Bubblegum Ice-Cream - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Make ice-cream in minutes using easy frost powder! Here it is presented in a dotty ice cream paper cup to match the shimmer pearl powder blue gumballs atop.

Simply measure 100g easy frost and 100ml water into a plastic screw top jar and shake to combine. Add 3ml bubblegum flavour and shake again. 

At this stage you can either pour it into your ice-cream maker and press start or simply beat with a handmixer for 1-2 minutes until it looks like whipped cream and freeze for 3 hours. Serves 2.

Amaretto liqueur with Amaretti cookie ice cream

This ice cream, which is more like a gelato, was made for Grandma Kiwicakes birthday. I adore Amaretti cookies, you can find them at most good delis. However, here in Whangarei we can usually only get them at Christmas time when our supermarket gets them in. I always grab some.

This year I decided I wanted to make something with them. I received an ice cream maker for Christmas so this seemed an obvious choice. I started researching Amaretti ice cream recipes, I didn't find anything that suited my needs, so I decided to create my own.

The recipe looks a little tricky, though no part on its own is hard, you just need the luxury of a little time. For me it was the perfect Sunday afternoon activity.

Ingredients:

4 cups of milk

1tsp vanilla bean paste

1/4c sugar

6 egg yolks

pinch of slat

2 Tbsp Amaretto liqueur

12 Amaretti cookies (this fills 1/2 cup when crushed)

Make sure your ice cream bowl has been in the freezer for at least 24 hours. Then you need to cook your custard base. In a saucepan add your milk and vanilla bean paste, heat on medium-to-low for a few minutes. It should be hot, but not simmering.

In the mean time you can whisk together your sugar and egg yolk. The yolks should become paler in colour. It usually takes about 2 minutes.

Remove your milk mixture from the heat. Take 1/2 cup of milk mixture and add this hot milk to your egg mixture, whisking quickly the whole time until all the hot milk has been added to your eggs.

Return everything to the saucepan and heat again on medium to low until it thickens in to a nice custard. Stir every now and then to ensure it's not catching or burning. Aprx 15 mins.

Once your custard has thickened, remove it from the heat and strain through a sieve. Allow to cool before adding a pinch of salt and Amaretto liqueur. Refrigerate to chill for a couple of hours. (You cannot put hot mixture in your ice cream maker, it will not work).

Add your chilled custard to your icecream maker and follow the instructions according your manufacturer. My ice cream maker is a Cuisinart brand, my ice cream took 20 mins to churn.

When there is 5 minutes left to go on your timer, add the crushed Amaretti cookies.

When it's finished churning, place in a container and freeze overnight. Serve with crushed Amaretti cookies. You need to remove this from the freezer 5-10 minutes before you want to scoop it, it sets rock hard, so cannot be scooped straight from the freezer.

Hairy Maclary is 30!

Hairy Maclary has been entertaining children all over the world for 30 years. To celebrate this, Oh Baby! magazine has created this wonderful birthday party. I was pleased to help with supplies for this wonderful party. (Currently if you buy this issue of Oh Baby! magazine at the supermarket, it comes with a free Hairy Maclary book).

I wish my kids were tiny again - they loved Hairy Maclary books and after seeing this photo shoot, I wish I could have a Hairy Maclary party too. I adore the dog bowl cake - what an awesome idea.

Our dog bone cookie cutter was used for the cookies, I love how they put different names on each bone. And our stainless steel ice cream cone holder looks awesome on the party table

Our dog bone cookie cutter was also used for the sandwiches and take home party favours.

(article copied with permission from Oh Baby!)

Mandarin cake - (Gluten free) with marzipan mandarins

This cake was so much fun and so quick to decorate. At my home, our family has committed to eating more seasonally and making good use of all the produce growing right on our section. I made this cake, this week for my husband's birthday, he is not a fan of icing, so this cake was perfect for him. The recipe was from Julie Le Clerc's Favourite Cakes book and Julie in conjunction with her publisher's Penguin, she graciously granted her permission to reprint the recipe for you all.
I originally tried the coconut version of this recipe, as one of my staff members Karina had made it. In the recipe Julie suggests options to use either 330g of dessicated coconut or 330g or ground almond. I knew if I tried the almond version I'd really love it (as I'm a huge fan of almond). My staff here at Kiwicake's are just gorgeous, when we are not sharing our baking or cooking, with each other, we are gossiping about recipes or what we are going to bake or cook - it is so inspiring. I am grateful to Karina for discovering this recipe - she tells me she prefers the almond too after having had a slice from this cake.

