Mint chocolate ice cream

Ingredients

• 4 oz. chocolate chips (about ¾ cup) -- I prefer Guittard  
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 pint cream
• 1 tsp mint extract -- I prefer Nielsen-Massey
• ¼ tsp salt

Equipment

• ice cream maker

Instructions

1. Put the chocolate chips, sugar, and 1/4 of the cream in a bowl. 
2. Microwave to melt, about 1 minute.
3. Whisk chocolate mixture until smooth.
4. Add remaining cream in 3 portions, whisking after each addition.
5. Mix in vanilla and salt.
6. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
7. Freeze in ice cream maker.

Chocolate butter cupcakes with chocolate whipped cream

For Noah's birthday today, we made chocolate cupcakes. We used Rose Levy Beranbaum's chocolate butter cupcake recipe from her Heavenly Cakes book. (It's an amazing book. All of her books are worth buying and reading and baking from.) I won't post it here -- just buy the book. :)

One of the rewarding things about Rose's cake recipes is that they come out perfectly flat on top, which makes it easy to apply frosting.

The texture is lighter and softer than a typical chocolate cake, partly due to the use of cake flour and superfine sugar, rather than all-purpose flour and granulated sugar, and partly due to her special mixing technique, which involves mixing softened butter into the dry ingredients, prior to adding the liquids.

For frosting, Noah wanted something chocolaty but light, so we used my version of chocolate whipped cream. It goes like this:

Chocolate whipped cream

-- adapted from this recipe

Ingredients

• 3 T cocoa powder (I prefer Guittard Cocoa Rouge)
• 3 T sugar
• 1 C cream
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Tools

• Electric hand mixer

Directions

• Measure the cocoa powder and sugar into a metal bowl. Put the bowl and the beaters from the mixer into the freezer, to chill.
• Add 3 T of the cream, and the vanilla, to the dry ingredients. Mix to form a paste.
• Add the rest of the cream in a couple of batches, mixing to uniformity after each addition.
• Whip until there are stiff peaks.
• Yield: 4 servings

Happy birthday!

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

Background

These pancakes are delicately flavored with lemon and cardamom. They are gluten-free and wheat-free, but contain dairy and eggs -- ricotta and eggs give them their body, meaning very little flour is required. To make them low carb, replace the maple syrup with a low-calorie sweetener. These are currently the favorite pancake variation at my house.

Ingredients

• 3/4 C chickpea flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 2 1/2 C ricotta (whole milk)
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract (I prefer Nielsen-Massey); or use lemon zest
• 1/3 C maple syrup
• butter for frying

Directions

1. Combine the dry ingredients (first 4).
2. Combine the wet ingredients (next 5).
3. Mix the dry into the wet, thoroughly.
4. Let the batter rest for about 10 minutes.
5. Fry pancakes in butter, on medium-high heat. They are rather delicate, so flip them carefully. It helps to make them fairly small, about 1 tablespoon of batter per pancake. Don't use as high a flame as you would for standard pancakes, or they won't cook through before they burn on the outside.
6. Serves 5 for breakfast.

Chickpea Sunbutter Muffins

This is a recipe I developed over the course of a couple of years, starting from a variety of muffin recipes.

The muffins are appropriate for those with allergies to wheat, nuts, and peanuts. The chickpea flour and sunbutter give them a higher protein content than most muffins, but with the brown sugar and currants they don't count as low carb.

These are intended to be more savory than sweet, with the cardamom rounding out the chickpea flavor. They freeze well, and can be microwaved for a few seconds to be a quick warm breakfast for the kids.

Dry ingredients

• 4 C chickpea flour
• 2 T baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp cardamom
• ½ tsp cinnamon

Wet ingredients

• 4 T butter, melted
• ½ C brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 C sunbutter (about half a jar)
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 2 C buttermilk (or plain milk)

Additions

• 2 C currants
• butter for pans

Equipment

• Large mixing bowl
• Electric mixer
• 5 mini-muffin pans
• Baking sheet
• Measuring cups and spoons

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients, using a hand mixer. Dump out the dry mixture onto two plates.
2. Melt the butter in the mixing bowl, in the microwave, about 30 seconds.
3. Mix brown sugar with the butter, until uniform.
4. Mix in eggs, vanilla, and sunbutter.
5. Preheat the oven to 425 F.
6. Add half of the dry mixture, then the buttermilk, then the other half of the dry. Mix until uniform.
7. Mix in currants.
8. While the batter rests and thickens, line a cookie sheet with foil, and butter two mini-muffin tins.
9. Spoon batter into tins, to form 24 mini-muffins. Fill to near the top of each hole, but do not overfill.
10. Bake for 15 minutes at 425 F.
11. Repeat until you use up all of the batter. It will be about 5 pans / 60 muffins.
12. Wait 10-15 minutes before removing muffins from pans.

Yield: about 60 mini-muffins (5 tins).