Raspberry Sherbet

Our backyard is invaded by raspberries. Someone offered us a couple of plants ago and, since then, trying to plant anything else has been a waste of time. In fact, I would like to add yellow rasberries - which are said to be sweeter - but I'm afraid to mess around with the genetic codes of respective species.

Two weeks ago, I picked up the first (and probably last) worthy harvest of the year. There wasn't enough to make jam, so I made this sherbet instead. The recipe comes from Ice cream and Iced Desserts and will make 900 ml - 1 1/2 pints - 3 3/4cups - six servings.

• 175g - 6oz - 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 150ml - 1/4 pint - 2/3 cup water
• 500g - 17 fl oz - generous 2 cups fat free fromage frais

1. Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Pour into a jug and cool.

2. Put 350g - 12oz - 2 1/2 cups ofthe raspberries in a food processor orblender. Process to a purée, then press through a sieve placed over a large bowl to remove the seeds. Stir in the sugar syrup into the raspberry purée and chill the mixture until it's very cold.

3. Add the fromage frais to the purée and whisk until smooth.

4. By hand: Pour the mixture into a plastic tub or similar freezerproof container and freeze for 4 hours, beatingonce with a fork, electric whisk or in a food processor to breakup the ice crystals. After this time, beat it again.
Using an ice cream maker: Churn the mixture until it is thick but too soft to scoop. Scrape into a freezerproof container.

5. Crush theremaining raspberries betweenyour fingers and add them to the partially frozen ice cream. Mix lightly then freeze for 2-3 hours until firm. Scoop the ice cream into dishes and serve with extra raspberries.

This sherbet is very refreshing. I didn't bother looking for fat free fromage frais and used the regular kind. The sugar syrup cuts through the acidity of the fruit without numbing the flavor. I also leaved out the extra crushed fruit because I find raspberry pits very irritating. If you would like a sharper taste, I'd recommend you to add the syrup to taste - but remember: frozen ice cream will always taste less sweet than the base is. Enjoy!

Milk and Cookies' Orange yoghurt cake

Oh. Food porn is no good.

I have to admit I have been cooking more often than the usual, since I started this blog. So often, in fact, that I now purposedly oblige myself not to, when it's a day when I'm not in charge for diner. If I'm counting right, five of the last dishes I cooked came from fellow bloggers - minus a delicious raspberry sherbet I will write about later.

I knew I would be making Jenjen's cake as soon as I saw it's picture. I bake yoghurt cakes every once in awhile, but mine tend to be on the (very) heavy side. I figured trying out recipes from other food obsessed people would be interesting. Now, about the results...

I thought there would be too much sugar for the batter but it was perfect. Same thing with the zest - the whole house smelled terrific - although I will probably cut it down to one orange and a half to work with next time. The texture was half cake-ish on the sides and flan-like in the middle, like my previous yoghurt cakes. I think I overworked it to get rid of the lumps... I'll have to watch out. I'm thinking of replacing the regular flour by the self-raising kind, and add an extra teaspoon of baking powder (instead of the required two).

But all in all, it was very tasty. Excellent with a side of yoghurt.

Hamburger buns - the war is on

Here in Belgium, people mostly cook sausages (especially merguez), kebabs and (more recently) spare ribs on their barbecues. The difference with the states has always intrigued me. I think that because hamburgers are more of an occasional thing that we tend to overlook them on the grill.

My sister and I are planning to do a barbecue soon - the occasion to try a couple of beef patties on our new Weber. I want to make great burgers. 'Woah!' burgers, to be precise. Which is why need THE perfect bun recipe, that will make us forget McDonald's forever. I found one here that had raving reviews and made made some last thursday because they didn't need too much time to rise (half an hour but I added an hour before the shaping stage).

The crust was kind of tough so I wrapped them in a kitchen towel when they came out of the oven. The texture was heavy. It was quite difficult to take a bite; the sauces (or even the meat) would slip out if you weren't careful... It had absolutely nothing to do with what I had in mind. They were quite decent toasted for breakfast the following morning, with cherry jam.

My quest for sweet, fluffy buns has officially began.

My ice cream making parcours - part two

I realized that good ice cream wasn't about the machine itself, but about finding the good recipes. Ice Cream... was full of inspiring pictures and had flavors I had never heard of in Europe (Rocky road, banana/toffee,...) and quite funky sounding ones (bay leaf/macaroon, strawberry/lavender) as well as tons of decoration tips, cookies, and all. The batches were small enough to fit into the machine but we would get a couple of very satisfying scoops.

A side effect was an increasing lack of interest for commercial ice creams and frozen desserts. Besides Ola's vanilla Fermette, we very rarely buy any. Their flashy packages poorly masked the lack of taste. We had to turn to imported ones. Haagen Dasz wasn't that special - not special enough to be that expensive, that is. We found our bonheur in Ben and jerry's.

My sister and I drooled for months in front of the video store's freezers once we found out they sold them. They aren't available in general supermarkets (though a quick visit to the belgian B&J site just now informed me that Carrefour is starting to selling them this very month!). We picked the whackiest flavor they had - I can't find it in their flavor graveyard, but I remember it had fudge, chocolate and marshmallow bits, marshmallow swirl with a chocolate ice cream base... or something. That was... overwhelming. But great! We chose simpler (dare I say wiser?) ones after that. : grins :

My ice cream making parcours - part one

Don't get me wrong. I have always loved ice cream - and I still do. Somehow, my mother's purchase of an ice cream machine a few years back (I don't recall seeing her using it) has completely changed my view on frozen desserts.

We started small, with the machine's booklet. It used to puzzle me. I would flip through it's pages, wondering how the end results would be like because I couldn't consider using that many eggs, or that ingredient. Basically, our sorbetière was used to get rid of the too numerous raspberries that grew in the backyard when we were getting tired of making jam. After a failed attempt at following one of those received recipes, our trick began to purée the fruits, sieve them, add sugar and a random amount of yoghurt. This resulted on ubersour rock hard sherbets (somehow, we always managed to eat them all). One day, I don't really remember how, I decided to cook the coulis before working with it. It was a little better but still not what I wanted. I eventually tried two recipes in there (vanilla and chocolate, I think) but gave up anyway because those micro batches called for too many ingredients.

I spent a month in Montréal, at an aunt's in the summer of 2001. We were having a great time trying new food - especially oreos and New York-style pizza -, checking out bookstores. A couple of days before flying back to Belgium, I found this awesome book called Ice Cream and Iced Desserts by Joanna Farrow/Sara Lewis, and bought it straight away because it was cheap, in english and had metric and volume measurements. The pictures were so elegant - and intimidating as well, but I bought it anyway.

Char siew bao

After looking for the kind that wouldn't need too many ingredients and a trip to the asian supermarket, I finally got down to work. The recipe is from My Lunch Can Beat Up Your Lunch! and will give you 24 buns.

I used milk for extra softness. The dough was surprisingly enjoyable to work with. I cannot emphase enough on the use of waxed paper - it gets very sticky when they rise. I filled some of the buns with the meat recipe provided by the same site.

I was expecting extra-fluffy and uber-nice but I certainly didn't expect them to taste so good. And I mean GO(O)D. The texture was fluffy and a bit chewy, the bun itself was perfectly sweet. The filling complimented it so well. I had never, ever tasted anything like it. I like to think of it as eating yummy, warm and delicate clouds! I was enjoying them so much my sister kept giving weird looks (^-^)

I may post a couple of pictures later if I find our digital camera before eat them all. Heh.

: edit : My younger brother glomped them before I even opened the fridge.