Easy Pumpkin Dessert with Maple Whipped Cream

This is something fairly easy I made in the fall, I wanted to write a little bit about if remember it for future use.  This was a very tasty pumpkin dessert I made one day after dinner.  I began by sauteeing chunks of pumpkin in butter with cinnamon, ginger, chile ancho, brown sugar and some maple syrup.  I placed this combination in the oven for about 20 or so minutes, basically until the pumpkin softened.



After removing from the oven I simply mashed the contents of the pan and served in a bowl.  Using a stick blender I mixed heavy cream, maple syrup and cinnamon to make a maple whipped cream to put on top. I added a few walnuts for crunch and it was ready to go.  A very tasty fall dessert. 



coffee ice cream

I used some of this week's batch of cold brew to make ice cream. I have been craving it for a couple of weeks now so I decided to make some tonight.

None of this I did by measure, I basically made sure that the main liquid was heavy whipping cream, that there was a good strong coffee flavor with sufficient sweetness.  I combined about 2 cups of heavy cream with .5 cups of almond milk and 1 cup of cold brew.  The coffee is concentrated so it goes a long way. To this I added a little less of a cup of brown sugar and a pinch of salt.

I put the mixture in the ice cream maker and let it go for about 20 minutes.

The finished result.  Still a little soft but this will set in the freezer.  The taste is amazing, the roasted flavor of the coffee is very pronounced goes well with the brown sugar, giving it a caramel flavor.

I stored the ice cream in a bread pan that I lined with parchment paper.  I'm storing it this way in the hopes that I try to cut it into slices for potential dessert ideas later this weekend.

Leftover Ice Cream

I had two tubs of vanilla ice cream sitting in my freezer left over from a family party and while I love vanilla ice cream, I wanted something with a little bit more interesting. An idea came to me after breakfast yesterday morning as I had a ton of dried tart cherries that I had reconstituted in orange juice to serve over oatmeal. The cherries were soft and juicy and developed a rich flavorful syrup so I thought this would be perfect to mix into the ice cream. I grabbed one tub of ice cream that was already partially eaten and added the cherries. To compensate for the sweetness I mixed in some used goat cheese to give it a tart flavor. I got the idea after seeing how some people make cream cheese ice cream by basically mixing cream cheese into vanilla ice cream and serving with fruit.

I let the ice cream soften a bit and then mixed all the ingredients together directly in the tub.  After mixing i placed back in the freezer to set for a couple of hours while we had dinner.

 

The ice cream was very good. the tartness from the goat cheese played well with the sweet and tart cherries, smoothed out by the vanilla ince cream. I have one tub left of vanilla ice cream so I'm excited to see what other combination I might be able to put together next week!