Honeycomb Pieces and Chocolate Brownie Fudge Cubes

Last month we got an email from someone at yolli.com asking if we'd like to try out their confectionery supplies. I'd never heard of them, so I followed the link, perused the site, and found they had ice cream supplies. But of course we would!

The site is out of the UK and so there were actually some items they were offering for sale that I had never heard of, including honeycomb pieces.

I asked my contact if she would mind sending me the honeycomb pieces and the chocolate brownie fudge cubes. She kindly obliged and a few weeks later I came home to a package of ice cream mix-ins.

I doubled a nice chocolate base from The Ciao Bella Book of Gelato and Sorbetto: Bold, Fresh Flavors to Make at Home, divided the base, and froze each half with each of the mix-ins so I could try them out.

The honeycomb pieces, to begin with, aren't honeycomb or honey at all. Upon further research, I found these honeycomb pieces are actually a crumbled version of a type of toffee also known as sponge toffee or cinder toffee. Honeycomb toffee is a mix of sugars and baking soda, giving it a very airy feel, and a spongy or pumice-y look, as one might imagine. It somewhat reminded me of peanut brittle without the peanuts. It was sweet with a hint of that baking soda taste.

Mixing it in had interesting results. When I took the ice cream directly out of my machine, the honeycomb pieces had a nice crunch to them in the ice cream. However, after I put the ice cream in the freezer to ripen, and then scooped some, the honeycomb had dissolved, leaving only darker, sweeter spots of chocolate (see picture.) It wasn't bad, just not much of anything.

I suppose in the future I would suggest either putting them in ice cream you are going to eat right out of the machine or using them as a topping for interesting texture. (And as an added note, do not leave the remaining bag of honeycomb pieces on the counter for your three-year-old daughter to find and poke at while asking "what is this?" unless you want to be left with honeycomb powder!)

The fudge bits didn't do as much for me. They kind of reminded me of Tootsie Rolls. They gave a nice chewy texture to the mix-ins, but overall the taste wasn't too exiting to me, and the chocolate flavor wasn't as chocolately as the ice cream actually was, which was surprising with the fudge name.

Final verdict? While Yolli isn't known for it's ice cream supplies, but more for it's candy making supplies, I am not sure they would be my first stop shop for ice cream making, but I certainly wouldn't discount them for candy making. (Quite honestly, when I first went to their site, I was wishing I had a candy or baking blog so I would have an excuse to ask for samples of the cookie cutters or candy floss (aka. cotton candy) supplies or many of the other various supplies (ah, in my next blog/lifetime).

Thank you Yolli for the fun supplies and the excuse to make some new and interesting ice cream flavors! And P.S. your site is incredibly fun and bright and makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop!

To Mix-in or Not To Mix-in? Part II: To Mix-in

I wrote last time about mix-ins that I didn't think added to the ice cream. I also talked about how there was another ice cream I thought that I wouldn't like because of the mix-ins and how I was wrong.

I really didn't think that the Cannoli Ice Cream (from their site: "Mascarpone Ice Cream with Fudge Covered Cannoli Pastry Shell Chunks & a Mascarpone Swirl.") from Ben & Jerry's needed fudge when I read about it for the first time. Chocolate? I am a cannoli purist -- I lived in Boston's North End for seven years (I loved it there) and can have debates with friends over whether Maria's or Modern is better. (Ok, ok, maybe a real purist wouldn't even want to try Cannoli Ice Cream.) But I did. I wanted to try it anyway.

I looked a lot to find this ice cream. At first I was too early and it hadn't hit the shelves yet. Then, apparently, it was harder to find than other flavors and they must have gotten a lot of questions about it, because they produced a total social media driven "Cannoli Finder." My local locations weren't showing up yet, so I would just hope I'd see it at the grocery store and I would be the one to be able to add it. Finally, one day, when I thought I was out of luck at my local Shaw's, BAM!, there it was at an end cap. I bought a pint. Bad idea...*

Ok, so, um, I loved it. First of all, I realized it would only be "Marscapone Ice Cream" with out the shells mixed in, but without being enrobed in fudge, the shells would be soggy, so I think that it was almost necessary  Second, the fudge didn't take away anything for me. In fact, I hardly noticed it. It wasn't an overwhelming flavor or anything. Just enough. Finally, Ben & Jerry's is kind of defined by its mix-ins. (Their site does say, "The road to Euphoria is paved with chunks and swirls!") I don't think it would be the same if there weren't chunks to search for! The flavor itself is rich but light at the same time. Does this make sense? I think my husband says it best when we had this conversation after first breaking open the pint:

Husband: What flavor is Cannoli?

