Easter Bake Sale and Ice Cream Woes

In February, a coworker and I had a Valentine's Day bake sale and it went really well! We decided to do another one for Easter, on Good Friday. I'm excited and am in recipe planning mode! I want to do things with spring fruits and fun colors. Here are some things that I'm thinking about making...

Lemon Macarons with Mascarpone Filling

Image from pizzazzerie.com

I love the bright color and lemon is such a lovely spring flavor. That recipe has a white chocolate ganache filling, but I am planning on using a mascarpone filling. The last time I made macarons, I made them mini size, and I think I'll go for a regular size cookie this time. The tiny ones were so fragile and some of them didn't make it in the best of shape to the bake sale. 

Mini Apricot Upside Down Cakes

Image from Half-BakedBaker

Obviously, that picture is of pineapple upside down cakes, but I couldn't find any images of what I'd like to make. I'm thinking a crushed pecan ring around the outside with sliced apricots in the middle. I've made a bigger version of this before and it was super nom. And everything is better mini, right?

Butter Crunch Cookies

Recipe and Image from Lipstick Blogspot

I stumbled across these cookies on Tastespotting and they look soooo good! I think they'd be really fun to make and super delicious to eat. I think I'm going to have to give these a try. Hopefully they make it to the sale, and don't all end up in my belly...

And finally, if I'm feeling super ambitious:

Strawberry Pie Pops

Image from www.instructables.com

I've never made pie pops before, but they look so sweet and fun! I may or may not have time to do these as well, but if I do, I hope they turn out flaky and yum.

Now, on to my ice cream issues :(

I've been attempting to make a super creamy ice cream, and I'm failing so hard. I've tried different bases, custard, cream, milk, and nothing really gets the super creamy texture I'm looking for. It's extremely frustrating. The flavor is always perfect, but it's got a bit of iciness that is just not what I want. Any thoughts on things to try that might help with this issue? I was actually hoping to sell a strawberry gelato at the bake sale as well. I got little one cup containers to sell, which would be really rad if I can pull it off. But I don't want to sell a product that isn't up to my standard =/

Roasted Banana Ice Cream

Holy crap. I'm in love with the flavor of this ice cream. I'm going to marry it. A spring wedding with a topping buffet at the reception.

ROASTED BANANA ICE CREAM!!

Banana has always been my favorite flavor of ice cream. So of course I decided to make my first ice cream attempt banana flavored. Since I've never made ice cream before, I looked at some other recipes, then kind of did my own thing with a few aspects, and wasn't sure how it would turn out. There are some things I will do differently next time, but I'll get into that later. Here is the recipe that I used:

3 ripe to overripe bananas

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1.5 cups heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons muscovado, thrown in the food processor to make it a bit more fine

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon madagascar vanilla paste

Chop up the bananas and toss them in the brown sugar. Roast at 350F for about 15 minutes, flip slices, roast for 15 more minutes. They should be soft and kind of gooey. 

Toss everything in a food processor and whip it, whip it good! I might have whipped it a little too much because it got more airy than it probably should have. 

Then I scooped it into the chilled ice cream bucket thingy and got it into the ice cream maker. 

30 minutes later I had roasted banana ice cream! This picture is after I already scooped some out to eat :P

My bowl full of nommy ice cream

Then, since I need/love/live for toppings, I toasted some almond slices in butter, and threw them over the ice cream, along with some chocolate chips. 

The flavor was soooooo good, but it wasn't quite as creamy as I had imagined. And as it melted, it got almost a little grainy... odd. 

NEXT TIME!

I think I will try making it with a custard base. That usually makes ice cream super creamy, right? I think so.. I will also use less heavy cream, and more whole milk. I think the whipping wasn't as good for making it creamy as I thought. 

Overall, I think it was a pretty good first try. And it definitely won't go to waste :P

First Item Listed on Etsy!

Ok, pity party mostly over. I went ahead and got my Etsy shop together, sans actual logo, and got an actual item up for sale! The first product I'm selling is Madeleine Cookies.

You can see the listing and my shop here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/94663068/madeleine-cookies

Excite!