TWD—Burnt Sugar Ice Cream

Ahhhh!  We moved.  All done.  I’ve been kind of sad that we’re not in our house anymore.  Sigh.  I’ll get over it.  We left our buyers the cleanest, nicest house!  While I was doing a final vacuuming of the house, completely empty, cleaner than ever, I was feeling a little bummed thinking, “There’s not a single thing of ours left in this house.  No one would ever even know we were here.”  Vacuum, vacuum.  Then I turned around downstairs and saw that Sam had drawn on the freshly painted wall with pencil.  How sweet of him to leave a little goodbye note.  Sigh!  I really thought of leaving the drawing on the wall.

Taylor’s “green frog room” no more. 

And Sam’s love note.

I should have left it.  The lady who bought the house is an elementary school principal, I’m sure she would have enjoyed the graffiti.  I took these pictures, then was nice and washed it off.

Sam IS becoming quite the budding artist.  He was drawing yesterday and said, “Look Mom, a monster.”  That’s the drawing on the bottom left.  Then later he showed the boys at dinner that he’d drawn each of them, too, pointing to each of the other three pictures and naming them Scott, Parker and Taylor.  Nice, Sammie!!!  (At least he didn’t say I was the monster one. ;) )

Okay, I’m getting to TWD.  In a sec.  We’re “settled” in the little duplex until June.  On Thursday, Kevin and a friend, Dan, drove a 26 foot truck with as much of our things as we could live without for 2 months to Utah.  Friday morning, after three days here with working internet, I had no internet.  It wouldn’t work no matter how many times I unscrewed the cable on the modem and no matter what else I did per Kevin’s instructions over the phone.  I was so frustrated.  Can YOU live without the internet?  I was seriously depressed (how sad is that?).  But I got a lot more done than I would have.  And now I’m super totally behind on blogging and catching up with everything.

Kevin got back tonight  (Monday night), (they flew home, on an airplane. ba dum dum.)  We figured out the issue with the internet (UGGHHH!)  And I’m now happily posting about TWD this week.

Our recipe is Burnt Sugar Ice Cream in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home to Yours baking book.  It was chosen by Becky of Project Domestication.  I SCREAM.

I made the “caramel” on the stove with no problems at all.  Then the custard for the ice cream, all went off without a hitch.  Chilled it for about 6 hours in the fridge.  Churned it.  And came out with some beautiful ice cream.  I packed up half of it and made some Lenox Almond Biscotti because Dorie suggested it would be a good compliment to the ice cream.  I took the cookies and half the ice cream over to our  now former neighbor :(  and my friend, Ruth.  I have so many people to make goodies for to thank them for all their help with our move this last week!  Ruth had told me before that she cannot resist ice cream.

With the rest of the ice cream, I played around.  Surprise.  I think the ice cream by itself really is too rich or sweet, or just needs something.  So I decided to make ice cream bon bons.

I melted some chocolate and sprinkled on some chopped pecans and toffee bits.  Then after coating one little scoop with the chocolate, I decided that wasn’t very fun, as during the second one, the chocolate wouldn’t stay on the ice cream to completely coat it and began seizing up.  So, I made one bon bon.  Then I forgot to photograph it whole.  So here’s the one shot of it.

After cutting it in half, I cut it into quarters and each of the boys had a bite of it. They liked it. 

When the melted chocolate was having issues, I hurried and threw some of the nuts and toffee into it and it was firm enough like ganache to form in to balls.  So I made a bunch of marble-sized balls of chocolate.  I thought they would be fun on a dish of the ice cream.   Fun, I SAY!

And that’s that.  The flavor of the ice cream is not my favorite, but it’s definitely good.  Give me chocolate or give me death. ;)  Really, I was happy to make ice cream for the first time since last summer and I’m super glad I didn’t pack my ice cream maker and send it to Utah!  Becky will have the recipe on her blog.  It really was pretty easy.  Homemade caramel, you don’t scare me!

And that concludes our broadcast day.

While Kevin was gone, Sam kept coming in and getting in our bed with me.  I woke up to him with his blanket wrapped around his head one morning.  Three days this little stinker got in our bed in the VERY early a.m., like 4:00, then wouldn’t go back to sleep until about 6:30 or so.  And slept until 10:30 a.m. each time.  Should be an interesting first night with Daddy back.  I asked Sam what he was going to do when he’s home and he said, “Sleep in Daddy’s bed.”  I said, “Where will Daddy sleep?”  He didn’t even hesitate and said, “In my bed!”  Yeah, I’ll let you take that up with him, little buddy.

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Oh wait, one more thing.  BEST kid’s meal toy ever! from Wendy’s.  Finger-sized Twister.  The boys were playing this Sunday morning and were having a blast stretching their hands and twisting them every which way.  My favorite thing---for at least a good half hour, all three of them were laughing like crazy over this game and getting along without any fighting!  Thanks, Wendy’s!

Hearing them laugh---priceless.