Scenes From My Life: Making Ice Cream

I come from a long line of foodies. I was lucky enough to be raised around good food. My mom enjoys cooking and when it comes to good homecooked nourishing meals it's hard to beat some of her classics, but my dad LOVES cooking. He doesn't just cook, he perfects. He''ll pick a recipe and make it over and over, making little changes along the way until he goes it just right. He'll learn about the chemistry behind what he's making so that he can really understand why things combine the way they do and use that knowledge to make things taste better. I grew up with my dad reading cook books for fun and taking cooking classes in France for vacations and making friends with chefs at his favorite restaurants. But, the family love for food goes even farther back than my dad. It extends to my grandparents and extended family as well. One of my favorite food memories from my childhood is making Creme de Menthe ice cream with my grandma. She was always very secretive about her ice cream recipe and it was always so special when she made it.

This weekend I was at my parents house with my cousin (who is more like a little sister to me) and my aunt and we decided my dad needed to give us a cooking lesson on ice cream. Of course, the only choice for what kind of ice cream to make was Creme de Menthe. So, we made three kinds of Creme de Menthe ice cream. We made my grandma's recipe first of course. And then we decided to play. Grandma's recipe isn't a custard based recipe so we decided to adapt it into a custard based ice cream. Then my cousin and I said we wanted to know how to make it without an ice cream maker so my dad showed us how to make a Creme de Menthe gelato without an ice cream maker. THEN since we had egg whites left over from making the custard we decided to make a Chocolate Creme de Menthe mouse. Oh, yay! It was a VERY good day! Here are a few pictures from our cooking extravaganza.

Video 49 0 00 40-22