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Wednesday, September 4, 2024

A Duo of Delicious Ice Creams, and a Dud

We blazed into the second half of August with high humidity, a mix of sun and clouds, some bouts of rain, and more than our fair share of mosquitos. But the cicadas were in full song, at last, and I found myself thinking intently about how ice cream belongs in this kind of scenario. Not quite a decade ago, I came across a recipe for brown sugar cinnamon ice cream that's always been well-received, and I put together a batch and churned it one weekend, and then stored it away for the right moment to bring it out. That finally occurred on the final Monday of August.

The other ice cream has been sampled only once before here, back in 2015, and failed to make much of an impression. I tried to up its game with a fuller coffee flavor and a more rounded sweetness. It's still not a top-tier player in the ice cream game here but, well, it's still ice cream, and it will find its way. I whipped it up, set aside the base to chill over that same weekend, and then churned it as we started the week of August 19. Unfortunately, perhaps because my ice cream bowl needed more freezing time as it ages, but it didn't set up quite right...and yet the flavor was still pretty much on point!

And finally, reaching back two weekends ago, as we awaited some heavy storming to roll through, I thought I'd finally get around to trying a recipe that felt a bit dicey to me...and I was correct to be wary. I'd gotten some Steen's pure cane sugar syrup just to try it out, and this was one of the recipes for doing so: chocolatey cereal squares. It wasn't uninteresting but wasn't especially edible, so it will not be repeated. Perhaps it was the lingering aftertaste, likely thanks to this heavy molasses-y bent of that particular kind of cane syrup. Anyway. I tried it, and now it's dead to me. That also was the verdict of neighbors with whom it was shared, with one saying: "Don't do that again."

Update: Some of the brown sugar cinnamon ice cream got stuffed into the final remaining waffle taco shell I'd made for choco tacos recently; then I whipped up a cinnamon shell sauce to roll it in, awkwardly. Our Labor Day Weekend guests got to split it, and it passed muster with them.


"Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream," from Heather Tullos of SugarDishMe.com. [Published 11 September 2015]

"Coffee Heath Bar Ice Cream," from Elise Bauer of SimplyRecipes.com. [Originally Downloaded 12 May 2015 / Updated 16 February 2021]

"Chocolatey Cereal Squares," from jimmie4 on SteensSyrup.com. [Published 16 May 2021]

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