Coconut Ice Cream

Homemade Coconut Icecream with Pandan Pancakes. Here is the recipe for a non cooked coconut icecream. Pancakes are just your basic buttermilk pancakes with pandan extracts for flavouring. The dressing is thick gula melaka aka cooked palm sugar syrup. It is commonly used in most Asian desserts.

Ingredients
2-3 cans of coconut milk
300 ml of full heavy cream - I added this for smoothness and creaminess
1 very tiny pinch of sea salt (optional)
1 1/2 cup of caster sugar
1 tablespoon of natural coconut essence (non alcohol) REMEMBER: Alcohol will not freeze!
**You can add any non alcoholic essence flavouring you like ** ie if you use rum and pineapple, it becomes a pina colada icecream!

Method
1. Mix in Blender till smooth then transfer to churn in ice cream maker for best result.
2. If you don't have one, pour into container and put in freezer, then every hour, remove and whisk and put back in freezer. The idea is to put air into it, to make it light, less dense and repeat as required.
3. Eat your icecream smile emoticon Note: it can be served, with all kinds of toppings or desserts. I'm saving mine for pandan pancakes!

Lychee Fruit Popsicles

I was inspired by my foodie friend Lorraine's post Summer Popsicles. It has been stinking hot in Wagga Wagga with the temperature reaching 41 degrees, so this recipe from her was Godsend. Please click on the link to follow her recipe.  As I had no Pimms in the house, err.. guilty as charged..... hick! I had to improvised. I decided to use my Lychee syrup and some sparkling Soda water and Angustura bitters. I was a little dissapointed of the lack of alcohol in it but meh.... it will do, for Lychee fruit popsicles.

1. Cut up some summer fruits and put in popsicle container/s.
2. Make your own favourite drink mix. (mine was lychee, soda, angustura bitters)
3. Pour it into container.
4. Freeze overnight in your freezer.

It really is that simple. 

Pineapple Jam

Chinese New Year is coming. Every year I try to make at least one Chinese New Year cookies, last year, it was peanut cookies, so yum..... the year before it was pineapple jam tarts. My household loves this jam tarts. So I try to make an effort to make this.  You would think that, one would find it easier as time goes by with the jam making. But strangely for me, not so much.

This is my second batch of jam making this week. The one that I made last week was a tad watery, I think I shall have to use it for glazing or dessert flavourings or saucing. It was just not fibrous enough, to hold the shape of a round ball to put on top of my open faced tart.

I wanted it to be drier than the first batch. No tears this time, just a lot of determination. I must be getting old because I forgot to strain it last week. It works so much better if one follows the recipe and don't just wing it! :) I blame getting old... Thank goodness, the pineapples are not too dear to buy this time of the year. I would have cried if it was. Besides, there more to CNY than pineapple jam tarts, right? Errr, NO! Not for all the Ang Pows in the world :)

Ingredients

3 - 4 Pineapples
2 cups of sugar ( you can add more but I don't like it too sweet.)
I cinnamon stick

Method

1. Remove pineapple skins, 
2. Cut into pieces
3. Process in a blender, I use chop instead of grind for coarser result
4. Put mash pineapple thru strainer
5. Collect the juice, you may need it for your Rum or if jam gets too dry. 
6. Heat up pan or wok
7. Put strained pineapple pulp into pan and leave alone to cook till soft
8. Add two cups of sugar, mix and leave alone
9. Check on cooking to ensure it is caramelising nicely and not burnt. Stir it as needed.
10. When it nice and thick and golden hue, turn heat off
11. Leave to cool. 
12. Once cooled, put in a sterile jar and keep in refridgerator till you are ready to use it.

You can use it for toast. This jam is so yummy, you shouldn't restrict yourself to just having it on the New Year. As for my other batch... hmmmm I can still use it for icecreams, cakes, or meat glazing on the BBQ. Meanwhile, ahem... need to find some use for juice, Where's that rum??

See how much juice you collect, if you strain it? If you don't strain, that works too but it takes longer for the jam to reduce the liquid and I am sure, no one wants to spend hours on it. Not when there's rum to be drunk !!! 

