COFFEE ICE-CREAM

 

We had locked Danny out in the balcony as Skip was having breakfast. I was at my work desk, whipping out a draft when I heard Skip call out for me, followed by some incoherent sounds.

Lockdown has given me selective deafness and I wondered if it had turned into the actual one. While I wriggled my pinkie in my ear, the calls became frantic. Skip was standing with the plate in his hand, pointing towards the curtain rod adjoining the door that led to the balcony. I kept staring at it, seeing nothing untoward…

…until I heard the word Squirrel. ( I’m getting goosebumps even as I type this out). Those new to my blog may perhaps not know of my extreme fear of critters (including birds) that enter the house. I am at times unable to move in fear and have been known to abandon my baby and run for my dear life when a vicious  magpie, looking to attack only me, entered the house.

I, thankfully had my phone with me. I called my father-in-law and  whilst precious seconds ticked away, having to listen to the recorded, automated message on the importance of vaccination, Skip and I  had our eyes glued on the squirrel. I mustered enough courage to be able to talk in my extremely calm, low-pitched voice (at times like these, I cannot scare people by howling into the phone as soon as they receive the call) and asked him to come up and save us from the squirrel.

What followed was a chaotic chase. Danny had to be let in as the balcony door had to be opened to let the squirrel out. Danny spotted the critter and started barking. The Squirrel jumped on to our bar section and curled up into a ball (it was all an act, I would say). I pulled Skip in front of me as a human shield. My father-in-law, coolly walked into the kitchen, got a long-handled broom and gently prodded the squirrel out of the house. It ran out and jumped on to the jackfruit tree facing our house.

Skip proclaimed I had frightened the Squirrel away.

All in a ‘work from home’ day’s work!

My favourite flavour in ice-cream is coffee and while adding the coffee powder, I wondered if it was enough for the flavour to come through.

Yes, it was!

Oh, how I miss the Corner House Coffee Ice-Cream but I could confidently say this came pretty close to it in taste, if not in texture.

If you do not have heavy cream, you can also use fresh cream. Read up on how to use fresh cream for ice creams on this post – Mango icecream.

Stay home, stay safe and follow me on Facebook and Instagram (Lucidlucent).

COFFEE ICE-CREAM

Ingredients:

Instant coffee powder – 3 gms (2 tsps)

Hot water – 2 tbsps

Heavy cream – 250 gm (1 cup)

Condensed milk – 200 gm (1/2 cup)

Method:

1.     Whip the cream and set aside.

2. Dissolve the coffee powder in hot water. Once cooled, add it to the condensed milk and mix well.

3. Add the whipped cream to the condensed milk mixture and mix until fully combined.

4.     Pour the mixture into the ice-cream tin. You may also additionally pour coffee decoction on the ice cream mixture and swirl it.

5.     Freeze it overnight.

6.     Done.

 

 

 

 

 

OREO ICE CREAM

 

Those easily offended by ‘bad’ words may kindly skip to the recipe.

The ‘F’ word is banned in our house.

We have a child, of an impressionable age at home. He’s 8 years old. I call him Skip in my posts. The other day (when I say the other day, I mean pre-covid days) when I was out, I heard a little boy, who I think was in Standard V, use the F word and my inner 1980s self, went “cheee bad word, I’ll tell your Mummy”. Of course, that’s not what happened, I just gave the child a stiff smile and moved on. This had me wondering if Skip used the word too.

He doesn’t. (Need to put this out soon else my parents who read all my posts will be calling me up even before they finish reading this).

I overheard this conversation between Skip and Sky.

Skip: I know many bad words.

Sky: Uh huhn *and gets back to work*

Skip: verry very bad words.

Sky: Which all?

Skip: *giggles*I don’t want to say.

Sky: You can tell me, I bet I know all those words.

Skip: I can’t.

Sky: Does it rhyme with duck?

Skip: *peals of laughter*

I don’t honestly understand the fascination with the word FUCK anymore. It’s so overused, it’s lost any “appeal” it had. It’s no longer the forbidden word. Apparently 6-year-olds are using it. We need to come up with a new word.

My choice of ‘bad’ words is bloody and shit and when I’m really angry, I use them together. I must confess, when I’m driving, I switch to Hindi.

I must clarify the F word banned in our house currently is FOOD.

That’s one of the few words, the Puppy recognises. Skip now uses our technique on the Puppy. He spells words he doesn’t want Puppy to understand. “Should I bring him his F-O-O-D?”

Summer is on us and it’s time to stock up on ice-cream unless you have a ‘tickle’ in your throat, then please do avoid refrigerated items. Now is not the time to tempt fate.

This recipe follows the same method as the mango ice-cream and Skip says it’s the best ice cream he’s ever eaten !!!

