Monday, July 20, 2009

Are we gonna die?

Wow! Just shy of having a two month lapse here on the blog. Sometimes life just gets in the way. And this is going to be photo-less (!!!).

A few weeks back, Cara shared this recipe she had come across for Brown Butter Ice Cream. She was hoping someone with an ice cream maker would make some for her. I love to make and eat ice cream and am no stranger to butter, browned or otherwise, so I jumped at the idea. Okay, I initially jumped and then after several occasions of having all the ingredients but never having the time or forethought to do the cooking part, I finally got my act together and made it last Friday. I figured I would make it first for myself to test and then again for Cara.

The results: A good custard recipe with the nutty aroma and flavor of brown butter. It turned out nice and thick. R and I each had a small bowl and after a couple spoonfuls, the words "Are we gonna die?" were uttered in all seriousness. Sadly, it was not, "Are we gonna die from eating a whole batch of butter ice cream in one sitting because it is so good?" It was, "Are we gonna die because I can already feel a 1/4" layer of butter on the roof of my mouth and can only imagine how my arteries are going to look if I take one more bite."

If you like to eat butter by the spoonful, this recipe is for you! Otherwise, I caution against getting your hopes up for this one. We just couldn't stomach the grease. Maybe I did it wrong since the author of that article seems pretty confident in it's yumminess.

Afterthoughts: I'm wondering if you could get the brown butter flavor without the greasy mouth by pouring off most of the melted butter before adding it to the mix and just using primarily the browned bits. Seems a bit wasteful, but so is contaminating an otherwise good batch of ice cream.

Also, I initially thought that the 1/2 cup of butter in the recipe was a reasonable amount, but in the end this seemed to make much less than your average homemade ice cream recipe and so turned out to be a lot of butter per serving (provided you can actually eat a normal size serving, which I doubt).

I considered using the remaining ice cream on top of waffles on Sunday morning, but we just couldn't do it. I would offer up the remaining ice cream to anyone who wants to try it, but we both dumped our half eaten bowlfuls back into the main batch. If you don't mind our saliva, come on over.

Since I'm not sure I can bring myself to make this again, I'm willing to lend you my ice cream maker, Cara. I think I'm going to keep my brown butter far away from my ice cream for now.

3 comments:

Amanda said...

What a bummer! Saturday night, when we were out for dinner we had the most amazing dessert. Homemade Italian vanilla gelatto served with this special extra virgin olive oil and salt. It was the most unusual and wonderful flavor combination. we were warned not to try it with Breyers and Bertolli at home.

Cara said...

oh NO!!!!!! how upsetting.... i'm sorry you wasted your time with it. i guess it was good in theory but not in reality.

now i think i need to drive to bedford to try the dessert amanda speaks of...

Unknown said...

I'm kind of gagging reading your review. Ugh.

Onto better flavors!