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.

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)