Honeyed Buttermilk Ice Cream in Kataifi Nests

It’s gotten to be that time of year. It’s the season during which all I want to eat is ice cream. Ice cream or sorbet or granita for every meal would be fine with me. Luckily, I received a review copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream Desserts so now I have some new options to keep my all-ice cream meals more varied. Here, you’ll find the same fabulous style of ice cream-making as that in Jeni Britton Bauer’s first book. There are unique flavor combinations, there’s some cream cheese in the ice cream base to give the texture more body, and there are also gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan recipes. In this book, there are also cakes, tarts, biscuits, cookies, cream puffs, waffles, and empanadas. There are suggestions for sundaes and parfaits, ice cream bars, layered ice cream cakes, and even cocktails made complete with frozen treats. Last, you’ll find recipes for sauces and crunchy gravels, and of course, you can mix and match to create your own desserts. Let’s start with some of the ice cream flavors. The Cream Biscuits with Peach Jam Ice Cream has crumbled biscuits along with the jam mixed right into the ice cream. The Double-Toasted Coconut-Cajeta Ice Cream is suggested as a good option to make into a chocolate-dipped ice cream bar, and I’d love to try that. The sorbets have some lovely additions like sprigs of tarragon for the Grapefruit Sorbet and Jonesy old tawny port for the Melon Jonesy Sorbet. The desserts with multiple components include delicious-looking dishes like The Salty Grahama with Salty Vanilla Frozen Custard, Sliced banana, Whiskey Caramel Sauce, Salty Graham Gravel, and Whipped Cream; The Key Lime Parfait with Graham Cracker Ice Cream, Lime Curd, Chocolate Gravel, Whipped Cream, and a fresh cherry for garnish; and The Little Havana Cake with layers of Lady Cake, Guava Jam, Cajeta, Double-Toasted Coconut Ice Cream, Whipped Cream, and Meringues on top. Of all the tempting desserts, the first one I had to try was the Honeyed Buttermilk Ice Cream and the Kataifi Nests. 

The Kataifi Nests are delicate, little serving containers just the right size for one nice scoop of any ice cream or sorbet. I thought they’d pair nicely with a honey-sweetened ice cream. To make the nests, a package of kataifi, which is shredded phyllo dough, was thawed. Then, you just take a handful of strands of dough, and wrap them around one hand forming a circle. Set the circle on a baking sheet setting the loose ends into the circle. There will be stray strands of dough here and there, and that’s just what you want. Once you’ve formed as many nests as you need, they’re baked at 375 degrees F for about 15 minutes until golden. When they come out of the oven, they’re brushed with melted butter mixed with honey and sprinkled with flaky sea salt. They can be stored at room temperature in an air-tight container for a few days. For the ice cream, honey and cream were heated and stirred until the honey melted. Buttermilk was added, and the mixture was brought to a boil. A cornstarch slurry was made with a little buttermilk, and that was added to the boiling buttermilk mixture. It was cooked while stirring until thickened. In a heat-proof bowl, some cream cheese had been combined with salt, turmeric, and a pinch of cayenne powder. The hot buttermilk was slowly whisked into the cream cheese mixture, and then it was left to cool. I chilled it in the refrigerator overnight before churning the ice cream.

The sweet, salty, crunchy, honey-coated kataifi nests were ideal ice cream holders. And, the Honeyed-Buttermilk Ice Cream was just sweet enough and not too sweet with tanginess from the buttermilk. It was a lovely yellow color from the turmeric too. I topped the ice cream with some fresh, local mulberries. With all the other flavor options in this book and all the possibilities for embellishing them, I’ll have countless ways to satisfy my ice cream cravings. 

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Buttermilk Biscuits with Parsley and Sage

I feel like I’ve been keeping this from you. It wasn’t on purpose of course, but I’ve made these twice before and am only just now getting around to telling you about them. These biscuits are as easy to make as they are delicious, and I highly suggest doubling the recipe which I’ve done each time I’ve made them. There’s chopped, fresh sage in the biscuit dough, and then when they come out of the oven, they’re brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with chopped parsley. They’re as rich and decadent as buttermilk biscuits should be, and they’re pretty with flecks of herbs inside and out. I found these biscuits in the book Flour by Joanne Chang. The first time I made them, I was looking for something savory to take to the Austin Bakes bake sale earlier this year in April. I was delighted with them, and since they’re quick to prepare, I made them again for the bake sale that just happened a few weeks ago. There’s no cutting butter into flour by hand. The entire process takes place in a mixer. And, once the biscuits are formed, they can be placed in the freezer until you’re ready to bake them. I’m already thinking about how convenient that would be for Thanksgiving dinner.

So, you start the dough by placing the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix briefly to combine. Then, you add butter that’s been cut into pieces, and mix until the butter breaks down some. In a small bowl, buttermilk, cream, egg, and chopped sage are whisked together and then added to the mixing bowl, and that is mixed into the flour and butter just until the dough comes together. As you transfer the dough to a work surface, you can work in any loose flour in the bottom of the mixing bowl. After patting the dough into a one-inch thick rectangle, I cut square biscuits to make things easy. Of course, you could use a round cutter, but I like the efficiency of only shaping and cutting once. Since I doubled the recipe and cut smallish squares, I ended up with 20 biscuits. They baked for 40 minutes, and then the tops were bushed with melted butter and sprinkled with chopped parsley. I sprinkled some coarse sea salt on them as well.