Matcha Aisu (green tea icecream)

Happy New Year all, celebrating the new year with a home made ice cream recipe. If you like green tea, you'll want to bookmark this simple recipe.

For those of who do not know what a Matcha is, it's powdered green tea leaves that has been dried and processed to powder form. It is more concentrated than Sencha. Sencha is just green tea in its normal form, you add it to hot water and drink it like hot tea.

With Matcha, you can drink it, cook it, bake it, it's very user friendly and there are so many recipes on the Internet that you can try and have fun with if you have some Matcha.

After just returning from Japan, more than anything, I am craving Matcha ice cream. It's terrible having to leave that place. I am already planning my next trip but it won't be for some time yet so for today, I am hoping to replicate that wonderful Japanese ice cream.

Recipe below is for 2-4 people or in my case, one :) Alright, I'll share, if I really have to..

Ingredients
• 2 Tbsp Matcha Green Tea Powder
• 2/3 cup Granulated Sugar
• 3 Egg Yolks
• 3/4 cup Milk
• 3/4 cup Double Cream

Method

1. A = Mix 2 Tbsp of sugar with the Matcha powder 
2. B = Mix remainder sugar with yolks
3. Heat milk (do not let boil) 
4. Remove from heat, add A+B to warm milk, mix well till smooth paste.
5. Return to heat, ( do not let boil) mix well to keep smooth
6. Remove from heat, strain mix and leave to cool in fridge
7. Start whipping cream for folding to Matcha mix.
8. Fold whipped cream to Matcha mix when the mix is cold enough.
9. Put in your chilled ice cream bowl container and leave in freezer. No need to churn with ice cream maker. 

Here are some photos from some of the steps.

There you have it, you chill it in the freezer for few hours and voila! Your very own Matcha ice cream ;) I'm going to serve mine in a Japanese bowl with some azuki (red beans). Oishi!  

Strawberry Icecream

Hi all, sobs.....Summer is here and she has been a scorcher, with her unwelcome heatwave. I must admit, I am not a summer person, I detest the heat and the humidity and I would hibernate if I could. Every summer I would curse and swear, that I would move to Antartica but it never happens. Maybe I should learn to ski and go hide in the snow somewhere.

But enough whining, here is one of my survival tip for summer. Eat lots of icecream. Invest in an ice cream machine, you can make sorbets, gelatos, yoghurt, and icecream and even slushies if you want. It is the perfect treats for those hot summer days and nights. However, for this post, I am going to share a very basic icecream recipe for the beginners.

Recipe for Homemade Strawberry Ice cream.  

It is very important that you read the manual of your ice cream maker. Please put the freezer bowl in your freezer overnight prior to making ice cream. You need to do this before the day of making your icecream. The bowl needs to be freezing cold, when it is churning your mix.

Ingredients

•         I to 2 small punnet of fresh ripe strawberries, stemmed and sliced, reserve a few for garnish.

•         1 freshly squeezed orange or mandarin. You may use 2 teaspoon of lemon juice as an alternative.

•         150 gram of caster sugar

•         600 ml of thickened cream (double cream) also known as cooking cream.

Method

•         Reserve a few strawberries for garnishes.

•         Chop up the rest of the strawberries with added caster sugar, put it in a blender to process. Once this is done, put the content into a mixer, pulse the strawberry with the heavy cream until it mixes in. Use a hand mixer if you haven’t got a standalone.

•         Transfer the mixture into the freezer bowl, turn on the ice cream maker and let it mix until thickened, about 20 to 25 minutes.

•         Five minutes before mixing is completed, add some chopped up strawberries and let it mix in completely. This is for the fruity bits in the ice cream. The ice cream will have a soft, creamy texture but not runny. If you prefer your ice cream a  little firmer, transfer the ice cream to place in freezer for about half hours. Remove from freezer about 15 minutes, garnish before serving.

And that is all. Stay cool and don't forget to slip, slop and slap if you go out in the sun!