Vanilla Mascarpone Ice Cream with Sweet Roasted Cherries . . .

"My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, 

but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate." 

                   -- Thornton Wilder

Solid advice, especially as it concerns homemade ice cream. Seems to me it melts faster than the store-bought stuff, so it's wise to take Wilder's suggestion. Luckily, this vanilla mascarpone ice cream is so darn good that eating it before it softens into a puddle won't be a problem for most folks.

Made with some of the most luscious ingredients known to man--heavy cream, mascarpone cheese, and slowly roasted sweet cherries--this may be one for the record books, it's that fantastic.

Adapted from Jeni Britton Bauer's Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, the latest ice cream volume to take up residence in my ever-expanding collection, this recipe is simple, as are most of her recipes. Three key elements make her standard method stand out from the crowd: she doesn't use eggs; she uses a smidgen of corn syrup; and, her ice creams are ready to eat far more quickly than the norm.

Until now, I've honestly never encountered an egg-free ice cream that has an undeniably wonderful texture. You probably know that the typical ice cream recipe requires the careful cooking, and then straining, of an eggy custard concoction. That's fine if you know how, for example, to make a decent pastry cream and you are well aware of the potential pitfalls, but it's far from a foolproof process for beginners. The likelihood of overcooking the custard and ending up with something akin to scrambled eggs is high. Yeah, there's nothing quite like the sensation of dumping a steaming saucepan full of expensive ingredients right down the sink after you've been diligently stirring it on the stove, non-stop, until your wrist seizes up. Luckily, it's been a while since I've had to face a pour-it-down-the-sink scenario, but I remember those days well. So, while you do have to cook the milk, cream, and sugar, etc., for Jeni's recipes, the chances of screwing up that step are happily diminished.

In the pantheon of ice cream cookbooks, I think this one is kind of a revelation. As I already mentioned, the recipes generally include a little bit of corn syrup, and though that may be a frowned-upon ingredient for those who require all-organic-everything in their gourmet ice creams, it sure helps to produce a seriously fine result. I think it's worth the trade-off.

I made a couple of minor changes to the original recipe by using mascarpone cheese instead of goat cheese (I love both, but I must confess that I love mascarpone more), and by using fresh sweet cherries instead of sour cherries. Also, I decided to add in a tiny bit of vanilla bean paste (the recipe did not call for any vanilla at all) and I think that rounded out the flavor nicely, still leaving the mascarpone aspect front and center. I also reworded the recipe to reflect exactly what I did.

Both of my kids, along with the hubby, told me they think this may be the best ice cream I've ever made. High praise, coming from them. That, however, is a testament to Jeni Britton Bauer's skill as an artisanal ice cream maker and recipe developer, without a doubt; I can't take the credit. I look forward to using this no-egg method many times in the future. It's a winner.

Vanilla Mascarpone Ice Cream with Sweet Roasted Cherries
(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Yield: About 1 quart of ice cream.


To make the roasted cherries:
(This should be made ahead of time and can, if you like, be prepared days in advance and kept in the fridge until you need it.)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

2 cups of pitted sweet cherries
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch

Place the cherries in a medium size baking dish/pan (I used a 9"x13" glass dish). Whisk the sugar and cornstarch together in a little bowl and scatter that over the cherries. Toss them around until evenly coated. Roast the cherries in the oven, stirring them about every 15 minutes, until the juice looks thick and bubbly, about 35-40 minutes or so.

Strain most of the liquid off the roasted cherries and let them cool completely before using them in the ice cream. (If the cherries are large, you can cut them into chunks before or after roasting, if you prefer; that's what I ended up doing with mine.)

To make the ice cream:

2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
1 and 1/2 ounces cream cheese (3 tablespoons), room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 and 1/4 cups heavy cream
2/3 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup

In a very small bowl, stir together 2 tablespoons of the milk with all of the cornstarch until smooth (this is the "slurry").

In a large bowl, with a fork, mix together the mascarpone, cream cheese, vanilla, and salt until smooth and well combined. Set aside.

Fill a large bowl about 3/4 of the way full with cold water and ice. Have a large, clean Ziploc bag ready and propped open near the bowl.