Like every recipe I’ve tried from this book, it works beautifully. My only disappointment with these biscuits is that each time I've baked them, I only kept a couple of them at home. I was happy to take them to the bake sales, but next time, I’m making a batch just for us.

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Sesame Seed Cake

I had some leftover buttermilk and wanted to use it for a quick, snack cake. I flipped through Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich and found a simple cake with ingredients that I had on hand. This sesame seed cake comes from the Grain, nuts, and seeds chapter. In the introduction, Medrich explains that the strategic use grains and seeds can add flavor, texture, and tenderness. The simplicity of her recipes allows subtler flavors to come forward, get noticed, and be appreciated.

Luckily enough, I had some black sesame seeds in my refrigerator. I actually store most seeds, nuts, and grains in my refrigerator to keep them fresh longer. White sesame seeds would work as well; they just wouldn’t be as visible in the cake. To add to the sesame flavor, some toasted sesame oil was also used in the batter. The flour and other dry ingredients were sifted together three times, and this resulted in a very fine cake texture. Butter and sugar were mixed, and then eggs, whisked with sesame oil and vanilla, were added. The sifted dry ingredients and buttermilk were added in intervals. Then, I really should have followed the instructions which stated that you should use parchment in the bottom of your cake pan. I skipped it, and the cake did stick a little. I managed to get it out of the pan still looking mostly presentable, and I let it cool before dusting it with confectioner’s sugar.

It’s a small cake that bakes in one eight-inch round pan, and that was just the right size to provide a nice snack or dessert for two of us for a few days. The sesame oil flavor wasn’t as evident as you might think. It just slightly boosted the flavor already supplied by the seeds, and the pretty seeds dispersed throughout provided tiny bits of crunch. The cake got better and better as it sat from the first day to the second and then the third. The tenderness and flavor really made it seem like it should have been much more complicated to make.

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Minneola Tangelo-Buttermilk Scones

It’s great to see so many magazine articles authored by food bloggers these days. In the February issue of Living, Clotilde Dusoulier wrote about crepes, and Deb Perelman wrote about cupcakes. There have been several instances of articles by bloggers in other magazines too, and it’s a nice acknowledgement of the popularity of food blogs. In Living’s January issue, Clotilde wrote about citrus, and that’s where I saw these delicious-looking, tangelo scones. Kurt is a fan of scones since forever, and thus, these were destined to be a treat for our Valentine’s Day breakfast.

I had never made scones with buttermilk, or minneola tangelos for that matter, so I was intrigued. This recipe makes a lot of scones, and had I been thinking more clearly, I would have cut it in half. Although, having some of these in the freezer isn’t such a bad thing. For the full recipe, six tangelos were peeled, segmented, seeded, and chopped, and one was zested. The dough was mixed in a large mixing bowl and then turned out onto a floured surface and patted into a rectangle as usual for scones. I made a lame attempt at cuteness by trying to cut out heart shapes. This wasn’t the scone for cute hearts. The tangelo chunks squirted and were squashed in the sticky dough by the cutter, and the resulting heart shape was less than precise. I abandoned that quickly and cut the rest in triangles.

There is a lot of liquid in the dough from the chopped tangelos and the buttermilk, and the cut scones need to be chilled for at least a couple of hours before baking. I brushed the tops with an egg wash since I didn’t have any cream and then sprinkled on turbinado sugar. Just to make them extra fancy for my Valentine, I squiggled on a confectioner’s sugar glaze before serving. The juicy bits of tangelo were lovely in the scones, and the buttermilk balanced the sweetness. I’m guessing these scones will make repeat appearances in my kitchen each time tangelos are in season.

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Crispy Biscuits

These buttermilk biscuits are from The Taste of Country Cooking and were part of the meal that I discussed in a guest post on Cooking Books. If you haven’t had a chance yet, take a moment to read that post and check out the fantastic Cooking Books site. When I read The Taste of Country Cooking, I noticed that almost every meal included biscuits or rolls served with homemade jelly or preserves, and that reminded me of how, years ago, my Mom got me hooked on putting jelly on leftover biscuits for breakfast. Biscuits with butter are wonderful things unto their own, but biscuits with sweet jelly provide a different experience all together. So, when I was choosing dishes to prepare from the Fall chapter of Taste of Country Cooking, biscuits simply had to be included.

The ingredients used here are pretty typical for a buttermilk biscuit. The difference is the thickness. These were rolled out to 1/4 inch and cut into two inch rounds. I usually roll out biscuit dough to about 3/4 inch or so. They were baked in a 425 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Inside, they are as delicate as can be, and the tops and bottoms have just a slight crunch making them even more delicious than you’d think was possible. Hot out of the oven, we sampled one with just butter and one with blackberry preserves. I would have been very full of biscuits by the time I chose a favorite, so I declared them both winners.

These biscuits are buttery and flaky with that nice, tart touch from the buttermilk which makes sweet preserves such a lovely counterpoint. Whether you partake of the jelly or preserves on your biscuits during the meal, after the meal, or for breakfast the next morning they’re equally good and well worth the effort of baking them.


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