New icecream maker

I've been slowly recovering from a bit of a cold bug, and it seems the only thing that is helping me recover is trying new recipes. I finally used 2 amazing gifts that I've left untouched since I received them.



The first is a shiny icecream maker attachment for the kitchenaid! It is super-easy to use, and I was able to start using it within a day oftaking it out of the box. The bowl had to spend a night in the freezer to get it ready, but that was really all the prep needed. I've already popped out 2 batches of ice cream, and I'm in love! I made a batch of nuetella ice cream first, and it was so easy that I went on to make a batch of darm chocolate peanut butter too. I think that may be my favorite rish dessert now. I used the same recipe, stolen from chocolate & zuccini (who was apparently thinking the same thing) for each:



1.5 cups nutella (or all natural dark chocolate peanut butter spread)
1 can evaporated milk



Whisk the 2 together until smooth.
Cover and refrigerate blend about an hour.
Whisk lightly and pour into ice cream maker.

Churn until done.


The nutella took longer (I think because it was less dense to begin with) - it took about 30-40 minutes. I think this is more of a normal time.


The dark chocolate peanut butter only took about 15 minutes. This could be because of the denseness, and/or because of the fact that I left in the fridge a little longer. Next time, I do think that I'll try to lighten it up a little. While I loved it, I think that it would be way to rich for most people.





Of course, ice cream is not nearly as amazing if it doesn't have baked goods to accompany it! I pulled out one of my new favorite recipies - a brown sugar pound cake. Normally I'd make it with pecans, but I had a bunch of walnuts and used them instead. It's a Southern Living Recipe. I love it with the tiny exception that I was the recipe was scaled back a bit. I don't have a single dish that can hold the full amount of batter that this makes. And rather than learn from my mistakes, I keep trying to get it all to fit, which results in a very dirty oven. One day, maybe I'll learn.





After cleaning out the oven, I finally tried another of my gifted toys - a madeline pan from Williams-Sonoma. Purr. (This also gave me a great chance to use my new dish.) I found a nice, basic recipe on cooks.com, and went to work. The recipe left out adding in the vanilla, so I may have added it later thanI should have, and I wasn't sure how to fold in solid butter (although maybe it should have been done more like a croissant, which would have made it more flaky?), so I melted the butter first.





I've never actually had madelines before, but I think they came out OK. They tasted cakey, and I'm assuming that's normal. I also though the flavor was a little lacking. They smelled wonderful, but the actual taste didn't quite live up, for me. To have any real idea of how mine turned out, I think I'm going to have to sample someone else's.