OREO ICECREAM

Ingredients:

Oreo biscuits – 12 + 5

Heavy cream – 250 gm (1 cup)

Condensed milk -   200 gm (1/2 cup)

 

Method:

 

1.    Powder about 12 Oreos in the blender.

2.  Mix the powdered Oreos with the condensed milk. (It will solidify in some time, it’s fine)

3.    Whip the cream.

4.  Add the condensed milk-oreo mixture to the cream and mix until fully combined. (You may also coarsely chop some oreos and mix it in).

5.     Pour the mixture into the ice cream tin. Top it with chopped oreos (minus the cream filing).

6.    Freeze it overnight.

7.  Done. 

 

I do hope you try the ice-cream because it’s fucking good. *cheee, bad word, need to rinse mouth with ice cream*

 

4-INGREDIENT OREO TART

 24.09.2020: The time was 8.30 pm. Post dinner, the three of us had retired into our respective nooks in the house. 

Was it time already for the next blog post? I jumped out of the rickety chair and announced loudly that I would be preparing an Oreo Tart. Skip left his candles and dashed to the kitchen as I started barking out instructions to keep butter out of the freezer, to get Oreos from my ‘hiding place’.

The Oreo Tart has been on my ‘list’ for the longest time. However, I always was short of one ingredient. That night I had all the ingredients. I held Skip by his hand and looked him in the eye and told him that we wouldn’t be eating the tart that night as I had to take pictures of it the next day. Skip asked me to finish the photography before he woke up so he could dig right in upon waking up.

That night, Skip and I lay awake till midnight, thinking about the tart in the fridge after having promised each other that we wouldn’t sneak a bite of it. 

Let’s first start with how simple this is. It requires ONLY 4 ingredients, a little bit of blending, heating and stirring and it’s done. Please use the best quality dark chocolate as its taste will stand out. The filling is silky, smooth, fudgy chocolate on a delightful base of crumbly oreos. I wouldn’t recommend adding any additional toppings (chopped oreos, chocolate shavings) as that may get too sweet.

Make this the previous night and it’s ready to be eaten the next day. Choose the dish according to the quantity, you don’t want to end up with thin slices of the tart.

OREO TART

Ingredients:

Oreo biscuits – 24

Melted butter – 2 tbsp+ 3 tbsp

Cream – 100 gms

Dark chocolate – 100 gms

Roasted, chopped walnuts – ½ cup (optional)

Method:

1.     Crush the biscuits in a blender into a fine powder. Add 2 tbsp melted butter to it and give it a quick whizz.

2.     Grease a dish (I used a 7*5 inch dish) and smooth down the powdered Oreos into it to form the base of the tart. Refrigerate it for half an hour.

3.    In the meantime, prepare the chocolate ganache. Heat cream and 3 tbsp butter until a gentle boil appears. Remove from heat and add chopped chocolate to it. After a few minutes, stir the chocolate until it fully melts.

4.     Add the chopped and roasted walnuts into the ganache. Once the ganache cools, pour it onto the Oreo base.

5.     Refrigerate for a minimum of 5 hours or overnight.

6.     Done.

Recipe Notes:

•       Heavy cream would be ideal. I have used the regular Amul cream and the tart tasted great.

4 INGREDIENT BISCUIT PUDDING

 30.07.2020 : There are numerous biscuit pudding recipes on the internet and I bet they look a whole lot prettier but I can assure you this is the simplest of them all, requires the least number of ingredients and tastes heavenly.

This is another one of my mother’s quick-fix desserts.

You can easily vary the quantities of the ingredients to suit your taste. The three of us do not like our desserts to be too sweet and we enjoy the coffee flavour. The aim is to get the right consistency. Do not let the pudding get too soggy or dry. If you want a mosaic appearance when you slice your pudding, you may lightly crush the biscuits but we enjoy the texture of the fully crushed biscuit as it absorbs more of the liquid.

You may also use Marie biscuits instead of Parle G but I prefer the latter for this pudding. Skip seems to have inherited his love for Marie biscuits from my paternal grandmother.

I have used roasted, crushed peanuts, grated white chocolate and chocolate and caramel sauce as topping. To be honest, I only used these to make the picture appear prettier. I would recommend skipping the toppings. The pudding tastes great as it is. I have also tried experimenting by sandwiching a layer of chocolate ice cream between the layers of biscuit. That tasted good as well.

Skip and I often make this dessert at home. We prepare it in the afternoon and it’s ready to be eaten after our dinner. Do try it out and let me know if you liked it. If this is indeed the easiest biscuit pudding you’ve ever come across, please do follow me on Facebook and Instagram @lucidlucent. If you have an easier recipe, please do send me the recipe and I will try it out and put it up on the blog.

