Tag: French

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Thomas Keller’s Caramel Ice Cream

making ice cream
making ice cream
Any ice cream churn will do.

Sometimes we make a bunch of things that require only egg whites, and we’re left with a lot of egg yolks. Egg yolks are more difficult to deal with: they don’t freeze as well as the whites, and it seems as if there are fewer recipes available, so, we generally just make ice cream. We know, we know, but we suffer through, just for our fellow scratchers. This time we decided to test out the Caramel Ice Cream recipe from Thomas Keller’s cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home.

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Lyonnaise Onion Soup

Lyonaise Onion Soup
Lyonaise Onion Soup
A good use for a surfeit of onions.

The other day, we noticed that some of our onions were starting to go bad. Not really bad, as in, you have to throw them out, but just getting soft, or needing several layers peeled off before use. To us, that meant we needed to find a use for a lot of onions, fast. We trimmed a couple and placed them in a bag in the refrigerator to use later in the week and selected out the ones that looked the best for later use, but, we still had three medium onions to use, ideally that day. We thought about Alsace Onion Tart, but then we remembered we had a recipe that covered two French onion soups, a Normandy Onion Soup, and this one, Lyonnaise Onion Soup. Don’t worry, fellow scratcher, we’ll tell you how to make both.

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Lemon Poppy Seed Pound Cake Bites

lemon poppy seed pound cake bites
lemon poppy seed pound cake bites
Just a bite, please!

We were going to make loaves of Lemon Poppy Seed Pound Cake for the church coffee hour and slice them for serving. It would be a bit easier in preparation, but those savings would just transfer to more difficultly later. Instead, we decided to make what we’re calling pound cake bites, basically mini cakes made in mini-muffin tins. If you want to make this pound cake as loaves, it’s pretty easy.

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Almond-Hazelnut Praline Paste

hazelnut-almond praline paste
hazelnut-almond praline paste
A delicious pastry staple.

This is another expensive ingredient that we needed for a dessert we’re making. So, rather than just buying some praline paste — probably online, where we’d have to pay shipping and wait days — we decided we’d try to make some, instead. It turns out to be pretty easy, and all it uses are nuts, sugar, and some vanilla. Let’s scratch some up!

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Feuilletine

home-made fueilletine
home-made fueilletine
Make fueilletine at home and save!

So, what is feuilletine? It’s a simple, crunchy, crispy wafer that you break apart into small pieces and add to certain pastries or candies to give them a little texture and crunch. We’d guess that commercial bakers probably use this stuff by the shovelful when they make up special desserts. And, since they use it in large quantities, they probably just buy it.

We happened to need just a small amount for a special dessert (you’ll see what it is later this week) we’re making, and we looked online to see if we could buy some. Talk about sticker shock! This stuff is pricey. We’re talking over a dollar an ounce. Maybe we can make some, instead.

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Irish Cups o’ Cream

Irish Cups o' Cream
Irish Cups o' Cream
Smooth, cool, creamy!

Well, these probably aren’t really Irish; we tend to think that they’re more French, but we’ll call them Irish, anyway. We think that most people from Ireland might have at least a wee taste.

We came up with the idea for these as a possible dessert for the upcoming holidays, and, naturally, we had to try them first. We’d surely hate to make them for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and have a dessert we don’t like.

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Pistachio Ameretti

pistachio ameretti
pistachio ameretti
Sorry we didn’t get a final photo; we had to run.

As regular readers know, we make small treats to bring down to our Monday evening walk on the nights we volunteer. It gives us the chance to try new recipes and see how the other volunteers like them. But, we often feel badly because there are a few people who don’t eat anything with gluten, and almost everything we make involves flour. Now, we could get gluten-free all-purpose flour, but we prefer finding recipes that are naturally gluten-free, at least when we can. So, when we saw this recipe in Ciao Biscotti, by Domenica Marchetti, we figured we’d give it a whirl.

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