In a large saucepan, combine the rest of the milk, the heavy cream, the sugar, and the corn syrup. Over medium-high heat, bring the mixture to a rolling boil. Boil for 4 minutes. Take the pan off the burner and slowly whisk in the cornstarch slurry, whisking constantly. Return the pan to the burner and bring back to a boil, again over medium-high heat, now stirring continually with a rubber spatula. Cook until slightly thickened; this will take about 1 minute. Take the pan off the heat.

Pour the hot milk mixture slowly into the bowl with the mascarpone and cream cheese, whisking until it's quite smooth. Pour all of this into the Ziploc bag, seal it, and place it into the bowl of ice water. Leave the bag in there until the liquid in it feels pretty cold, at least half an hour. Add more ice to the bowl as needed.

Follow the directions for your own ice cream freezer, churning the ice cream until it's thick. (I use the ice cream attachment for my KitchenAid mixer and my ice cream took at least 20 minutes to thicken.)

 Get out your roasted cherries and a spoon. As you pack the thickened ice cream into one or two storage containers (I used two pint-size glass containers that have plastic fitted lids), spoon some of the cherries in frequently; don't stir/mix them in, simply layer them.

Cover the containers securely. Chill them in the coldest part of your freezer for at least 4 hours, until the ice cream is as firm as you'd like (I ended up letting mine chill overnight, but I did check it after only 4 hours and, relatively speaking, it was probably firm enough to serve).

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Fresh Sweet Cherry & Nectarine Upside-Down Cake . . . with Honey Whipped Cream

As a kid, the only upside-down cake I ever encountered was the classic pineapple ring and maraschino cherry model. I couldn't stand the stuff. As I recall, my dad adored it. He was the only one in the family who showed unfettered interest. Not even my mom, devoted dessert lover that she was, could bring herself to crave the canned-fruit laden cake. As a rule, it was atrociously sweet, sodden with that sugary syrup and just not an altogether great concept. She'd make it for him, of course, but the woman had her standards; given the choice, she would always have opted for a slice of something chocolate.

I guess it's no surprise, then, why I've never launched with abandon into the production of that sticky, inverted confection. Those pineapple cakes may be endearing in a retro sort of way, but not enough so to motivate me into actually baking one. No siree.

But this cherry and nectarine upside-down cake, on the other hand, while bearing some resemblance to that toothache-inspiring item of yesteryear, isn't as cloying. Made with thin slices of ripe nectarine, fresh sweet cherries, honey, plain yogurt, a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a teeny tiny splash of peach schnapps thrown in to jazz things up, this baby's an improvement on that fusty old relic.

In fact, were the two cakes to pass on the street, I'd wager they'd acknowledge each other with a polite nod but, figuring they hadn't much in common, the pair wouldn't even stop to chat.

About this recipe . . .

Today's cake is adapted from a recipe in the gargantuan volume, Bon Appetit Desserts. It's a dream of a cookbook and, with 700+ pages, it's heavier than heck. Weighing in at 6.5 lbs., it's the size of a full-term newborn. They should sell it with a complementary stroller so readers can cart it around the house. Or, better yet, a forklift.

I customized the original recipe, which called for peaches along with a lot of spicy cardamom. What did I alter? In addition to using a combo of nectarines and cherries instead of peaches, I omitted the cardamom entirely, using just a little cinnamon and a scant pinch of nutmeg instead. I also added in a wee dab of peach schnapps, for a bit of zing, and I slightly increased the amount of salt (coarse kosher). Threw in the seeds of half a vanilla bean, and reduced the amount of granulated sugar in the cake by a small margin. In the honey whipped cream topping, I used less than half the amount of honey called for. (Have you ever mixed honey with heavy cream before? Fact is, you need a remarkably small amount to get the desired effect.)

With the adjustments, this cake is still sweet, but not ridiculously so. Some sweetness is just the nature of an upside-down cake. The flip-it-over-while-it's-still-really-hot concept wouldn't work without that gooey glaze permeating the top/bottom of the cake. In any case, if you want a concentrated sweetness infusion, an upside-down cake is definitely the ticket.

Fresh Sweet Cherry & Nectarine Upside-Down Cake 
with Honey Whipped Cream


(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!) 

