Blueberry-Yoghurt Ice Cream

I love seeing different recipes using berries, gorgeous berries! And am so jealous of the lovely berries desserts that our Western blogger friends always post in their blogs! Blueberries and all berries are extremely expensive over here! A couple of weeks ago while I was shopping for grocery, I saw some blueberries on sale, at a third of their normal price! Wow, was I happy indeed! They were very fresh, and I immediately bought 4 packs home, washed the berries and freeze them.

Lovely blueberries.

Made this Blueberry-Yoghurt Ice Cream, recipe taken from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking From My Home To Yours". The original recipe was actually Blueberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream, and since I have my own homemade yoghurt, I used that instead.

I reduced the sugar slightly, and it is really blueberry tangy, as I added in half a cup more of blueberries! Even though this is not sweet at all, my 14 year old niece did not complain, she loves it, keep asking for more! If you love a slightly sweeter taste, just use the full amount of sugar calls for in the recipe or adjust to your own liking.

Yummy tangy blueberry yoghurt ice cream!

Blueberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream
(adapted from "Baking From My Home To Yours" by Dorie Greenspan)
1 cup blueberries - fresh or frozen (if frozen, thaw and drain) (I use 1-1/2 cups)
1/3 cup sugar, or more to taste (I use 1/4 cup)
pinch of salt
grated zest and juice of 1/4 lemon (or lime, as you prefer), or more juice to taste
3/4 cup heavy cream (I use 1 cup)
3/4 cup sour cream (I use 1/2 cup yoghurt)


Put the blueberries, sugar, salt and lemon zest and juice in a medium nonreactive saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the mixture boils and the berries pop and soften, about 3 minutes.
Turn the berries into a blender and whir until you have a fairly homogeneous puree, about 1 minute. (It will never be completely smooth, and that's just fine). Add the heavy cream and sour cream and pulse just to blend. Taste and, if you'd like, add a squirt more lemon juice or a tiny bit more sugar.
Pour the custard into a bowl and refrigerate until it is chilled before churning it into ice cream.
Scrape the chilled custard into the bowl of an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer's instructions. Pack the ice cream into a container and freeze for at least 2 hours, until it is firm enough to scoop.

Brioche : ABC June 2012

I have always wanted to make Brioche, especially the one from Dorie Greenspan's book, "Baking From My Home To Yours". So when Hanaa chose Brioche from "The Weekend Baker" by Abby Dodge for our monthly Avid Baker's Challenge (ABC), I was really looking forward to it. Abby's method  is simpler than Dorie's,  though I would definitely give Dorie's recipe a try one of these days.

Abby's recipe is very flexible, meaning that you may prepare the dough right up to the first or even second stage of rising, refrigerate the dough overnight and bake the next day, really convenient for busy bakers on the go! 

I did not follow the overnight method, made this in the afternoon, enjoyed it on the same day! The dough is wonderful to work with, but at the beginning it is really soft and sticky, after the first 12 minutes of mixing, it does not look like it is leaving the sides of the bowl, as it should after 6 minutes of mixing! So I added in about 1/4 cup of bread flour. I use bread flour instead of all-purpose flour as called for in the original recipe. After the addition of flour, the dough gets a little better but was still sticky, butter was then added in, and continue kneading until the dough is smooth and satiny. Leave to rise in an oiled bowl for about 45 minutes. 

Abby's Brioche is done plaited style, but I wanted a loaf, after I divided the dough into three equal portions, I placed them side by side in a greased 9"x5" loaf pan. The dough is very easy to work with, it is soft but no longer sticky. Leave to rise for about 30 minutes, they rose beautifully. Brush the top with some egg wash and bake in a preheated oven at 200C.

Goodness, the loaf really rises more during baking! I could not see as the light bulb in my oven is no longer in working condition. At 20 minutes into baking time, I checked the loaf and found the top is getting brown too fast as it really rises very high, almost touching the heat element at the top of my oven! I tent the loaf with a piece of aluminium foil, lower it to a rack below and continue baking for another 5 minutes of so. The Brioche loaf took only about 25 minutes to bake. I took it out and when I tried to remove it from the baking pan, it got stuck! See the tears at the side of the loaf! The next time when I make this again, either I'll use a bigger baking pan or simply plait it, just as Abby suggested.

This Brioche Loaf is so fluffy and soft! 

It has a lovely light yellow buttery colour, though you can't see from the picture.

This is the first time that I've made Brioche, so I am unable to compare with other Brioche, but I have no complains about this one!

Can you see the fluffy, cottony soft texture? It even stays soft and fluffy the next day! Good eaten on its own, with a cup of black coffee!

My hubby had a piece of this soft and lovely Brioche, fold it in half, sandwiched in the centre, is a scoop of homemade creamy chocolate ice cream! It takes me back to the days when I was a little girl, we used to buy soft bread sandwiched with scoops of ice cream from the ice cream seller, who went round selling ice cream using his bicycle with a freezer box at the back, holding a bell in his hands, and you can hear him coming!  Attached to his freezer box in plastic bags, hung the ice cream cones and soft square buns, he would slit the buns halfway through and place a scoop of ice cream in the centre! Have you eaten ice cream this way before? This Brioche is perfect for that! Yum!!!

