jamuns. I started out making the khowa with 4 cups of whole milk which I boiled for 2½ hours on low simmer. The khowa was still a little wet when I took it out of the pan. I let it cool for about 2-3 hrs and then I made the dough by adding the flour & corn starch. I added a tbsp of flour in the beginning and when I saw that the dough was still wet, I added another tbsp of flour and then another and then another and so on.. Well in the end the dough looked pretty good and I was able to make tiny jamuns. I didn’t realize that they formed a crust on the top and didn’t let the jamuns soak the sugar syrup. They tasted pretty good even though we had to struggle to cut them with spoon :-). I was a little disappointed with the end result but now I think I have the tools to make gulab jamun from scratch.

Here’s Alka’s recipe verbatim:

For sugar syrup:
Ingredients:
Sugar - 500 gms (This can be reduced as per taste)
Water - 1 & 1/2 cup (bit more or less)
Cardamom - 2-3
One spoon of milk (optional)
Few threads of saffron (optional)
2-3 drops of rosewater (optional but highly recommended)

Method:

• Mix about 500 gms of white sugar in one and half cup water and keep it for boiling.
• Add a spoonful of milk to remove the impurities (impurities if any, will form a scum on surface).
• Add 2-3 green cardamoms also in syrup for strong flavor, and a tad of saffron strings (optional).
• Boil until you get just a tad sticky syrup. Gulab Jamun syrup is not very dense nor too dilute as in Rasgulla.
• Strain the syrup, add rosewater when syrup is slightly cooled.Always remember two things while using rose water, do not add it while syrup is bubbling hot or on fire, and be particular about the quantity mentioned in every recipe, since even few drops of excess rosewater could lend a bitter taste to the final product.
  

For Gulab Jamun:
Ingredients:
Unsweetened Maawa/ khowa* - 250 gms
All purpose flour - 1 & 1/2 - 2 tsp
Cornflour - 1 tsp
Green cardamom - 1-2 crushed
Oil for shallow frying

* (read my comments above on making khowa.

Method:

• Mix all the ingredients in a wide mixing bowl until soft textured dough is obtained (keep mixing until it is really soft).
• Make very small sized balls (bit larger than pebbles) as they swell up after frying and soaking in syrup.
• Make sure that the surface of dough balls is really smooth without any cracks. In case the cracks refuse to go away, slightly wet your palms with water and roll the flour till absolutely smooth.
• Now take little oil for frying in preferably flat bottomed pan, and heat the oil. But gulab jamuns are to be fried on LOW FLAME or else the surface will be browned while the core will remain uncooked. Some prefer to place an unsalted pistachio in the center of every gulab jamun while making balls, that way the core of gulab jamun is not left uncooked.
  
• Fry one or 2 gulab jamuns at a time and always remember to STIR THE OIL with slotted spoon AND NOT TO TOUCH GULABJAMUNS, which means keep swirling the oil without tossing or turning gulab jamun.
• Fry till light brown in colour, remove on tissue paper and repeat the procedure with rest of dough.
• Now soak these in COOL syrup for few hours. They will surely swell up.

These can be stored in the same syrup till consumed.

If there are cracks in the balls before frying it will burst open while frying, in that case adding a bit of cornflour will surely help.