Me: Marscapone but doesn't it taste like pistachio? (I have since changed my mind on the pistachio opinion...)

Husband: No. It tastes like "good." (I agree, but I might say great!)

*So then I ran into a problem. At the time of this writing, I was very pregnant and I started to crave it. I made my husband and daughter and I go back to the Shaw's (not our closest grocery store, I might add) to go shopping...and guess what?! They were out. So, I have polished off a pint of Cherry Garcia (still an excellent standby) but I was still craving Cannoli. I'll just have to keep looking.

It's a good thing I found this. Just the other day I realized my other Cannoli supplier would never be my supplier even if they did arrive out in these parts. They no longer make it.

Ben & Jerry's...please don't do this to me and take it off the shelves in the end. Make this a permanent flavor. I would be so grateful.

So here it is. To mix-in.

To Mix-in or Not To Mix-in? Part I: Not to Mix-in

I'm having a bit of a mix-in mix-up. Usually I like mix-ins. In this way, I do not take after my mother. She's not a fan.

Here's what happened. I bought two ice cream flavors recently -- one that I expected I wouldn't like as much because of the mix-ins and another I thought I would like because of the mix-ins. In both cases, I was wrong.

My sister suggested I try Talenti's Sea Salt Caramel Gelato. Amazing ice cream. Really amazing. Creamy, smooth, and a perfect salty/sweet flavor. But, while I usually find myself searching out the mix-ins, I found myself digging around the mix-ins. First of all, I couldn't tell what they were. The container doesn't tell me a thing. I read chocolate on one site. Didn't taste that way to me. Second of all, the gelato was smooth, wonderful perfection -- smooth and creamy -- it just did not need anything else. I found my frozen euphoria broken up by chunks of...

Well, I'll be..."small sea salt caramel truffles that have been bathed in chocolate." You got it, Ice Cream Informant! I don't know why I doubted you except for the fact that  it just didn't taste that way to me.

Anyway, would I buy this again? Yes. But would I be happier without the mix-ins? Yes.

Stay tuned for my next post where I am happily surprised with the mix-in.

Recipe Friday: Rice Krispie Treat Ice Cream

I have been busy busy making ice cream this month, and wanted to share with you a new one I made.

Honestly, it wasn't what I had hoped it to be, even after my second stab. It's still good but the Rice Krispies turn out a little soft. Maybe this is okay to those who like their cereal with milk, but I really don't like milk in my cereal for the very reason that it turns the cereal soft.

First off, I made Rice Krispie Treats ®. This was a bit dangerous because I was home alone that weekend and it was a great temptation to eat them all -- I didn't, but that's not to say I didn't eat a lot of them! If you are going to eat a lot of them like I did, be sure to reserve about 2-3 treats (out of the 12 they say it makes) to incorporate into your ice cream. (As a side note, when I went to get this recipe from the Rice Krispie ® site, I read a comment from a woman who incorporates bacon bits into her Rice Krispie treats...interesting...)

Then came the ice cream. I wanted to go for a marshmallow base. A Google search lead me to this one from the Blue Ridge Mountain Ice Cream Store. I made it, but personally, without any eggs, I found the recipe to be too much like frozen milk. That's not to say other people wouldn't like it -- I just prefer my custard based ice creams.

Then I tried altering a vanilla based ice cream with advice from Gail Damerow in Ice Cream!: The Whole Scoop. This created a lovely marshmallow flavored ice cream.

Here's the recipe:

Heat:
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 (7 1/2 oz) jar of Marshmallow Fluff
1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped

Stir occasionally, until the mixture is warm (not boiling though).

Whisk:
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Slowly add warm milk mixture to the whisked egg mixture, and whisk until mixed. Return entire mixture to the stove, and heat until the mixture begins to coat the back of the spoon. Do not bring to a boil or you will have scrambled eggs. Pour the mixture through a strainer into a clean bowl -- discard the solids that remain in the strainer. Chill overnight.

Pour chilled mixture into an ice cream maker and churn according to the ice cream maker's directions.

I then broke my reserved Rice Krispie Treats into bite sized pieces and added them to the ice cream maker during the last five minutes of churning.

The ice cream was good. Again, my only complaint is the sogginess of the Rice Krispies. Surprisingly I didn't find it too sweet.

My husband liked it, but he said it wasn't as good as the coconut. (See yesterday's post.) He also said it tasted like vanilla. When I asked about the Rice Krispies, he said he hardly noticed them -- well, then I guess they didn't bother him, anyway!


[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]