Toasted Coconut Ice Cream

Alright, alright.

So, this is the first part of a three-part series that will culminate in my new favorite dessert.  (Yeah, I know I've got a penchant for hyperbole, but this dessert is at the highest level of delicious desserts, in my [not terribly] humble opinion.)

Now, I'm not even going to try to lie to you and act like this was some quick 30-minute dessert that you can whip up to take to a pot-luck.  Nope.  It's not.  It's a labor of love.  But it's also totally worth it. 

This weekend, I had a giant folder full of papers to grade, but it was beautiful outside and I had all of the windows open and I was listening to music and everything was right with the world, and I didn't want student papers to sully my perfect afternoon.  And making the house smell like toasted coconut only made that afternoon more perfect.

So here I bring you Toasted Coconut Ice Cream, again by none other than Mr. Lebovitz.  Now, I know that not everyone is BANANAS! for coconut, including Matt. (Who also doesn't like macaroni and cheese.  What's wrong with him?)  And I know that the texture of coconut can be off-putting, which is part of why this ice cream is extra awesomepants.  Matt--hater of coconut, husband who spit out my Pecan Praline Ice Cream--even liked this one.

Because, see, once you toast your coconut. . .

. . .You heat it with milk and then add vanilla bean (I used vanilla bean paste) and let it steep for an hour.

(Doesn't it kind of look like soggy cereal?) 

And then you strain the coconut, so you get all of the coconut flavor goodness without having the coconut texture. 

After that, you just take some regular ice creaming steps.  You know, eggs and sugar, more straining, heating, chilling, etc. 

But when you're done. . .OMIGOD.  I wish this blog could provide those tiny little spoons so that I could give you samples so you wouldn't just have to take my word for it.  And I wish that I wasn't going to keep all of this ice cream for myself because it's just that good. 

When you're done you'll feel, at the same time, like a kid on the last day of school, and like a grown-up relaxing in a tropical paradise.  (Which is pretty much the best way to feel, ever.)

So here's the recipe, including Levotitz's introduction, which I really liked.

Toasted Coconut Ice Cream from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop

I’ll admit that my favorite selection from the shiny white Good Humor jalopy that cruised our neighborhood was simply called “Toasted Coconut”: vanilla ice cream on a stick, coated with lots of sugary-sweet coconut.

On the last fateful day that I’d ever see the Good Humor man, the bully next door decided to spray him with water from a hose as he slowly circled our block. He beat a hasty retreat and never came back. Being blackballed by the Good Humor man made that the worst summer of my life. I don’t know what happened to the neighborhood bully, but now that I’m an adult I can have Toasted Coconut Ice Cream whenever I want. And I do.—David Lebovitz

Ingredients

1 cup dried shredded coconut, preferably unsweetened
1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
Big pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, or 1 teaspoon rum

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Spread the coconut on a baking sheet and bake for 5 to 8 minutes, stirring it frequently so it toasts evenly. Remove it from the oven when it’s nice and fragrant and golden brown.

2. In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, 1 cup of the heavy cream, sugar, and salt and add the toasted coconut. Use a paring knife and scrape all the vanilla seeds into the warm milk, then add the pod as well. Cover, remove from the heat, and let steep at room temperature for 1 hour.

3. Rewarm the coconut-infused mixture. Set a mesh strainer over another medium saucepan and strain the coconut-infused liquid through the strainer into the saucepan. Press down on the coconut very firmly with a flexible rubber spatula to extract as much of the flavor from it as possible. Remove the vanilla bean halves (rinse and reserve them for another use), and discard the coconut.

4. Pour the remaining 1 cup heavy cream into a large bowl and set the mesh strainer on top. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm coconut-infused mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

5. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. Mix in the vanilla or rum and stir over an ice bath until cool.

6. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Super Lemon Ice Cream

Grading essays makes me feel like this.

Which reminds me of this. 

Which makes me laugh and wish that they would move back to the SAV.

But, alas, I have to get papers finished and I can't make my friends stick around forever.  Boo.

What I can do is make ice cream all weekend. (Especially since I had a pretty large supply of cream and milk and produce that wasn't going to be good for too much longer.)  So I took a quick inventory of the refrigerator, and turned to Mr. Lebovitz, the god of ice creaming.

First up, Super Lemon Ice Cream.

Now, I really love lemon, which is good because you really have to love lemon to love this ice cream--especially if you are extra dumb like I am and instead of just zesting the peel of the lemon, you instead puree the entire lemon.*  Yep, then your ice cream is going to be extra lemony. 