BISCUIT PUDDING

Ingredients:

Glucose Biscuits - 36

Instant Coffee Powder – 2 tsps

Sugar- 4 tsps

Milk – 8 tbsps

Toppings (optional) – chocolate shavings, caramel/chocolate sauce, coarsely ground nuts.

Method:

1.     Add the coffee granules and sugar into the milk and stir until the sugar melts.

2.     Take a dish and line the base with one layer of biscuits. Pour a little of the coffee  until the biscuits are just soaked. Lightly crush the biscuits and top it with another layer of biscuits. Pour the liquid on it, crush, layer repeat until you run out of biscuits. Make sure that the biscuits are neither too soggy or dry. It should be ‘slushy’.

3.     Top it with toppings of your choice (optional).

4.     Refrigerate for atleast 4 -5 hours.

5.     Done.

NO-CHENNA/PANEER RASMALAI

21.06.2020: Today, we experienced the solar eclipse and at the end of the day, if you happened to remark that it’s been a long day, do know that it literally would have been so. Skip is fascinated with space and celestial bodies and is keenly following the movement of the eclipse.  He says his favourite celestial event is the occurrence of the blood moon since it can be seen with the naked eye and that he’d like to call it the pomegranate moon.  

I may have mentioned my earlier disastrous attempt at making Rasogullas. I find making Indian sweets daunting as it almost always involves too much stirring, reducing a liquid or getting the right consistency. When my parents hosted dinner parties, my mother would invariably make either Trifle or Rasmalai and these were the best that I’ve ever had. The Trifle would have an assortment of fruits, cake, jelly and custard and a bite of it would result in an explosion of flavours. The Rasmalai would be sweet, soft and spongy.

The yellow colour comes from the egg yolk.

Mamma had given me the recipe for Rasmalai 9 years ago and the time had finally come for me to try and make it. I decided to make it at 9 in the night (always a bad hour to try a new dish). I had Skip to assist me, not just with the cooking but also in sending panic voice notes to mamma. What you see in the picture is from the second attempt. “Every cooking disaster is a new lesson well-learnt”. Since mamma sent me cup- measurements, I ended up using a bigger cup and adding too much sugar and milk powder and the result was Peda dipped in sugary milk. Skip and Sky liked it (I’m beginning to wonder if these are ideal candidates to judge a dish or probably, I’m just too self-critical).

Sky invited V home for dinner, and I decided to make the Rasmalai again for dessert. Skip had spent a few days with my parents, and he learnt to make the Rasmalai there though he keeps forgetting the name and ends up calling it the Rasgullam or Rasmilla. V and Skip say they loved the Rasmalai. I’m yet to master it and make it as spongy as the one’s mamma used to make. The trick is to get the quantities right. Do read the Recipe Notes before you make the Rasmalai.

I like this recipe as it involves fewer steps and doesn’t require separating cheese curds (chenna) from milk. Besides milk, you only need an egg and a tiny cup of milk powder and baking powder.

I’ve always preferred Rasmalais to Rasogullas. Which do you like more?

RASMALAI (Makes 8)

Ingredients:

Egg- 1

Milk Powder – 1 small teacup, heaped (50gms)

Baking powder – 1 tsp

Fresh milk – ½ - 1 litre

Sugar – ½ teacup (20- 25 gms)

Rose essence / cardamom powder – ½ tsp

Chopped almonds/pistachio- 1 tbsp (optional)

Saffron – few strands (optional)

Method:

1.     Add sugar to the milk and boil it around 5-6 times until the milk thickens slightly. Turn off the flame.

2.     Separate the egg white from the yolk. Beat the egg white until it’s stiff. Add the yolk and beat again.

3.   Add milk power and baking power to the egg and mix well to form a dough. Make small balls and then gently flatten it.

4.  Heat the thickened milk and once it starts to boil, drop the balls gently into the pan, reduce heat to low. Let the balls cook on low flame for 20 minutes. Keep swirling the pan at regular intervals so as not to let the balls stick to the bottom. If possible, gently flip the balls after 10 minutes.

5.  Remove from heat when they are cooked. Once cooled, add the saffron and rose water/cardamom powder. Gently pour it into the serving dish. Sprinkle chopped nuts on it and let it chill in the fridge for a few hours.

6.     Serve cold.

7.     Done.

Recipe Notes:

·       Both the times that I made the Rasmalai, I started off by boiling ½ litre milk, but I had to keep pouring additional milk as the Rasmalai was being cooked in the milk. The next time I make it, I shall start off with 1 litre milk.

·       I added 25 gms of sugar to the milk. While others found it just right, I felt it was a tad bit too sweet.

·       The Rasmalai dough ought to be sticky. It is a difficult task to roll it into balls but do not add more milk powder.

·       Use a broad bottomed pan to cook the balls as they expand when cooked.