Strawberry Ice Cream

Garrett enjoying his strawberry ice cream.

Garrett decided to make strawberry ice cream using our Cuisinart ice cream maker, the kind with the frozen ring that comes out of the freezer to churn the ice cream mixture. He wanted smooth ice cream (no chunks of fruit), and he was looking for serious strawberry flavor. This job called for fresh strawberries and our food mill. I know, it's not strawberry season, but we made due with a package of fresh strawberries from Stop 'n Shop that looked pretty good. Imagine if we thought of this back in June when Buells had pick-you-own strawberries for sale?

Here's the ice cream in one of my new favorite bowls.

Anyway, we chopped the strawberries into big chunks and ran them through our food mill. The result was strawberry pulp without any seeds. All of this strawberry goodness went right into the ice cream mixture, giving it a bright pink color and great fruity flavor. Adding lemon juice in the mixture really brightened the flavor of the ice cream. We churned it in the ice cream maker for about thirty minutes. Unfortunately we filled it a little too full so we had to scrape off the outside and top of the ice ring right into our bowls. At this point the ice cream was a think soft-serve consistency. We transferred it to a tupperware dish and let it cool in the freezer for about two more hours to make it more of a scoop-able ice cream. The strawberry ice cream was so refreshing on a hot August afternoon.

The flavor was wonderful and the color was really appealing.

Boston Cream Donuts

Boston Cream Donuts on the first day of school. A new Geyer tradition?

In a moment of weakness I asked my boys "Would you like me to make homemade donuts on the first day of school?" What middle schooler would possibly say no to that question?!  I was feeling bad for Gabe and Garrett because they had to go back to school nearly two weeks before their older brother.  Yves, the new freshman at Pomfret School, just smiled because he knew that meant donuts for him too, and then another day of summer vacation.

A plate full of delicious donuts.

I instantly regretted my offer.  I have made donuts on special occasions many times. Usually the birthday boy will request donuts for their special day, a tradition that started with my husband and Boston cream donuts. As romantic as homemade donuts sound, it is a very messy and time consuming project. It seems like I use every bowl, spoon, and spatula in the kitchen in the process; and then there's the large pot of vegetable oil to deal with when it's all over. What was I thinking? I offered a trip to We-Lik-It ice cream instead of the morning donuts to honor the last day of summer vacation; no deal. All hearts were set on donuts, and Boston cream was the flavor of choice.

Today was my third attempt at making Boston creme. I used the recipe from the Food Network today. As they say: the third time is a charm.  My approach this time was to do as much as I could the night before. The cream recipe came out very nice with good flavor, much like a vanilla custard. The dough was a sweet yeast dough that had to ferment for an hour before I could roll it out and cut the donuts. I used a three-inch round cutter to make the donuts.  I left the donuts in the refrigerator overnight with the cream. The morning production was very easy, the only thing left to make was the chocolate glaze. My only problem was that the donuts didn't rise enough, even though I got up at 5:00 to take them out of the frig. Next time I'll set the alarm for 4:00, take them out, then go back to sleep for a few hours.

I had to carve out the center to create a space for the filling.

The donuts were delicious, but a little too dense. They didn't puff up enough make a nice big open cavity for the cream. I used a knife to cut out the middle so I could squirt in enough cream to make it a respectable Boston cream. The kids and Brian loved them and enthusiastically ate two each (so did I). I will definitely make them again now that I have figured out the secret to keeping the project manageable.