The funny thing is that I still liked it a lot, but that's because I like things to be uber-lemony.  I think, though, that I'm going to have to swirl it with something a little sweeter if I plan to serve this people who weren't addicted to War Heads and Cry Babies as kids.** Shoot.

Also, this whole story just proves again how much I need Cassie to move back to Savannah.  She would've known that I shouldn't puree the whole lemon (just like she knew that to knead bread one need not purr and pretend to be a cat). 

Anyway, if you're salivating just thinking about all of that lemony goodness, give this one a shot.  Follow the directions for real and let me know how that one is.  I figure that if it's good even with my huge error, then it'll be great when done correctly.

Super Lemon Ice Cream (From David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)

Makes about 1 Quart (1 Liter)

2 lemons, unsprayed
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (3 lemons)
2 cups half-and-half
Tiny pinch of salt

Zest the lemons directly into a food processor or blender. Add the sugar and blend until very fine. Add the lemon juice and blend until sugar is completely dissolved. Blend in the half-and-half and salt until smooth.

Chill for 1 hour, then freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker.

*Definitely didn't realize that until I stumbled upon this blog, authored by someone who is much more educated in the language of recipes than I am. 

**I told you already on here about how on my 16th birthday I ate an entire pound of Sour Patch Kids, right?  And how my tongue was bleeding, but I continued to eat them?  Yeah, I'm super smart.  Sometimes I can't even believe that I'm allowed to teach children.

This post is really a waste of my time and yours. Except for the chicken recipe.

This is how I am spending my time when I'm supposed to be doing laundry and vacuuming and ellipting and cleaning the kitchen and doing lesson plans.  Because, here's the thing: I really don't feel like doing laundry or ellipting or cleaning the kitchen or doing lesson plans. 

I should do those things, though, so that tomorrow when I get home from school I can revel in the fact that I had such a productive Thursday night, and I can walk around the house barefoot (without my feet getting Wal-Mart feet dirty), and I can rub my hands up and down on my stomach and be proud that I'm not as much of a fatty as I was the day before. 

What's to blame for this lack of productivity?  Well, it could be that the time change is turning me into a bear.  Matt insists that I have SAD, but I argue that I do not have SAD; instead I am a bear (Kind of like Yogi.).  I like to eat a lot and then hibernate.  (Granted, I also like to do those things in the summer, so maybe the explanation is more that I'm a lazy bump on a log.)

We could also blame my lack of productivity on the cinnamon glazed almonds that I made yesterday.  See, I let them cool on the baking sheet for too long, and when I went back to get them the almonds were all stuck to the sheet.  So I had to use spatulas and my hands to pry them off, and in doing so, I cut my finger on some jagged hardened sugar.  I would show you the cut, except that it would be really hard to take a picture of it because it's on my right hand.  Also, I don't want to show you the cut because it's so tiny and inconsequential that you would think that I was a big whining baby.  Anyway, I think the cut might be infected, and it's very likely that I have developed some sort of brown sugar poisoning.  I'll probably be dead by morning.

Oh, and this is completely unrelated, but if I'd be remiss if I didn't promote this one chicken recipe before this certain death.  I've posted about it before, but kind of just in passing, and it's just so good.  We've actually had it twice in the last week (gas grill decided that it didn't want to live any longer; I'm pretty sure it was dying of brown sugar poisoning).  It's Lemon and Rosemary Roasted Chicken from The Bitten Word, and it's absolutely delicious.  It's a little bit time consuming since the chicken has to marinate for an hour and then cook for almost as long, but it's sooooooooooooooo good.  So make it in honor of me.  You know, after I die from the the sugar wound and subsequent poisoning.

I get the purple plate and pour the remaining marinade on mine.  Mmmmmmmmm.

That was probably enough rambling.  I think I'm going to race myself now to see how quickly I can accomplish everything on my current to-do list. 

Ready. . .set. . . go!

How to Avoid Grading Papers

School's back with a vengeance.  My eleventh graders, you see, will be taking the State of Georgia's writing test--the one they must pass to graduate--at the end of the month (Sept. 29th to be exact), so we begin the school year with intense focus on persuasive writing.  And, as you all know, writing takes practice and more practice and more practice, so I start the year by grading lots of big stacks of essays.  Since the stakes are so high, I know that I have to put everything (time and energy) into grading these essays, too; there's got to be good, thoughtful feedback if I want my students to be able to improve. 

