Some of you will recall I started a Great Cake Baking Project a while back, intending to bake one of each of the cakes in my 80 year old cookbook. The very first cake, an angel food cake, turned out somethig more of an angel food doughnut: it tasted fine right out of the oven, but I’d overwhipped it and it was flat. Well, having all these leftover egg whites from making custard for ice cream, I figured I should try it again. Except having just moved, I have no…
French Vanilla Ice Cream 4 egg yolks 1/3 c sugar 1.5 c cream vanilla to taste pinch of salt Mix egg yolks and sugar at a high speed until they’ve thickened to a lovely light yellow and make ribbons when you draw the beaters out and across the surface of the mixture. Scald the cream. Remove from heat when a perfect scald is reached. Add salt and vanilla. (I judged the vanilla by the mixture’s smell, and would guess I used 2-3 tablespoons. But that’s a guess.) Drizzle the scalded…
When I was a kid, we used to go down to Homer for the 4th of July. Loads of us, extended theatre family types. Lots of kids, lots of adults, lots of mosquitoes. Fireworks you couldn’t see, because the sun doesn’t go down in Alaska in July. Wading in the slough and getting clay up to your knees and convincing each other that the mothers wouldn’t notice. Picking Alaska cotton and tickling each other with the fluff. Running up the solid mud road to the cousins who had running water,…