Saturday, August 20, 2016

Black Cherry and Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

Hi everybody! The Fresh Pioneer is back with a fun summer recipe. But first, a silly picture. (I'm wondering if this will be the screen grab for the post, haha. That would be great!) Anyway, we walk along the river in the evenings and came upon this field of... toilets. 
Apparently, this retirement home is renovating, but the image was so funny, especially to our elementary aged boys. "Ahhh, summer, when toilets are finally ripe for the picking."
  I also have to share this funny picture of my seven year old reading. It's so "summer" to read in an inner tube with goggles. LOL
 So, our peaches are ripe!
                                             
For a while, every day he'd go out with a basket and come back with a few tomatoes and peaches. Now, we need about five grocery bags.
                                            
We leave them on the tree as long as possible so that friends can come and pick what they like.
 We had old friends from Idaho visit this past weekend and my fifteen year old made a peach cobbler...
 And a huckleberry one (that was my favorite!)...
 And a blueberry one. It looks like all the fruit sunk to the middle, but it was nicely distributed.
                                  
Oh, it was delicious. I forget how amazing huckleberries are. We have blueberries most of the time, but huckleberries have such a unique flavor.
 We also made pasta salad. Only sharing because it's sooo prettttyyyyyyy. We also made a roast chicken with potatoes, gravy, corn, fruit salad, etc. Good food and great friends over, can it get any better?
 Random pictures of the garden before I get to the ice cream. Black bell peppers! They tasted pretty good once they ripened. I had one before it was done and thought it was bitter. But they were actually okay.
 Purple tomatoes. They're really called "black beauties" or some such but they're not exactly black. :D
 The tomatillos are growing! This is the source of all our salsa verde and green chile pork stew through the winter. MMMMMM....
 I'm excited to pick these banana peppers and stuff them with herbed cream cheese, then fry!
 It's been a great year for cantaloupe. Not anything like Ruthy's farm but I'm proud of these little guys.
 I'm not actually sure what this is...
 Pumpkins!!
 Little guys wanted me to take this picture of a "beauty" hidden under a spider web.
 I can't remember what heirloom variety this is but it's getting interesting.
 And the sunflowers! I love these giant sunflowers that grow bigger than your head!
 OK... so finally to the recipe! And there was something awry with my camera so it's a bit fuzzy. This is the final photo and it was so hot the ice cream was melting as I took the picture. The recipe is a general ice cream recipe tweaked for maximum deliciousness!

Ingredients:
one and a half cups chopped and pitted Bing or other sweet cherry
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1 1/3 cup heavy cream (I used half and half, still good!)
1/2 cup sugar
dash of lemon juice
1/4 cup chopped dark chocolate (I used chips)

Some add the chopped fruit directly to the cream, sugar, milk mixture, or they heat the cream and cherries altogether to make a dark purple ice cream (very pretty!). We've done it both ways, but I like this way the best: I like to make it into a syrup first. Add 1/4 cup sugar, cherries, and lemon juice to a sauce pan on medium heat (stirring constantly) until cherries are semi dissolved and the mixture is thick and bubbly. Let cool for about 30 minutes.
Mix the cream, milk, 1/2 cup sugar in a pan and heat on low until the sugar is combined. Pour into a form or mold. Place into the freezer for one hour or until lightly set. Fold the cherry mixture in, letting it fall gently into the ice cream. Let freeze overnight. Each slice should have a delicious ribbon of cherry goodness!

 That's all for now! A few last photos of my grandfather's typewriter. He was raised on the border of Arizona, the son of a border patrolman and fluent in Spanish from childhood. He knew from his teens that he wanted to be a veterinarian and to raise money for school, he wrote and translated letters for the illiterate city residents.
Note how there are the "enya" and upside down question mark keys! So wonderful to see this and remember how much he loved typing out stories. I have dozens of letters from him from my college years and early on in my marriage.

Everyone have a wonderful weekend and stop by my facebook author pages Mary Jane Hathaway, Virginia Carmichael, or my blog The Things That Last!

13 comments:

  1. What a harvest of delicious photos. :-) So much going on down your way. The field of toilets...I guess it's true what they say --if you have a green thumb you can grow anything! LOL I'm truly jealous of your garden. Truly. Hopefully next year for me...but I'll never be able to grow my own peaches up here.

    I thought you had to have an ice cream maker to make ice cream. My favourite ice cream of all time was the cherry custard I used to get as a kid so this one looks really appealing. And it would probably taste better if eaten from inside an inner tube. :-)

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  2. Oh, those potties remind me of that scene in the movie THE HELP.

    All those wonderful fruits. If I have one regret about leaving Colorado, it's sunflowers. Can't grow them here.

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  3. Mary Jane, this is beyond awesome! The pics are Pioneer Woman pretty (you brat) and I love the toilet pic, too! Yes, Tina's right "The Help" such a funny scene!

    I love making ice cream and we haven't done it once this summer. Shame on me. Now I am inspired!!!

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    1. I just made peach sorbet from a recipe I saw on facebook. WHY do I try recipes from facbook? It said a can of sweetened condensed milk. Now, I've made sorbet before and it didn't have milk, but derrr, I tried it anyway.
      YUCK. Like peaches with sweetened condensed milk all over them. Lesson learned!

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    2. I agree... I'm not a sweetened condensed milk fan... it tastes weird to me. But some folks love it! This is something we have in common, Mary Jane!!!!

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    3. I like to make caramel from it (boil the unopened can in a pot of water for three hours) but otherwise... No. It tastes chalky and leaves an unpleasant residue. Blah!

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  4. I'm green with garden envy! Beautiful produce!

    And the ice cream - I've never tried to make it without churning it in a freezer, but yours looks great.

    The typewriter is perfect. What a great heirloom!

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    1. And it's a small garden year before we're in the middle of a drought and decided to buy more produce than grow it this summer. But yay for heirloom deliciousness!

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    2. Years ago Lacey bought me an ice cream maker, an electric one. I'll have to get it out after Nashville and play with it. It's amazing, you freeze the bowl (there's a liquid panel between the sides, and then you pour your recipe in and plug it in... And when it's done, it's done. No ice crystals, no nothin'. It's just pure, custardy, just-made deliciousness. And it's the kind of machine that people sell at garage sales ALL THE TIME because they don't use it. Like my deep fryers. Beth has found me two back-ups for when one goes down... one for $15 and one for $10 and they're brand new, at a third of the price they would have been. Or less. She loves bargain hunting!

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    3. And the drought hit here too, hence the 140 milk gallons and 6 or 700 feet of hose to help the corn. But now we've had two good rains and that takes the stress off.

      YES!!!!

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    4. We had an ice cream maker just like that for years an loved it! I don't know why we didn't get a new one when it broke. I think because it never made very much, only a pint or so, an for 8 or more people, that just didn't work!

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