But I didn't really feel like grading essays this weekend.

Initially, I thought that if I just sat down and did them Friday night, then I wouldn't have to worry about them for the rest of the weekend. 

Yeah, right. 

 Instead, I found ways to procrastinate. 

(It's really similar to when I was in college.  Back then, if I had a big paper to write, I'd find all manner of ways to occupy my time--anything, really, would be better than writing the paper.  It was during these times that my sock drawer would call out to me to be reorganized, that I'd decide to write a letter to that long lost friend.  Now I do the same thing, except that now I'm the teacher, and I'm supposed to be better than that.   I'm not.)

Here's what I did to avoid grading essays this weekend:

• I baked a cream cheese poundcake.

• I drank way too many glasses of wine.
• I talked to Matt for hours and hours.
• I wrote blog posts.
• I cleaned and reorganized the office (the room that had become a catch-all for garbage during the Lagoon and Deep End makeovers).
• I scrubbed every little nook and cranny in the bathroom.
• I arranged flowers.
• I went to Wiley's BBQ with Matt (and ended up having to share a table with two of the most irritating people on the planet--two irritating people who were on a first or second date--two people who said things like "Let's see if these collards are anything to write home about. . ." and "Sorry doesn't pay the bills."  We probably should have gotten takeout.)
• I wiped our walls with bleach (and made myself sick with the fumes--super smart).
• I went to Target (home away from home).
• I went to Kroger (I hate Kroger, but they have cake flour and Publix doesn't).
• I labeled and organized the paint that I've used in various rooms around the house. (Seriously.)

• I took pictures of Mitch.

• I made spinach dip.
• I talked on the phone.
• I looked through cookbooks to do meal planning for the next week or so (more on that later--it's super exciting).

• I got so hungry after looking through cookbooks that I ate a potato chip sandwich.  Judge away (but try it, too--jalapeno chips on wheat bread = delicious). 

• I checked Facebook 200 times.
• I read magazines that have been sitting around for a month. (Why is Garden & Gun so good?)
• I touched up the paint in the Deep End.
• I did all of the laundry (and, hell, one day I might even put it away).
• I went grocery shopping with Matt.
• I spent time with friends, and my favorite little girls in the world, Iris and Opal. (We made chocolate peanut butter ice cream.)
• I vacuumed.
• I dusted.
• I cleaned all of the fans in the house.
• I cleaned the globe on the light of our ceiling fan (and, at that point realized that I was running out of things to do.)
• I even--if you can believe it--got myself interested in Matt's fantasy football draft.  And it was then that I knew that there was nothing else for me to do than grade papers.  So I did them while he did his second draft (no bitterness here).  And then I was proud of myself. 

And I won't have another big stack of essays to grade until. . .oh crap--tomorrow.  Get here, September 29th.

U Really Got a Hold on Me

Today, during my planning, while I did everything I could to avoid grading 90 essays on how Animal Farm is a satirical allegorical fable, I was listening to my "My Girl" radio station on Pandora. Smoky Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" came on, and, unexplicably, the only thing I could think of was Sesame Street. 

I couldn't figure out why, until I decided to Google it.  (Or Lougle it--yeah, Hot Tub Time Machine!)

Oh yeah!

Here's a blast from the past.



Sesame Street is awesome.

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuny day. . .

Thank You, Goodyear!

While I was out running errands today, I noticed for the 75th time that I am overdue for an oil change. I passed my favorite oil change place, Goodyear, about five times, each time thinking that I should stop and just do it already.

But I didn't because I had groceries in the car and I was in the middle of a very entertaining conversation with my brother (who just might be the funniest person in the world).

So I procrastinated.

And it's a good thing I did.

Because when I got home, I looked at our foot-high stack of mail, and right on top was this:

Hells yeah!

This experience should serve as a lesson about the benefits of procrastination.

Matt's Movie Review

Those of you who follow my weekly movie review on the blog know that perhaps my greatest skill is procrastination. Here's how I just wasted the last 45 minutes of my life: http://www.flickchart.com/. It's a site where they give you two movies and you pick which you like better. As you pick the movies they keep a running list of your favorite movies of all time. When they made me pick between A Clockwork Orange and No Country For Old Men I almost had a nervous breakdown. Eventually I had to go with Alex and the ultraviolence. At the moment my number one is Jaws, but we'll have to see how it fares against The Big Lebowski or The Godfather.

Later,

Matt