Pumpkin Gingerbread Sandwiches

My love for pumpkin and spices overtook my senses, and I just had to make these little sandwiches. And boy am I glad I did! My waistline may have suffered, but my taste buds delighted! I adapted the ice cream from one I found on Williams Sonoma, and the cookie dough was the same from my previous entry.

Pumpkin Ginger Icecream
1 cup pumpkin
1 cup cream
1 cup milk
walnut sized piece of ginger
3/4 cup brown sugar
5 yolks
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt
pinch nutmeg

In a heavy 2-quart saucepan over medium heat, combine 1 1/2 cups of the cream and 1/2 cup of the brown sugar, and thinly sliced ginger. Cook until bubbles form around the edges of the pan, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, combine the egg yolks, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, the remaining 1/2 cup cream and the remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar. Whisk until smooth and the sugar begins to dissolve.

Remove the cream mixture from the heat. Gradually whisk about 1/2 cup of the hot cream mixture into the egg mixture until smooth. Pour the egg mixture back into the pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon and keeping the custard at a low simmer, until it is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon and leaves a clear trail when a finger is drawn through it, 4 to 6 minutes. Do not allow the custard to boil. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl.

Place the bowl in a larger bowl partially filled with ice water, stirring occasionally until cool. Whisk the pumpkin mixture into the custard. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly on the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until chilled, at least 3 hours or up to 24 hours.

Transfer the custard to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions. Transfer the ice cream to a freezer-safe container. Cover and freeze until firm, at least 3 hours or up to 3 days, before serving. Makes about 1 quart.

Pie Chart

There are a great many things I love about this time of year; such as the gray skies, crisp breezes, the smell of wood smoke (we don't get much of that here, but every now and then...), the crunch of leaves, and fat cinnamon-y apple pie! Tart, spicy, and buttery, with a flaky crust and a ton of fruit, apple pie is a delight to all of the senses.

I'm a big fan of apples in most forms and enjoy either granny smiths with salt, or sweeter apples with sharp cheese. I recently bought some Honeycrips from Trader Joes, and they were well worth the slightly higher price. Few fruits have been as perfect as those tasty little orbs.
The good folks at Pilsbury have put together this super handy chart to help you decide which apples are right for your needs. And with as many options as the stores have right now, I know this will help me out!
Click for a larger (and therefor legible) image.

Gingerbread Owls

It's amazing how as soon as the weather cools off my taste buds start crying out for spicy holiday foods. I thought I'd make use of some of my many many cookie cutters and so I baked up some ginger owls. I made some dachshunds as well, but didn't get around to photographing them before they were all eaten.
I used Martha's recipe, and they were delicious. The day they were baked they were very crispy, but they softened up overnight (which I greatly prefer).

Cowgirl

So if you've never seen Bakerella's site, you my friend are missing out. She did a lovely little post about cowgirl cookie mixes, and they sounded so tasty I had to make some. You can get the recipe on her site, along with some lovely little templates for packaging. I switched the nuts out for some cocoa nibs, and added a little peanut butter. And the results were fabulous!
Oh, I also didn't add m&ms (I didn't really feel like walking to the store) so I added some white chocolate chunks I had lying about. Really, you can throw all manner of things in this cookie. I worked at a place that added bran cereal to a similar cookie, and it was amazing!

The Scoop

I wonder how many ice cream scoops (or portioners) have fallen apart in my hands over the years. The inner scrapping arm is the most common place for things to go wrong. They bend or break free and refuse to return to their former location. The second most frequent place for things to get squiffy is in the lever area. Modern scoops generally have a spring, and those springs are often held in place by little tiny bits of plastic that easily fail, and getting a spring back in place is generally a lost cause. I have even once had the entire head of a scooper pop off while portioning out cookie dough.
Why can't we still make things as well as we use to? I wonder how much less waste this country would have if we didn't constantly have to throw away poorly made objects that break constantly?
I don't think I will have to worry about it at home now. I found these two beauties the other day, and I think I'd need a sledgehammer to mar them.

Wedding

Almost exactly a year after my wedding, I got to make cupcakes our friend who officiated our own wedding ceremony. Isn't that a nice little circle of giving? I thought so. Anyways... they asked me to make one cupcake tower for the groom (as I have known him longer) and they had another friend who is closer to the bride make her tower. As the other baker and I didn't know each other and only met the week of the wedding, there was potential for disaster. But through many an email we worked out a nice complimentary plan of attack and the results were highly praised by all.
I was a fool and forgot my camera, so I snagged these from another attendee's facebook account. I'm looking forward to seeing pictures by the photographer, he went crazy snapping pictures of the cupcakes.

The bride and groom with toppers made by the groom himself.

My contribution. The flavors were jalapeño (requested by both as they had them at my wedding), mocha, and Irish Car Bomb. The tower was made with cake boards lines with unbleached canvas (as the groom and I were classmates at art school), trimmed in ribbon and supported by glass jars filled with flowers and leaves from the property. The jars looked nice and I was proud of the idea, but it was a bad one! The table wasn't level and the tower was highly unstable. Thankfully there were no terrible disasters, but a few cupcakes were lost at one point.

End of Summer Icecream

My latest culinary obsession is ice cream, and man is it a tasty obsession to have! Since there are only two of us I often have to throw away stale baked goods that we just can't (or shouldn't) eat fast enough. So it's nice to make a sweet that will patiently wait in the freezer while we slowly nibble away at it.
I don't have an ice cream maker, and while I would like to get one some day I've found that mixing by hand works quite well. I pour the custard into a wide bowl with a flat bottom (I used a jelly roll pan a few times but I would always mix too vigorously and make a mess), place the bowl in the freezer, and whisk it about every hour or two until it gets nearly frozen all the way through. Then I scoop it out into an old yogurt container and let it finish freezing. Yeah, it's not perfectly smooth, but I don't care! It's amazingly delicious and still better than most store bought ice creams. So there!

Berry Ice Cream

1 1/2c half and half
1c sugar
4 large yolks
1 1 /2c heavy cream
1 2/3c fruit puree (I just mashed equal parts blackberries and raspberries, I like them to be chunky)
1T lemon juice

Warm half and half and sugar in a heavy bottomed pan over a low heat, stirring often until sugar is all dissolved and mixture nearly boils. Remove from heat and slowly temper into the yolks. Return this to the pan and cook over a low heat, stirring constantly with either a whisk or a rubber spatula. Remove from heat when the mixture coats the back of a spoon (I cooked mine a touch too long and it started to curdle, but the end product wasn't affected). Strain into a larger bowl and add the cream, fruit, and juice. Freeze either in an ice cream maker or using my method mentioned above.