Homemade Vanilla Bean Ice Cream With Pecan Praline Cornbread

Okay that title is a mouthful, but I have to acknowledge both parts fittingly! For the ice cream, yes I made homemade ice cream again, without an ice cream maker. I used two Madagascar vanilla beans (this time from Nielsen-Massey instead of World Market's), along with heavy cream, milk, whole eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract (the alcohol helps to soften the ice cream as well as impart more flavor). I love love love homemade ice cream! The only thing I have to give up is letting it sit for a bit after taking it from the freezer, before it is scoopable. I love how VANILLA it is. Oh, I also made the Baileys ice cream again... and once again, that was softer than the vanilla (probably due to the higher alcohol content). Mmmm....

Okay so the other part of this is the pecan praline cornbread... I basically threw in this Pecan Praline Liqueur along with a bunch of pecans, flour (regular and corn), cream cheese, and sour cream (no sugar at all), and baked the batter in little cupcake liners as well as steamed the batter in the rice cooker. The above slice you see is the steamed version. I personally love pecans and cornbread so it's something I really enjoyed (not to mention the strong kick from the liqueur). Oh and I have to comment... I don't usually get tempted by sour cream, but Wallaby's European style cultured sour cream is soooo thick and tasty that I actually got tempted to eat it straight, with crackers, before dumping it into the batter...

Chocolate Brownie Soufflé

Okay okay this wasn't really a soufflé but I just wanted to call it that due to my usage of the ramekin. This was the same brownie batter as that used for the car brownies. I actually made it myself from flour, cocoa, etc. as opposed to from a mix. It came out more cakey than fudgey but I was going for that anyhow, since fudgey brownies wouldn't fare well when attempting to release them from the shaped molds. While googling for from-scratch brownie recipes, I learned there is this huge debate about whether brownies should be fudgey or cakey... I guess my lack of opinion, coupled with the misuse of the term "soufflé," betrays that I'm not really a foodie but just someone interested in food.

Car Brownies

Yay... I've posted about these before but they were time-consuming enough to warrant another post! It's not so much the baking that takes awhile, but it's the cleanup! If you're interested in the pans themselves, they are Nordicware's "Sweet Rides Classic Car" pans. I do like all the fun shaped pans offered by Nordicware but yeah the cleanup bites.

Minted Lamb With Quinoa Polenta And Carrots

So I bought this jar of Colman's Mint Sauce on a whim... and the safest thing I could possibly use it for was to pair it with lamb! Hence, I bought these boneless lamb cuts from Fresh & Easy, threw them in the slow cooker with olive oil and the mint sauce, and the carrots, and let her cook away for 10 hours. As you can see, the resulting lamb was basically so fall-apart tender! Taste-wise, the mint sauce was fine but it's probably a bit too strong for Kevin. The other interesting part of this dish was the quinoa polenta that I picked up from Whole Foods. It went well with the minty olive oil lamb sauce. I've seen the plain yellow polenta before, but not this speckled one! Apparently it's got heirloom red and black quinoa along with your standard corn meal. Looking at the package here... it's from The Quinoa Corporation based in Gardena? How interesting. They make a lot of the other quinoa products that I recognize! Didn't know they were in Gardena. Check it out: http://www.quinoa.net/ .

Raisin Rosemary Crisps

Wow! I love these Raisin Rosemary Crisps from Trader Joe's! I say this because I've actually bought Leslie Stowe's Raincoast Crisps before, which were good but relatively pricey... So compared to that, these crisps from TJ are a no brainer replacement! Granted, the raincoast crisps come in different flavors and are bigger than these mini-toast sized crisps from TJ, but the latter are always crispy whereas I've had somewhat chewy raincoast crisps before, which are no fun. I wonder if it's because the raincoast crisps are all natural whereas the TJ may not be? I'm not sure. If you want to know what I'm talking about, you can read a bit about the Raincoast Crisps. I would vouch for the TJ crisps over Leslie's Stowe's any day though, because they taste delicious, are reliably crispy, and much more affordable!