Blueberry Ice Cream

Although the candy cane ice cream is by far our favorite, the blueberry ice cream (which I'd never seen made before) was really good also.  We don't normally buy blueberries, they are a bit sour for me, but the kids begged me and they were on sale, buy one get one free, so we got them, and then no one ate them.  Since I have this awesome, brand new ice cream maker and I couldn't let the blueberries go to waste, I thought, why not turn it into ice cream.  I did a search on the internet and came across a recipe from the same person who posted the candy cane ice cream!  I knew it would be really good and I was not disappointed.  The only thing I did different was after blending.  Because I used a smoothie blender which purposely has a dull blade to keep the the smoothie thicker, it did not chop up the skins of the blueberries.  I used a very small strainer and pushed the mix through the strainer and as you can see it got out most, but not all of the skins.  I was okay with this, I think it added to the flavor and the visual effect.  And even more beautiful was the amazing purple color the ice cream turned from the blueberries.

Candy Cane Peppermint Ice Cream

For Christmas we got an awesome cuisinart ice cream maker and we have been making ice cream like it was going out of style.   So far we've made vanilla, chocolate custard, strawberry kiwi sorbet from fresh fruit, and candy cane Peppermint Ice Cream which is by far our favorite.  We had so many left over candy canes and usually they get thrown out, but not this year!  I found this recipe and was really drawn in by her beautiful photos.   The ice cream turned out just like store bought only better.  It was incredibly rich and sweet and we loved how the candy canes turned the ice cream pink!   Here is the Recipe. Although my photos aren't nearly as awesome as the recipe 's,  I thought maybe you'd want photos of the process and final result. 

Icing Trials

I made 3 different batches of icing today and have been trying to teach myself to decorate cakes.  It is so much harder than it looks in all the tutorials and youtube videos!  Here are all of my failed attempts from today.  I guess on this project, practice is going to have to make perfect cause I'm not getting it the first several batches that I've tried.

Buttercream icing roses turned out more like cabbages hah!  They were so flat, I don't know yet what I did wrong here.

these are supposed to be apple blossoms and it is just a table of complete mess.

These were supposed to be swirl drop flowers out of buttercream but no matter how many I made, I couldn't get it to work.  These things still look cool though, whatever they are.

These are made out of royal icing and although they are cool looking, they were completely 2 dimensional, I was trying to make regular roses.  the smaller "flowers" if you can call them that were supposed to be apple blossoms but I couldn't figure out that technique either.  They do look quite a bit better after drying.  When they were wet, they just looked like messy blobs.

This was after I gave up on flowers altogether and tried to use up the rest of the royal icing with the only technique I've mastered...the swirl.  Still haven't figured out how to make the leaves have just one point.  When I pull away, they always have 2.  I've kind of figured out if I pull up sometimes they have one point like normal.  I think with more practice I'll get the leaf figured out.

Covering oreos with marshmallow fondant.  That was so hard!  It wanted to wrinkle at the bottom even if I cut it to size.  Trimming the extra off was difficult too.

Oh what a mess.  If the boyfriend came home 10 minutes sooner to this mess, he would have had a cow!

Added embellishments from a previous decorations practice, those were royal icing I think.

These stacked oreos look like baby cakes,  the photos make it look better than it looks in real life.  Its very sloppy.

I got the cookie crumbs and icing all over the white fondant

My poor attempt at piping, broke when I put it on top.  I also cut the fondant too small and it didn't wrap around the cookie.  Fail.

More cabbages.

More practices to come and hopefully some successes to report!

Marshmallow Fondant Trials

Recently I have been teaching myself how to decorate cakes.  I decided to try fondant, but I know nothing about it.  I have never even tasted fondant but it always looks so pretty so I thought I'd try it.  I found several recipes for Marshmallow fondant here , here and here although all the recipes seem relatively the same, the comments where helpful and all of the reviews said it was easy and tasted great, so I was sold!

So far it was a very easy project.  The biggest lesson I learned the hard way was to not use Crisco when I dug my hands into the dough.  It was quite comical trying to get it back off my hands again.  Definitely use Crisco on your hands when mixing.  The other big difference was that most people used a kitchen aid mixer with the dough mixer/hook and I don't have a Kitchen Aid but that was no problem, just helped build a little muscle!

Supplies...and big mess.

Put some Crisco in a bowl on the side so you can dip your fingers in as needed

Sticky sticky sticky mess.  Mix most of the sugar into the bowl, makes less mess later

Finally done and I impatiently had to wait overnight to play with it

Very 1st attempts at roses.  I had to hang it upside down to keep the petals from falling too much.  Using the right amount of water to get them to stick was key.

Started small by attempting to cover an oreo.  Was not easy. 

This is where I stopped for now.  I am sure there will be more to come!