My sister has decided to make a specialty of homemade ice cream. Her first concoction was the perfect execution of this recipe for blueberry ice cream. The lightly crushed and occasionally intact, fresh, raw blueberries were shockingly good--enough to disrupt some of my stereotypes about putting fruit in ice cream. (Like "the fruit must always be cooked first" and "the fruit will taste a little mediocre" and "raw blueberries are too sour for this.")
Her second concoction, the second night I crashed on her couch, was a recipe of her own invention. Apple crisp ice cream. She made a spiced apple compote in a saucepan, using fresh apples, and chilled it. She made a toasted, crunchy crumble out of oats, flour, butter and brown sugar. Both were stirred into the completely from-scratch vanilla ice cream batter, and froze right into it. It was amazing, and I hope to publish the recipe later if she'll write it down for me.
While my sister assembled the yolk and milk mixtures, I was left with two nights worth of egg whites. I stood in the kitchen with her, but my help was infrequently required. I decided to attempt a simple mousse without reading any mousse recipes.
Unfortunately, the available resources were a bit scant, so I found myself whipping the bowl of egg whites with a salad fork, for want of a mixer or whisk.
Check it out:
Actual, standing egg whites whipped in an absurdly low-tech way. I think it took me two hours.
Unfortunately, I made a fatal mistake immediately afterward. I folded the beautiful meringue into hot, sweetened, chocolatey milk without removing the scalded milk mixture from the stove. The egg whites cooked far too much (they actually boiled!!!), and my would-be mousse developed an unfortunate texture, a bit like it was full of tiny, sand-like grains of rubber.
Here is a photo of my dashed dreams and public shame:
Woe is me.
Luckily, my sister's ice cream was ready around the same time that I concluded that I could not keep eating my experiment. We watched Community and all was well.