Yield: One 9" one-layer cake

6 Tbsp. (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature (divided use)
1/4 honey (I used clover honey.)
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 and 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Scant 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. baking soda
Scant 1/2 tsp. coarse kosher salt
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, large
2 tsp. peach schnapps (optional)
seeds of half a vanilla bean (or, 1 tsp of vanilla extract)
1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
2 medium size nectarines, pitted and thinly sliced in crescents (about 1/4" thick)
Approximately 16 fresh sweet cherries, pitted

For the honey whipped cream:
(Note: The original recipe suggested adding a little plain yogurt into this mixture. I didn't try that, but thought I'd mention it in case you'd like to give it a whirl!)
1 cup heavy cream, very cold
2 tsp. honey (Or use up to 2 Tbsp. if you want really sweet whipped cream.) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place rack in middle of oven. Liberally butter the bottom and sides of a 9" round cake pan. (After buttering, I took the extra step of lightly spraying the pan with vegetable oil spray; as far as I'm concerned, one can't be too careful where inverted cakes are concerned.)

In a medium size sauce pan, melt 2 Tbsp. of the unsalted butter. Add into that the brown sugar and the honey. Cook on medium high heat until the mixture begins to boil; stirring often, let boil for about 2 minutes or until the mixture begins to darken just a bit.

Remove the pan from the heat and immediately pour all of it into the buttered pan. Set the pan aside; the syrup will harden in the pan while you're preparing the rest of the cake.



 In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and kosher salt. In the bowl of your mixer, using the paddle attachment on medium high speed, combine the remaining butter and the granulated sugar until it looks somewhat fluffy. Beat the egg into this on medium speed, along with the vanilla been seeds, and the peach schnapps.

Pour in half the flour mixture on medium speed just until well blended; blend in all of the yogurt. Add in the remaining flour on low speed, just until blended.

Arrange the nectarine slices (you may not need to use them all) in a spiral design around the edge of the cake pan, over the hardened syrup. Arrange the cherries similarly in the middle of the nectarine spiral. Using a spoon, gently dollop the soft batter over the fruit, being wary not to disrupt the design. Smooth the top of the batter carefully to completely cover all of the fruit.

Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the cake is golden and the sides begin to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Let the finished cake cool for only 5 minutes after removing it from the oven. At that point, have your serving platter ready and place it snuggly over the top of the cake.

Quickly invert the hot cake pan onto the platter and delicately lift the hot pan off. If all goes well, you'll be faced with a lovely fruit design atop a glistening cake. Let the cake cool before slicing.

To make the honey whipped cream: 

Whip the cream in your mixer on medium speed in a chilled bowl. Drizzle the honey in and whip until the cream forms soft peaks. Add more honey to taste, if you'd prefer the whipped cream to be sweeter. Keep refrigerated and serve over individual slices of the cake.

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Cherry Clafouti, Julia Child, and Stella . . .

I'll bet you're among the huge flock of bakers out there who are looking forward to the Julia Child movie, Julie & Julia, that will be in theaters soon, yes? I know I am. I figure it's a good bet that a hefty percentage of the people interested in this film feel some sort of personal connection--and I don't mean in a touchy-feely encounter-group sort of way--to the memory of Julia Child as we knew her from public television.

If you were a kid in the 1960s or 1970s, and cooking or baking was a big deal in your household, then chances are you probably sat through at least a few episodes of The French Chef, and paid some level of attention to it, even if you really wanted to be watching Mr. Ed, Bewitched, or maybe That Girl. (As a pre-adolescent, I coveted Marlo Thomas's hairdo on That Girl, and the way everyone always ended up loving her character, Anne Marie, even though she consistently managed to engender all manner of catastrophe wherever she went. One might say I saw her as the perfect role model.)

You might also be among the legions of readers of Julie & Julia, the book on which the movie is based. I must admit I haven't yet finished the book, which was kindly loaned to me many weeks ago by Holly, one of my kindest and obviously most patient friends (really, she's a gem; everyone needs a pal like her). The story's premise is unique and it pulls you right in, but in reading it I eventually stalled amidst Powell's recounting of her efforts to cook what sound like the least appetizing recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking--stuff like Foies de Volailles en Aspic. (Picture chicken livers in a savory Jello . . . . uh huh, I knew you'd understand.)

