Fall Flavors

Scoopalicious's newest
team member, Violet gazes
at Tina in admiration.

I think Tina has a review to do of some super tasty seasonal flavors she got in the mail, but in the meantime, I am using this quiet time at home (baby and dog sleeping, husband at the gym) to write about some fall flavors I like...

Two of fall's greatest flavors are pumpkin and cranberry -- no wonder I like autumn. Oh, right, I am not forgetting the apples, too -- I hope to create a cider donut ice cream before the season is over! In the meantime, however, I have been indulging in one homemade flavor and one store bought flavor, and am extremely happy with both. (Though I have actually yet to try them together...I'll have to do that.)

Tina came over the other day to meet baby Violet. She brought pizza and salad, and of course, ice cream! I had also made some ice cream, so we were all set!

Cranberry Ice Cream

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from my sister, Arianna, asking if I had ever made Cranberry Ice Cream. As a matter of fact, I told her, I had, for this year's ice cream party. But it made me start craving cranberry ice cream, so I got out my copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homemade Ice Cream and decided it would be a perfect treat for my Tina visit!

I love this ice cream. It's light and refreshing -- sweet and tart at the same time, but not tart in a tart frozen yogurt kind of way (thank goodness!). My only complaint is that the recipe uses a container of frozen cranberry juice concentrate and I guess they want to use the whole can, so they make the recipe kind of large...in the end I got 8 cups of unfrozen base, and my freezer only takes about 4-5 cups. I ended up sending Tina home with a couple of unfrozen cups and after freezing about 4 cups of base, I had to pull out another frozen canister to freeze the last two cups. I need to remember to half the recipe...good thing I like this ice cream!

In the past, I have only thought of freezing cranberries for the purpose of saving them to use in the off season. I really love cranberries but you can really only get them in the fall/winter, so I would buy a couple of bags then and freeze them for spring/summer use. However, with this recipe and the Cranberry Sorbet recipe made with red wine from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book: Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, Drinks, And More, I am beginning to rethink this!

Pumpkin Ice Cream

Tina brought Edy's Pumpkin Ice Cream when she came to visit. So, um, it's only been about a week since I have seen her and the carton is almost empty. Two of my favorite things: pumpkin (which falls under one of my favorite holiday categories of "orange food") and ice cream. It's just like pumpkin pie. In fact, a lazy (or smart?!) person might just have the brillant idea to slightly melt the carton of ice cream, pour it into a premade/prebaked crust, refreeze it, and voila, a new, frozen twist on an old favorite.

It really is a treat, this ice cream. Rich and creamy and accurately reproducing an American tradition.

Well, enough from me. Stay tuned for Tina's review of another pumpkin ice cream, as well as a trip to Sonic for their ice cream, as well as some other fun posts.

The Super Sundae Recipe Contest by Turkey Hill starts now

Turkey Hill is at it again with another fun contest, the Super Sundae Contest, and this time its all about coming up with an awesome recipe for a sundae, creating it, naming it, taking fabulous photos of it, and submitting by Nov 14th. How fun and somewhat simple...um...I think! Well I say that but when I try to think of what kind of sundae I would create I draw blanks but I do know that chocolate is part of the equation and I am going to enter so look out for a sneak peek in the near future.

Oh and I think the hard part of this all could be the photos as they talk about in a recent blog post about food photography and the fact that the sundaes will be judged 50% on the recipe and 50% on the photo so even more pressure. This is always my challenge when I make some ice cream then try to shoot it to post. Inevitably it starts turning into soup before I get that great shot. So this could be even trickier seeing that a hot sauce could be involved as well as whipped cream but I guess if one melts I eat it then try again. Oh that really stinks!

Oh and the important part...the prizes! Turkey Hill is going to choose four of their favorite entries and post for you to vote on (hopefully mine will be there!) and the sundae with the most votes will get a super sundae prize package containing 10 free containers of Turkey Hill ice cream, a set of six Bormioli Rocco waffle cone-inspired glass sundae dishes, a Tovolo Standz Ice Cream Scoop, and a jar of Ghirardelli chocolate fudge sauce. And so nobody goes home empty handed, each finalist will also receive a one-month supply of Turkey Hill ice cream...not so shabby!

I'll be sure to share the trials and tribulations of my sundae creations. Good luck and can't wait to see the results!

