As much as I love to hate on Sandra Dee, she of Semi-Homemade Cooking on the Food Network, for her freaking looks, her weird way of talking, and the fact that she doesn't actually cook much of the things on her show, I have to say that I totally pulled a Sandra Dee this afternoon. For Christmas, I got this awesome ice cream maker. I wanted one for a while, but never had the get-up-and-go to actually purchase one. Then my parents started bugging me about what I wanted for Christmas.
I think you reach a certain age and there just aren't things you want anymore for Christmas. And if you want them, they are not always things you can ask your parents to take care of. I wanted to tell them they could just pay part of my bills one month and I would be happy. My dad is the kind of parent that thinks Christmas and birthdays are for just getting things you would never, ever get, that you can get a little extravagant with these gifts. But he didn't want to pay my bills. My mom is of the kind that either you get something, and if you want nothing, you get nothing. But she felt a little bad, I think, about not getting something so then she asked me what I wanted. And I told them I wanted an ice cream maker.
The love I have for chips of almost any variety is almost unparalleled. Except by ice cream. Both of these loves, I am convinced, are inherited from each of my parents. They both love chips and ice cream in major ways. I sometimes wondered where my desire and love for these things came from, and it wasn't until this very moment when I realized that it is totally from my parents. We had an ice cream maker when we were kids. I don't remember how often we used it, but we pulled that thing, literally, out of the attic every now and then.
Folks in my family loved some homemade peach ice cream. My grandpa, RIP Papa, would make this in the summer time for them with his ice cream maker. I hated that stuff. I thought it was disgusting. The kind of ice cream I liked came in a box from the store. This may be why my parents never made homemade much for us. I could be a bit of a little diva some times. But we had homemade ice cream every now and then, and even if the taste never made a memory for me beyond nasty, I feel like there are very distinct sense memories around the making of ice cream.
All of this is to say, I wanted an ice cream maker. I didn't know which kind, or what price, or even what color. This made purchasing one hard to do because I just said, "I want an ice cream maker." My dad got me a blu-ray player. And my mom got me a John Grisham book. I guess I wasn't very clear because they both complained of not knowing what kind I wanted or where to even find one. My mom said she found some that were $40 and others that were $700. I guess when the range is that varied, some direction may help. Being more clear is something I am working on. The folks also gave me some cash, so I used that to buy the ice cream maker.
In what I feel like is a stroke of culinary luck, I found the same ice cream maker as one of my sheroes, Ina Garten. If it's good enough for the Barefoot Contessa, clearly, it is good enough for me. Except that mine is red, and her's is white. The first batch of ice cream I made was some cake batter. It's one of Ben's favorites and the recipe was pretty easy. We've gone through two or three iterations of this recipe, each one getting a little bit closer to what they dip out at the Coldstone. Once, I made it almost entirely with half-and-half. If you know anything about cooking, of which I know only a little, you can't really substitute half-and-half for milk. But that's what I did. It turned out okay. I think our bodies are still recovering from it, though.
The flavor I was most excited about was recreating the salted caramel from Bi-Rite Creamery in San Francisco. It tastes exactly like it sounds, and it will blow your mind. I found a recipe online. I would post it here, but I think it kind of sucks even though I keep trying to make it work. The first time we made it, Ben helped me. Whenever I set out to cook something, I follow the recipe. Almost to a fault because I do every step as it says, and all at the same time. For this one, you first have to make the caramel sauce. Then it says to get the milk and cream boiling. It doesn't say that you should pay attention to the caramel sauce in case it burns or doesn't even melt. Recipes don't tell you the things you need to do, like "Make the sauce first. Once it is done, move on to step two." They make it seem so easy, like you can just do it all at once and it all gets done easily and beautifully. It's not like that at all. Well, with Ben's help we got the first batch of the salted caramel together in a tasty way. It was so good.
The past two times, on my own, I have tried to do it and it just didn't seem to work. And all of it is to blame on the caramel sauce. I sort of know what I am doing when I set out to make ice cream at this point, but I am definitely only making the sauce and nothing else when I start. Each of this two times the sauce burns and tastes disgusting. The first time this happened I made it all the way to the end step, where you are dipping out the ice cream to eat when you watch "Chelsea Lately". Well, since the caramel was burned, it didn't really work. I convinced myself that it wasn't the caramel sauce that tasted metallic, it was just the pan it came from. And then that it was just the spoon I was using to taste the sauce. The consistency of this sauce compared to the first was nothing alike. It was liquid-y, and full of these little weird floaty things. I don't know, but it was nasty. Ben's face when he tried the second round was a little priceless.
I decided over the weekend that I was done fooling around. I went to the grocery store and just bought a jar of caramel sauce. A jar of it. This is the very kind of thing that Sandra Dee does. I feel so dirty, like I work for a company that supply school cafeterias with those weird pizzas that have those little nuggets of what could be sausage or maybe pepperonis. As if I was fooling the world into thinking that this ice cream was all of my own doing. I don't like Sandra Dee because I feel like she is a bit of a farce, trying to pull fast-ones on her guests. That is Rotell, lady! You didn't chop those peppers and tomatoes!
But then I kind of got over it when I put everything together and it was so much easier than making your own sauce. It remains to be seen if the ice cream will be good, but the mixture I tasted over the last few hours does not taste like spoon! I guess it's not so bad to sometimes buy things. Whatever. I am not Sandra Dee.
Jon