My own relationship with the TV personage of Julia Child was channeled, if you will, through my mom, whose name was Stella. Back then, there were only a couple of cooking shows on TV that I can recall--Julia's, and Graham Kerr's Galloping Gourmet. My mom loved watching them both, especially the former.

As kids, my older sister Joanie and I spent hours at my mom's side on summer afternoons while Julia chirped away on the screen in black and white, instructing American housewives of the proper way to render goose fat, unmold coeur a la creme, or achieve the perfect golden crust on a baguette. The three of us would perch on the big bed in my parent's room, a summer breeze moving through the pristine white curtains, and all of us folding clean laundry for the thirty minutes or so of the show. (Joanie and I eventually came to label my mom's particular--and more or less mandatory--towel folding technique as "The Stella Fold.") That's got to be one of my fondest old memories. Not that I loved the program. In fact, I thought Julia's voice was just awful. I can still hear her breath-laden, overly lengthy pronunciation of the word tomatoes as "tommaaaatoes." But, Julia was pleasingly far from intimidating and, clearly, Stella felt some kind of kinship with her enthusiasm and gutsy confidence when it came to food. That brief half hour represented a cheery, and very female, domestic diversion in the middle of a typical summertime weekday.

Stella, just like Julie Powell's mother, had her own set of Child's two-volume masterwork. Well worn as an old pair of fine leather gloves, and pictured above, those books inhabited my parents' house for decades, alongside dozens of other somewhat less awe-inspiring cookbooks. This spring, when I began reading Powell's book, I took Stella's volumes off the shelf where they'd stood undisturbed for a few years now, reverently blew the dust off the bindings (if such a thing can be reverently done), and brought them home to join my own ever expanding cookbook collection. Since Stella's death at the age of 79, two and a half years ago, I'd already taken--with my father's blessing--the vast majority of her wonderful cookbooks, but I'd hesitated when it came to removing these seminal tomes. It had seemed to me that removing them too soon would be unseemly, not in any formal sense that anyone else would notice, but just in terms of my own knowledge of how much they belonged so expressly to her, and because of my sense of how much joy she must have derived from them.

The only Julia Child recipes that I know for certain my mom used were for breads. She perfected, through literally hundreds of batches, the most delicious homemade breads I've ever tasted. Probably her greatest triumph was her French baguette. Until I entered culinary school this past spring, and was offered slices from a very fresh baguette created (I assume!) by the artisan breads class, I didn't realize how completely perfect--truly perfect--Stella's breads must have been. I have renewed admiration and appreciation for her talent and perseverance as a baker, based on that recent experience alone, and I had quite a bit to start with.

A few days after Julia Child died, in August of 2004, my husband and I traveled with our kids on a trip we'd planned to Washington D.C. and while there we made the obligatory trip to the Smithsonian. Julia's actual home kitchen--all of her own belongings, I believe--had recently been recreated and installed in a display there, not too far from the First Ladies' inaugural gowns. It seemed fitting to me that I was able to see her kitchen so soon after her passing. It looked at the same time cluttered, functional, and comfortingly well used. That experience, of looking at the objects she must have handled over and over, is part of what I think of when I think of Julia. I wish my mom could have seen that kitchen too; I imagine she would have stood there gazing quietly, examining all the details for a long time, smiling to herself.

My sister, several years ago, went to one of Julia's book-signings in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that year for Christmas she gave me an autographed copy of the book Baking With Julia. Of all the cookbooks I own, that is the one I am least likely to part with.

In homage to Julia, and in honor of Stella (who adored sweets of every stripe), I made Julia's very simple and very French recipe for cherry clafouti (accent on the last syllable, bakers!). An eggy, custardy dish, that is sometimes served as part of a breakfast meal, clafouti is also served as a dessert. Julia's clafouti recipes, with several variations, appear in Volume I of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.


Julia Child's Cherry Clafouti

(For a printable version of this recipe click here!)

1 and 1/4 cups milk
2/3 cups granulated sugar, divided
3 eggs
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup flour (I used All Purpose, bleached)
3 cups cherries, pitted
powdered sugar, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a 7 or 8 cup baking dish (or a 9" cake pan will work).

