mango ice cream

in summer when mangoes are at their best and cheapest i indulge and buy a box of them every now and then..many are eaten as is..the cheeks are cut off and the flesh slashed to the skin forming easily dispatched cubes.. even with this method it's a messy business especially defleshing the seed which my less than salubrious self can be found doing, dripping mango juice down my chin and onto my clothes if i'm not careful, leaning over the kitchen sink..

before i came across these beauties yesterday i'd been contemplating sweet mango recipes and very few of the ideas i came up with appealed to me..i don't fancy mango in cake or cake with mango curd but when i thought of mango ice cream it definitely seemed very appetizing..so i looked online and found a recipe that i adapted today to suit what i had on hand and also because i like to play around with foody ideas..

i didn't have to buy anything to make the ice cream.. the lemons i have are home grown ones that i bought last week from an op shop for 0.20 cents each, i made yoghurt last night using a method recommended by brydie and my mint is rampant..and instead of glucose i used honey, and just to see the effect i replaced some of the yoghurt with coconut cream and i added the lemon zest because i love to come across bits of lemony zest goodness in ice cream..

8 large not too ripe mangoes for $12

mango icecream recipe

ingredients

1 large or two small ripe mangoes peeled and flesh cut into medium dice

50 gms icing sugar

50 gms honey

juice and zest of 1 large or two small lemons

400 gms yoghurt 

100 gms coconut cream

1 tbs finely cut mint

method

put all ingredients except for lemon zest into a food processor and process until well pureed

add lemon zest

churn in an icecream maker according to the manufacturers instructions (i have a kitchen-aid ice cream making attachment)

remove ice cream from the churn and place it into a bowl, cover with foil and place in the freezer

at the same time as i bought the mangoes i bought 2 kgs of bananas for $3..now that might not sound that exciting to some of you..but to us aussies..well to this aussie it is great because i haven't bought bananas for months because they've been $15 per kg..the price increase was due to the devastation of 85 per cent of the $200 million industry by cyclone yasi early in the year..but the plantations are producing again after intensive redevelopment of the industry..

i think my banana buying frenzy was a tad over enthusiastic because i now have a dozen bananas that will ripen fast in the heat we've been experiencing in the last few days..i will freeze a few peeled bananas for smoothies and make banana ice cream using a similar recipe to the mango ice cream..hopefully that will take care of them..it seems to be the story of my culinary life that i start fires in order to work out the best way to put them out :)   

the ice cream is good by the way..a nice balance of sweet, sour, creamy, minty and fruity mango flavour..i'll let you know how the banana ice cream goes..i rather fancy putting a praline through it or maybe making a butterscotch sauce to swirl through it after it's set a bit..i'll see at the time..

beer bread

on wednesday night this week my children were due to come to my place for our fortnightly meal together..i went for a long walk with a friend in the morning, shopped for the meal and and then i spent the rest of the day cooking the meal as well as ironing the tablecloth, setting the table and picking a small posy of flowers for the table..as i was working i kept reminding myself to get the ladder so that i could get a few more bottles of beer from a high cupboard where i have them stored and to put them in the fridge because sometimes my children and i like a beer or two with certain meals..but i didn't get around to it.. 

when my children arrived i offered them a drink from the very limited selection i had on offer..red wine or beer..and they all wanted beer..fortunately there were enough bottles for us to have one each..my tall son offered to get more out of storage when i told my children about my unfulfilled intention to put more in the fridge..when he put four more bottles in the freezer to hasten their drinkability i asked my children to remember that they were there because it's not uncommon for us to forget..and then i have a freezer cleaning job and wasted beer.. 

well..i did give away a small clue in my post title about what happened to those beer bottles so it's no surprise then when i tell you that the next day when i was cleaning up i had a light bulb moment that featured those beer bottles..upon opening the freezer i was surprised though to find that only one of the three bottles left in there had an escapage problem..the other two appeared ok..so what to do with the renegade bottle of beer since the bottle was almost entirely full..throw it away..or what?

i wasn't sure if it was another light bulb moment or not when i decided yesterday to make bread with some of the beer..but..having just tasted a slice i can confidently say that beer in bread makes a very fine loaf..   

since i started making sourdough bread i've not been particularly adventurous because i always use the same recipe that i adapted from one of joanna's recipes at zeb bakes..for this particular loaf i replaced the 200 mls of water with the equivalent amount of room temperature beer..

i've bought dan lepard's bread book 'the handmade loaf' but so far i haven't tried any of the recipes but i have looked at the kneading and shaping information in the book..today after the initial three 2 minute kneading and 10 minute resting cycles i always use i applied his fold and turn method after the last resting cycle, after 30 minutes and after 1 hour..and in between the folding and turning cycles i put the bread in my oven on the dough proving setting..for the final prove i put the dough in a rye floured muslin lined colander for 2 hours and then the bread was cooked with steam for 20 minutes at 220 deg c and then for a further 20 minutes at the reduced temperature of 180 deg c..

if you've made beer bread i'd love to hear about your adventure..oh..and by the way i'm now thinking  about experimenting with stout in bread..