Yay! Father's Day! Guinness Brown Bread Ice-Cream

As I write this, my father is slumped dejectedly on the sofa, holding his head as the West Indies cricket team loses spectacularly to Sri Lanka, at The Oval in London. After the first three wickets fell, West Indies had only one run on the scoreboard. Wow! This is serious and it is guaranteed to put him in a bad mood. For the next couple days, we will have to endure constant grumbling and muttering in undertones about how "dem boys throw way de wicket."

It's true that my dad loves his cricket but here is something else that he loves - Guinness ice-cream. Fortunately I have some tucked away in the freezer for Father's Day tomorrow that will hopefully lift his spirits.

Outside of the odd Irish priest, you're not likely to run into an Irishman on our shores, yet there isn't a man in my family who doesn't love this ice-cream which is obtainable only from street ice-cream vendors.I wonder how it became so popular and if this is a favourite of other Caribbean islanders as well?

I just love the sharp, bitter, flavour and the contrast of the sweet in this ice-cream. Unfortunately the texture of most ice-creams just isn't up to standard. My gold standard for ice-cream texture and flavour is Häagan Dazsä®. The kind bought from street carts is icy and or chalky - not creamy. I have always wanted to improve upon this not one of my many recipe books have a recipe for Guinnes ice-cream. What good luck then, that I stumbled upon Murphy's Guinness Brown Bread Ice-Cream. Go to their site if you want to see a totally delectable, makes you want to eat it, not melting, nicely styled scoop of ice-cream. I guarantee it will make you want to have this. The rest of their site is worth browsing as their ice-creams are unique. Have a penchant for goat cheese ice-cream...no I'm not kidding you'll find it there.

I've made Murphy's Guinniss Ice-cream twice before and both times the ice-cream never set up past a very soft serve consistency. Granted I am truly awful at making custards but I began to suspect that there was just too much alcohol in the Murphy's version which can cause ice-cream not to firm up. So I tried another recipe which used less stout and ......well almost! It firmed up nicely but the texture was still not what I was looking for as the custard was just a wee bit over cooked.

Finally, like the West Indies team I just threw in the towel and opted for an eggless version. Love it! Because it doesn't contain eggs or cream it is economical to make and a very forgiving recipe. I cooked the bejesus out of that 'custard' and it was not ruined! Why did I cook it so long? Well... if you've been reading carefully, which most probably you haven't because unlike myself you have a life and have just been skimming along, hoping at some point I'll stop blathering and just get to the recipe already - I suck at making custard.

Okay, so here it is the recipe already!

Guinness Brown Bread Ice-Cream

1 cup water
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups evaporated milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup Guinness stout

Method

In a heavy saucepan whisk together the water and the cornstarch and simmer the mixture over moderate heat, whisking, for 2 minutes. Add the milks, the salt, and the sugar, heat the mixture over moderately low heat, whisking, for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the sugar is dissolved, and remove the pan from the heat. Let the mixture cool completely, stir in the Guinness. Put into your ice-cream maker and follow manufacturer's instructions

* I must have cooked this for about 10 mins before I finally figured out it wasn't going to get as thick as an egg custard.




*used leftover bread crusts to make this and tore them by hand because I find that the food processor gets them too fine and then they just get lost in the ice-cream. I wanted some crunch.

Brown Bread Crumble
Can be made in advance or while the 'custard' cools.

Ingredients
1 Cup stale brown bread crumbs
7 Oz brown sugar
2 tablespoons Guinness stout

Method
Put the sugar in a pan, add the 2 tbsp. Guinness, and cook until it is melted and completely liquid. Do not let it get too dark. Remove from the heat.

Stir the bread crumbs into the melted sugar, then spread on a baking tray and cook in the oven at 350F for about 20 min, until the sugar is caramelised and the crumbs are crispy. Keep an eye on it, though, that it doesn’t burn.



Cool the crumbs, and add to the custard base according to your ice-cream maker's directions.



The flavour is superior and as as to that elusive texture, ooooooooh so close...