We planted our little mandarin tree some years ago and despite it's small size it's producing a vast quantity of mandarins at the moment.

I thought the mandarin's made of marzipan would be a nice compliment to the almond in the cake. They are coloured using the new Progel food colouring gel pastes, which I was thrilled with the workability of these gels. I modelled the mandarins using my hands, and just poked the dots on them using a toothpick. I used a small rose leaf cutter and veiner for the leaves.

When I baked this, I did use a springform cake pan as suggested. I fell in love with my new Fat Daddio's brand springform pan. It worked really well, I may use it for quite a few things I think, now that I have invested in one.

Recipe from "Favourite Cakes" by Julie Le Clerc, published by Penguin. The recipe is gluten free. If you do not need it to be gluten free, you can use any icing sugar and baking powder you have on hand.

Mandarin Cake.
600g Mandarins (or oranges) - we've tried both and prefer the madarins
6 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
3 cups of dessicated coconut (225g) or 3 cups of ground almond (330g) I used the ground almond
1tsp gluten free baking powder
gluten free icing sugar to dust

Preheat oven to 160C and grease a 22cm springform cake tin and lightly dust with gluten free flour.
Coarsely chop the mandarins, including the skin but removing any pips and place in a saucepan with enough water to cover.
Bring to the boil, then simmer until mandarin pulp is tender and the liquid has mostly reduced (this will take 30-40 mins). Blend or process to smooth puree and set aside to cool.
PLace eggs and sugar in bowl and whisk with electric mixer until thick, pale and fluffy.
Fold mandarin puree into egg mixture. Fold in coconut or ground almond and baking powder. Pour mixture into prepared tin. Bake for 70 minutes (mine took 65 mins, so check before timer goes off), covering with foil halfway through to avoid over-browning.
Allow to cool in the tin before removing to a serving plate. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

We served this cake, with a mandarin frozen yoghurt - that my ten year old daughter made from a recipe from a children's cook book. The original recipe was apple frozen yoghurt, we adapted it to mandarin flavoured by switching out the apple juice and changing it for the juice of mandarins. When choosing your apples, use a mild apple (not a strong sour one, such as Granny Smith) as the mandarin is sour enough. It was the perfect accompaniment.

Mandarin frozen yoghurt.
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup juice squeezed from mandarins
1 tsp gelatine
500g greek yoghurt
3/4 cup grated peeled apple

Put honey and mandarin juice in a saucepan and stir on low heat until the honey has melted. Cool for 5 minutes. Then add gelatine, stir until dissolved.
Put yoghurt, grated apple and gelatine mixture in to a loaf pan (on our second attempt we used a silicone loaf pan, so it was much easier to turn out, than from a metal pan. We found this very difficult to scoop, to we cut slices from the loaf and it looked quite stylish on the plate, next to the cake when served.

Both recipes worked well with children helping, as all of the steps were very simple to follow. The hardest part for them was waiting for things to cool, to move on to the next step

The easiest ice cream I've ever made

I was recently inspired to make this super easy ice cream from the Donna Hay magazine, after reading Mrs Cakes' blog post

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Her sheer enthusiasm for it made me think it must be pretty great - that is an understatement, it is FANTASTIC!

Since making this yummy icecream, I've puzzled as to how it can be so simple - making ice cream usually requires a lot more work and time. Spurred on by Mrs Cakes' assurances it wasn't, I grabbed a bottle of cream from the fridge and a tin of caramel condensed milk from the cupboard. YES that's it, that is all that goes in to it. I could not locate where my issue of the Donna Hay magazine was (leant out to friends and not back yet), so I followed Mrs Cakes' instructions.

Easy Caramel Ice-Cream (from Donna Hay Magazine)

Ingredients

395g tin caramel (found next to sweetened condensed milk in the supermarket)

300ml cream

Whip the cream until firm but still smooth. Mix in the caramel until well combined. Transfer into a 1 litre container and freeze overnight or until firm. (I actually froze mine in silicone cupcake cases, to make indivdual portions.

The taste of this ice cream is wonderful it is far nicer than the sum of the two ingredients - Grandma Kiwicakes and hubby commented it tasted like russian fudge (both are fans).

Prior to freezing this wonder concoction, it did occur to me, the creamy goodness would make a nice accompaniment to Christmas pudding or the like.

It even had the perfect texture of ice cream.