Using a blender (by necessity I used my food processor and it worked fine) combine the milk, half the sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt, and flour.

Pour one quarter of the batter into the pan. Place the dish in the oven just until it sets. Remove from the oven and spread the cherries over the batter.

Sprinkle on the remaining sugar. Pour on the remaining batter.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the clafouti is puffed, brown, and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Sift the top with the powdered sugar. Serve warm.

* * * * * * *


Stella, above, as a bride on May 17th, 1952. She carried fresh lilacs in her bouquet, three of her four sisters were in the wedding party dressed in sea-foam gowns, and an assortment of finger sandwiches were served at the reception. (P.S. I just realized that the Julia Child movie opens on Stella's birthday, August 7th! How serendipitous, and how perfectly appropriate.)

(My sister, Joanie, on the left . . . I'm on the right. We called these outfits our lemon dresses. This was taken on Mother's Day, circa 1967.)

Fresh Sweet-Cherry Coffee Cake . . . Yum . . .

One of my very favorite food blogs is Confessions of a Tart. Is it one you've ever visited? Almost every time I do, I find a recipe I'd like to try. It contains some of the most lovely and striking photos I've ever seen in any blog, and not just of baked goods. Its writer, whose name is Irene, has an intuitive way with her camera. Anyway, I'm a big fan.

A nice cherry coffee cake recipe--made with fresh sweet cherries, mind you--caught my eye in Confessions of a Tart recently and I tried it out yesterday, with slight revision. The texture is wonderfully velvet-like and kind of dense without actually coming across as heavy. The flavor is delicate; it fittingly complements the sweet-tart Bing cherries. Truly good.

The biggest changes I made to Irene's recipe included adding in a very small amount of lemon zest, adding in a wee bit more salt, baking the cake for no longer than 35 minutes max, draining a little juice from the berries at the get-go, and rewriting the directions a smidgen. Oh, and I baked it in a 9" springform pan. (I'm sure it would work just as well in any 9" layer cake pan but, never having made it before, I wasn't sure so I wanted a pan with slightly higher sides.)

**Full Recipe Disclosure: Irene notes in her post for cherry coffee cake that she in fact discovered the recipe in another food site called "A Series of Kitchen Experiments." Irene altered that recipe, and created her post based on her revision. I, in turn, looked at both recipes in both sites, and made my own version, which is sort of a slightly modified, happy medium between the two versions. ( Did you get all that? Are we good to go, or do you think I need to get on the horn and secure the services of an intellectual property attorney??)

It's a simple recipe with a pleasing result. Just what we all need now and then, right?


Fresh Sweet-Cherry Coffee Cake

(For a printable version of this recipe click here!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put a rack in the upper third of your oven.
Grease and flour, or spray with baking spray, a 9" cake pan or springform pan.

1 and 1/2 cups of cherries, pitted and sliced in halves or quarters (whichever you like)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups All Purpose flour, bleached or unbleached
1 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 scant tsp. of lemon zest
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk

Place the pitted, sliced cherries in a small bowl and mix in a tablespoon of granulated sugar.

Pour the cherries into a strainer or colander placed over the bowl, and let juice drip off of them for about an hour.


Measure and combine the dry ingredients--flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

After an hour has passed, discard the juice in the bowl that dripped from the cherries. Put the drained cherries back in the empty bowl and mix in 1 tsp. of vanilla. Set aside.


Cream the butter and sugar in the large bowl of a mixer for a couple of minutes, until light and fluffy.


Add the eggs to the creamed mixture, one at a time, until well combined.



Add the lemon zest and the additional 1/2 tsp. of vanilla to the creamed mixture; combine.

Now, stirring just by hand--not with the mixer--add in the flour mixture and the milk alternately--three portions of flour and two of milk, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir just until combined; don't overmix. The batter will be thick.




Gently fold the cherries into the batter. Don't mix too zealously or the batter will become pinkish from the cherries. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.


Set on the upper oven rack. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.


Cool completely on a rack.

Garnish the top with confectioner's sugar and a couple of your prettiest leftover cherries.

Enjoy!


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