Teacher Appreciation Cupcakes

It's Teacher Appreciation Week at my son's school. Darn Internet and the dissemination of American culture. Now I have to go bake stupid cupcakes for a hitherto unknown celebration. Again thank you Martha's people for sucking me into the "it's a good thing," hype. Yes there were a million easier ways to decorate these muffins except that this gave me a way to use some Marzipan I had bought on a whim a month ago.

Making the apples was but fun and reminded me of playing with modeling clay. I made them the day before. Well actually after showing her how to do them I drafted my elder daughter to make them for me - delagate delagate delagate I always say. They look more like cherries or maybe tomatoes but I'm not complainin'. The teacher's loved 'em. The cupcakes recipe I got from the book Hello Cupcake. They were completely flat and didn't rise at all. Maybe that was deliberate in order to pile on all the decorations....they were however lovely and moist and very tasty. I love that all the cupcakes in this book are decorated using nothing more than a ziplock bag, a technique that I also employed when decorating my son's birthday cake. I frosted these using Martha's Swiss Meringue Butter Cream which was light and very yummy.If I had stopped to think about it I should have realized that this frosting was going to be a very, very pale yellow and not white as shown in the pictures ( artistic license heh heh.) If I make these again I must remember to use a cream cheese frosting.

A Perfect Ending

It's not much to look at and rather plain-Jane looking, as far as desserts go. But it's a simple, easy to make dessert that is not overly heavy or sweet. A perfect end to a meal. You can find the recipe for this in The Multi-Cultural Cuisine of Trinidad & Tobago.

For those of you who are afraid of using the raw eggs called for in this recipe, here is a vintage version Pineapple Ice-Box Cake from a newspaper clipping dated 1962! Given that, when I'm in the kitchen there is oftentimes a toddler attached to one leg, a screaming baby in the background and a husband calling out for help - the real baby:-)- suffice to say that I have made the easy, raw egg version a gazillion times for my family and served it to young and old with no ill effects.

Growing up dessert was not a tradition in my home and as such, when I find myself out for dinner I will usually opt to end my meal simply, with a cup of coffee. I am of the not popularly held opinion that cloying sweets, heavy pastries, cheesecakes, towering cakes and the like are meals onto themselves, deserving of having my full attention on their decadent surfeit. Such treats just cannot be fully appreciated on an already full stomach and need only be paired with a perfectly brewed coffee as an accompaniment. The times that I do end a meal with a dessert, it is often a small portion of something light.

Delectable Gruel

I fall into the category of folks who hate porridge. Hate might indeed be a somewhat mild word. Fortunately I was a child of the 70's, a time of economic wealth for my country, so Kellogs cornflakes featured more often on our breakfast table than bowls of porridge. My dad often talks of farine and the cornmeal porridge of his childhood yet strangely these things were never prepared for me. The memories I have of porridge are few and vague. But in all those memories it seems that cream- of-wheat was the gruel du jour. It arrived on the table as a steaming-hot, grey, mass, and left as cold, congealed, hardly touched lumps - the colour and texture of papier-maché. As unappetizing as it was, it wasn't the lack of taste that was this dishes undoing but it's texture. To this day I have a hard time swallowing porridge and I spend such a long time trying that it invariable turns into cold lumps as I dawdle over consumption. I have always imagined that this was what cardboard would taste like if macerated with water.

Okay , now I am an adult and not forced to eat porridge anymore so why then do I continue? Well the health benifits of oats have pursuaded me that thier consumption are worth my effort. Besides there are not many foods that I do not like and I am thinking that perhaps it's an acquired taste. So this month I am on a quest to acquire a taste or more accurately a tolerance for the texture of porridge. Additionally, it seems a pity that I have never tasted some of our traditional porridge mixes from times past.

So here is my review. This was anything but bland, the aromas of this cornmeal gruel tantalized and really put me in a positive frame of mind for trying something new. I could not wait to taste this; it smelled sooooo good. Anyone who loves porridge should love this, sadly it did not make me a convert. The texture was still gag inducing. Still I will not be defeated. I will try farine (cassava porridge) next.