Ice Cream Ball Part 2

Bowling with the Mega Ice Cream Ball

As promised here's our second shot at trying our the Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker. The first time was a dud but I wasn't involved so this time I had to try it out for myself.

I have to start by saying that my camera died only a few shots in so the pics I have to post may not seem appropriate since kids and alcohol are both involved but I promise the two never mixed! We had so much fun with this ice cream ball on an end of summer camping trip. Five couples each with a couple kids makes for many people to keep this thing rolling and tumbling which is exactly what we needed. Wow..this is not the ice cream ball. It's the "Mega" ice cream ball. So it makes a quart of ice cream instead of a pint or so and with that said it means its heavy when all ingredients are in place so it was amusing seeing 3 and 4 year olds trying to get this thing moving.

I have to say again...this was SO much fun and the kids were so anxious to eat homemade ice cream around the campfire. So first we added all the ingredients..heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla and sealed it shut. Opened the other end, added ice and rock salt then sealed it shut. Then the fun began. As I mentioned it was quite heavy so it was a little challenging but then the brilliant idea of bowling came about. Beer bottles + ball = ice cream ball bowling! OMG...hysterical and fun. I must say...kids don't try this at home....it could get dangerous as again, this thing is heavy! The ball itself took a little bit of a beating during our bowling tournament but nothing that harmed the final product so it all went just fine.

Play & Freeze Ice Cream Maker

It did take awhile to make. You had to keep it going for 20 minutes then add more ice and rock salt and go another 20 minutes. You can probably imagine how many times we heard from the kids..."Are we almost done yet?"..."When are we going to have ice cream?" Well when we were finally done we had soft serve consistency ice cream and a good amount of it because each kid got a half cup and then enough for us adults to taste test. It was super creamy. The end closest to the ice came out somewhat hard and then the other end was a little soupy but when mixed it was perfect. Sorry for the lack of photos of the actual ice cream since my camera died on me. Definitely a fun thing to bring along camping or on a picnic or your back yard. Everyone was so into it and anxious to see if this ball thing would actually produce real ice cream. It was a success and super fun....definitely recommend!

Turkey Hill is getting ready for some foooooootball!

This is so not right being a New Englander and proud Patriots fan (poor Tom Brady got in a fender bender last week..hope his hair isn't messed up ;)) but we love Turkey Hill so I we'll play nice and tell all you Steeler fans about an awesome chance to win tickets to see the Steelers that Turkey Hill is scooping out. All you have to do is purchase their football crazed flavor, Blitzburgh Crunch, go here and enter a code found on specially marked packages, and get a chance to win two tickets to a Steelers home game on December 23, 2010. Wait...there's more... during each of the First Prize drawings, you also get a chance to win a  $25 Steelers gift cards and then the kicker...at the end of each season (2010, 2011 & 2012!), they'll select one fan to receive a Grand Prize — a pair of Steelers season tickets. 

So I might not be as big of a football fan as I am of ice cream but this sounds like a good deal (if you win of course) and the flavor doesn't sound so bad itself either. Actually I do have to say this ice cream sounds fantastic. Blitzburgh Crunch is a whole lot of sweet cream vanilla ice cream with chocolate cake crunchies and crunchy chocolate cookie swirl. I love crunchies in ice cream. Actually kinda reminds me of how much I love the crunchies in the middle of a Carvel cake..yum...so if this is anything like that I'd love it. But I have a feeling I will love it regardless. Oh and I guess I could enter but not sure season tickets would do me any good up here in RI but still looking forward to trying the new flavor. I'll just cover up the label when I bring it to a football party just in case!

Promo ends 1/31/2011 so get out there and get yourself some Turkey Hill Blitzburgh Crunch, let us know how it is, and most importantly don't forget to enter the sweepstakes.

Eagle Brand Homemade Ice Cream Recipe Contest Winners!

So sorry this post took me a while to write...been a little crazy here in babyland, especially dressing our daughter Violet up as an ice cream cone (thanks, Stephanie!)...

Anyway, congrats to the two reader's choice winners for the Eagle Brand Homemade Ice Cream Recipe Contest were:

Charlene with her Coffeehouse Ice Cream

Sunshine with her Key Lime Pie Ice Cream

Congrats to the winners and thank you to everyone for playing! We think all the recipes looked yummy and can't wait to try them!

Thank you to Eagle for sponsoring the contest!