I made the big G a vanilla bean cake with mocha frosting and my aunt bought a strawberry shortcake. So grandma had to do double duty blowing out candles.

I didn’t have any of the strawberry shortcake (not my fave kind of cake), but my cake was indeed super delicious. Not bad for whipping it up the night before!

I was trying to replicate the flavor of the ices they sell at the Hackensack Pastry Shop. My mom grew up in Hackensack and whenever we’re in the vicinity we stop for ices, but we haven’t been for years. I don’t know if I quite managed to duplicate the Hackensack Pastry Shop’s Italian Ices, but my mom loves it.

I really enjoyed making ices. It’s quicker, cheaper, and easier than making ice cream. And it really hits the spot on a hot day. Next I’m going to try making watermelon.

Here’s the Recipe

Lemon Italian Ice

ingredients

2 cups sugar
5 cups water
4-5 lemons juiced and finely zested
fresh mint for garnish

yield: about 6 cups

instructions

1. Combine the water and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Let it simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes. (Note: Congrats, you just made a simple syrup!)
2. Stick the sugar water mixture in the fridge for a couple of hours until it’s cold.
3. Add the lemon juice and zest to the sugar water. If you like your ices super lemony, like me, then use 5 lemons. Otherwise go with 4. Not sure? Add the juice and zest from 4 and give it a taste.
4. Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and use as directed by the manufacturer. Check the capacity of your ice cream maker. If it can’t do 6 cups you might need to do this in 2 batches.
5. Once the ice cream maker has made you ice into a semi solid, scrape it into a freezer safe container and cover. Freeze it until hardened.Garnish with fresh mint.

notes

If you don’t have an ice cream machine, I have read that you can freeze this in a pan then break it up and stick it in a food processor or blender before serving. I’ve never tried this though. I highly recommend getting an ice cream maker. My first one cost $20 at Target and worked great.

The next course was cream scones. I made adorable mini ones that I served with Devonshire double cream, raspberry preserves, and sweetened whipped cream and marscapone cheese.

Dessert was citrus poppy cake with cream cheese frosting and cream filled strawberries. They were filled with the sweetened whipped cream and marscapone. I had some left over after filling all the strawberries and figured it would make a nice scone topping.

I served two kinds of Rishi Tea – Earl Grey and Golden Yunnan. It was perfect weather for an afternoon tea as it was on the cool side while still being comfortable enough to be outside enjoying the sunshine and the late spring garden.

I also managed to score some sweet tea cups and dishes at Homegoods. I got 4 cups and saucers for $7 in the clearance section. I bought 2 sets.

Cardamom scones with Lemon icing and Cranberry and Walnut Scones. I’m eating a cardamom scone right now with some Rishi Earl Grey. Perfection.

I started off using Grandma’s Chocolate Cake recipe from Cake & Commerce. It was delicious. One of the nice things about it is that it uses vegetable oil instead of butter so it’s easy to make it last minute. My butter is always in the freezer so if I have an immediate cupcake baking need it means waiting a few hours for it to soften or doing some work to speed it along.

That recipe doesn’t have instruction for cupcakes, but I filled each with 1/4 cup of batter and baked for 25 minutes on 350°. The cupcakes shrunk slightly but rose to have a nice little dome. It yielded just over 2 dozen cupcakes.

I decided to do a mint frosting. Rather than doing a regular buttercream, I used a white chocolate butter cream base and my modified recipe is below

. I’m just not feeling regular buttercream any more. The white chocolate buttercream is tasty without being cloyingly sweet. It’s also stiffens up a bit so that you don’t mess up your icing. That’s great if you plan to transport your cupcakes!

White Chocolate Mint Buttercream Frosting

yield 2 3/4 cups

Ingredients

• 2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, softened
• 12 ounces white chocolate
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract (do not use mint)

I mostly followed the recipe but I added at least double the garlic and replaced the onion salt with some chopped onions. I did chicken, shrimp and steak and a bunch of onions and peppers and there were no leftovers!

I had no idea cumin was used so much in Mexican cooking.

Santa got me a new ice cream maker for Christmas. My the freezing gel disk on my old one got corroded so I threw it away. Anyway I also got the Ben & Jerry’s cookbook. My first batch had to be my favorite flavor – Mint Chip. I used the Sweet Cream base but I scalded the milk/cream so that it would cook the eggs a bit. Then I added 2 teaspoons of mint extract. I melted a cup of chocolate chips and as the ice cream was almost set I drizzled it in. I was going for the Turkey Hill style of mint chip.

The ice cream turned out really good except for one thing. I used mint extract which is combination of peppermint and spearmint. I don’t really like spearmint and it’s not the right flavor for mint chip ice cream. I also made some choux and chocolate sauce to make profiteroles. It turned out yummy!

Back on topic. I have an idea for this year. I want to put together a family cookbook. My mom has lots of recipes in various books and in her computer and I have my own copies of some. But I think it would be great to put an actual book of our favorite recipes together and give everyone a copy. You can make amazing hardcovered books for a reasonable price on sites like blurb these days.

So the plan is when we cook these recipes we’re going to have to make sure we get some nice photos. I figure we’ll do the books for christmas so that gives us about 11 months.

I need to think up ideas for lettuceless salads.