To see the other ABC members' wonderful Brioche, please do stop by ABC.  You can get the recipe from "The Weekend Baker" by Abigail Johnson Dodge, one of my top favourite baking book. All the recipes that I've tried are keepers!  If you would like to join ABC, please contact Hanaa.

Free and Easy Bake-Along #25 - Bake-Along 1st Anniversary Layer Cake

Bake-Along is one year old! I can't believe  that it has been one year since my first Bake-Along with Lena! This Bake-Along idea was first started when I realized that I needed that "push" to encourage me to bake from my ever increasing collection of cookbooks. There are times when I look through my cookbooks and decided on a bake, when another one caught my eye, and another one, and another one! Most of the times I could not make up my mind and these are pushed back to later and sometimes forgotten until something or someone sort of reminded me of my bookmarked recipes. So in order to commit myself to bake from my many cookbooks, I decided to have someone to bake together with me. That leads me to Lena of Frozen Wings, (Hi Lena!), I noticed that she has made several recipes from the same books that I have. And she seems nice, which she is! So I sent an email to Lena about my idea of a Bake-Along, I was ready to be rejected! LOL! I was feeling a little foolish sending her an email about this crazy idea of mine, when she does not even know me! After all, we do not know each other very well and the only correspondence we had was through our comments in each other's blog, and we have just recently knew each other through blogging! Imagine my surprise and excitement when Lena replied that yes, she is interested! Gosh, someone actually is interested in this crazy idea of mine! She must be as crazy as me, looks like we will get along fine after all! (wink! wink!)

That settles it! We emailed each other almost every other day to discuss on this Bake-Along. Finally our first Bake-Along, chosen by Lena, was posted on 19th May 2011, Streusel Pizza. It feels nice to have a partner in baking, especially when that recipe was bookmarked and I never did came round to make it, which I finally did. Then Lena suggested inviting Zoe of Bake For Happy Kids, whom I am not familiar with, but that was taken care of soon enough. And Zoe joined us in our second Bake-Along. (Hi, Zoe!). 

Now a year later, with 24 bakes behind us, I am really happy to have Lena and Zoe as my baking partners.  I did manage to crossed off about 20 recipes from my cookbooks for our Bake-Along, YAY!! During the months of Bake-Along, we have received some enquiries from our blogger friends who has shown interest to follow along. Of course, we are very happy and thrilled that Bake-Along has sparked an interest in some of our blogger pals, and we took a step further to start the linky tools so that anyone who is interested can join and blog-hop along with us. And we include a theme bake each month, so that it is easier for our friends to join us, as not everyone may have the same cookbooks. During this one year journey of Bake-Along, I have the pleasure to know some awesome home-bakers and their wonderful blogs (Hi, ladies, you know who you are!! :). I deeply appreciate your constant support! Thank you for baking along with us! 

Today's post is "Bake-Along 1st Anniversary Layer Cake". Layer cake is something that I very seldom make, mostly because I am totally lousy at frosting and decorating any cake!  But then again, I would prefer to eat plain cakes without any frosting, so that is why I keep away from frosting most of the time. So I made a simple chocolate cake layered with chocolate ganache and top with the same ganache at the last minute, last evening! Yup, I was usually so organized when it comes to our Bake-Along, was ready at least a week in advance, but not this time! I was busy the last couple of weeks and was not around during the weekends, so this is my simple layer cake. I did plan on making something else but have to settle with this instead.

I made half the recipe, so this is a rather small cake, only 7". Since I do not have any other things in my pantry except the coloured sprinkles and white choc chips, I used that to decorate the sides and top. Haha, looks kinda funny!! See what I mean with my cake decorating skills???  

 Putting aside the unattractive look, this cake is really moist and chocolaty with intense chocolate flavour.

Happy 1st Anniverysary, Bake-Along!

A special Thank You to everyone!

Please visit Lena and Zoe and our friends who has baked along with us in the linky below.

Be sure to join us in our next Bake-Along, where we will be baking Pear and Maple Crumble from Bon Appetit Dessert Cookbook, page 409, or you may get the recipe here, and post it on 12 June. The linky will stay open until 18 Jun. See you!

Chocolate Cake
(source from "Delicious Cakes" by Amy Heng)
Ingredients :
250gm butter
370gm soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 eggs, lightly beaten
320gm plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
100gm cocoa powder (dissolved in 280ml hot water)


Chocolate Ganache
300ml whipping cream
600gm cooking chocolate (chopped)

1. Line and grease a 10" round baking pan. Preheat oven to 170C.
2. Sieve plain flour, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl. Whisk to combine.
3. In an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla essence until light and fluffy. Gradually add in eggs and mix until well combined.
4. Add in one third of flour mixture alternately with half of dissolved cocoa on low speed until combined, repeat with remaining flour and cocoa mixture.
5. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour or until done. Cool cake in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes and turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.
6. Slice cooled cake into 3 layers horizontally and spread with ganache. Pour ganache over cake, letting it coat around sides of cake. 
7. Decorate as desired.

To make Chocolate Ganache :
Heat cream in double boiler until hot. Add in chocolate and stir until smooth. Cool until chocolate has thickened slightly before using.

Kitchen Flavour notes :
~ made half the recipe using a 7" round cake pan, baked at 170C for 38 minutes.


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