I entertained a lovely group of nice young ladies (grades 5-9) at a fine arts camp this week, and at the end of my presentation, one of them asked how long it takes me to compose a piece of music.
I said it varies.
Sometimes I am walking the dogs when an idea hits; and when I get home, I sit down at the piano and crank out a whole composition in an hour or two. Other times though, it takes a little more elbow grease to complete the task. I’ll leave it after an hour or 2 and come back to it another time when my mind is more fresh.
The same thing happens with recipe writing, I believe. An idea pops into my head with ease, but the desired execution may linger for a while. I’ll make a “flop”, and then stew over it until I come up with a solution. (And when it comes to ice cream, I have a couple of days to stew, because it takes 24 hours for my ice cream canister to re-freeze.)
So, along came Fresh Blueberry Buttered Sweet Corn Ice Cream in my head last year, and I gave it a whirl. The first batch was, well, I don’t even need to talk about it, ha! It was the end of summer, so I plopped in the back of my head for winter storage. But then along came blueberry/sweet corn season, and I needed to seize the moment!
This year’s batch 1 went to my friend Liz (as in Liz and Larry who tested my Orange Cardamom Pistachio Ice Cream). It was determined that it tasted okay, but there was a funny “lard on the top of your mouth feel”. Can’t have that!
I figured butter was the culprit. So I looked around the Google world to see if anybody else had used butter in ice cream before. There was nary to be found. I did find one with clarified butter, but I really didn’t want to go to the trouble. Then it dawned on me — butter is nothing but churned cream anyway, so why add it when there is cream in the recipe already? It’s really the salt that adds “buttery” flavor, so why not just add salt?
Ahh, my quest was complete.
Let the scooping begin. —Sherry K-Jazzy Gourmet
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