Fall Flavor of the Week: Campfire

   It's a pleasant 58 degrees, stars dust the velvety sky, and the swollen moon looks like a rich scoop of marshmallow ice cream. The fire crackles and spits friendly flares into the air that fade into nothingness as they fall back down. Your dad is snoring, wrapped and half-wrapped in a sweater and a sleeping bag; you are the only one still awake, and you listen to the sounds of nature around you. The warmth of the fire beckons you closer, but you know better than to crouch to close. Beside you a pile of thin sticks lay with gooey tips, the satisfaction of roasted 'mallow, melty chocolate, and crunchy graham still lingers in your belly.

  Take this and freeze it.

  This is what I was trying to capture when I thought of this ice cream. Sure, S'mores ice cream has been done before. But not this way. I've had several, and with each one I was left in want, left without that real fireside feeling. Commercialized ice cream, like Ben&Jerry's S'mores, only aims to capture the general taste of what the real treat tastes like.

   I had a different goal in mind.

Campfire - roasted marshmallow ice cream swirled with dark chocolate ice cream, layered with graham cracker

(this is a photo of my chocolate ice cream, though with peanut butter, just to give you an idea of its deep, silkiness.)

   My goal was, yes, to capture the true taste, but to also capture a feeling, a memory, an experience, an emotion that no store-bought ice cream ever can. In fact, I can't stand commercialized chocolate ice cream. Try out Ben&Jerry's S'mores and you'll see what I mean. It's not rich, it's too sweet, it's not dense, and it tastes cheap. I use Dutch processed dark cocoa and a blend of 65% specialty chocolate to create a truly rich, deep, full-bodied chocolate ice cream that has layers of flavor. (For my darkest chocolate ice cream, I use 85% chocolate; but I wanted to slide a bit closer toward the milk chocolate used in real s'mores).
   If you let my chocolate set in your mouth and move it around a bit until it melts, you'll find those layers. It is deeper than any chocolate ice cream I have ever had. It's chalky and bitter, but is balanced with sweetness and milkiness. After molding in the freezer for several hours, it still scoops like butter. It tastes like the inside of a truffle. Melts in your mouth, literally.

   The thing that actually sets this flavor apart from any of the s'mores aspirers is my Roasted Marshmallow ice cream. I don't use the word "roasted" lightly. It is a trendy thing to have "toasted marshmallow" items. I toast coconut. But I burn my marshmallows.
   I like my s'mores to have that charred, black marshmallow as its gooey backbone, not some lightly browned sugar puff that won't melt my chocolate. So, I put the marshmallows in the oven, cranked up the broiler, and let the sugars darken. It was a caramelization process. I then packed them into a blender, and added the hot milk-cream-egg mixture to it, and blended it all together. The liquid turned a dark brown color from the disintegrated blackened sugar flakes. I tested it...campfire.
   Once frozen, the true taste of the ice cream doesn't hit immediately. It's a delayed gratification. Although a hint of marshmallow does appear first, you have to let it sit and then revel in the aftertaste to really taste that roasted marshmallow. It's smokey and sweet. I combo that I am falling in love with. So, when you hear or see "toasted marshmallow" on an ice cream or dessert menu, you know that the people are too afraid to burn a few things to get at real genius. Don't be afraid to burn.

   The pints are my template to which I can craft the ice cream in any form and style I want. I wanted to recreate an actual s'more, so I thought out my layering process sufficiently: graham cracker, chocolate ice cream, roasted marshmallow ice cream, graham cracker, etc, until the pint lid sealed out the air.
   I had raving reviews about the graham cracker. Bready things do wonders to ice creams. They are like little patches of dry land that cause the mind to trip and stumble, forcing the mind to go back and really think about why that happened; and therefore causing an extreme taste invasion onto the palate, which evokes an elating response from the sensory receptors in the mind. (push up glasses)
   I believe in this counter-balancing technique. It is an attention to detail that I highly hone in on. It isn't something that I just throw together to see what happens. The graham cracker was chunky, gritty, and offered a cookie-like taste to balance out the creaminess of the other two flavors. It worked.

It was frozen s'mores.

It was frozen childhood.

-Reese O'Shirey, Esquire

Fall Flavor of the Week: Caramel Coconut Pie

 

   So, the leaves haven't deepened to their rustic hues and the temperature still has not dipped to those crisper, I-love-this-weather-so-all-my-windows-are-open-kind-of-days yet. But here at Shireshack, we like to think it has, and Fall it gloriously lingering just over the hills.
   When this season annually arrives, an array of desserts appears that we just don't see in any other part of the year. What I anticipate so eagerly are the pies. OH, the Pies! And the Thighs!
   Pies can be done so many different ways, and are truly inspiring. I am a firm believer in the nostalgic and believe we, as humans, are always trying to return to our childhoods. So, I use things from my earlier years, things that brought me joy and fond memories at the table with my family, as inspiration for my ice creams.
   My mother used to make this ice cream pie for my brother's birthdays; it was his favorite. We were not versed in the art of ice cream making then, so she simply used store-bought vanilla ice cream, let it soften, mixed it with cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk; topped it with coconut and caramel. It was a pie. It was childhood. It was ridiculous. It was good.
   Thus, with the colloquialism of the Shirey Brothers, we resurrected a childhood favorite, and froze it; and Caramel Coconut Pie ice cream was born.

Caramel Coconut Pie - perfectly toasted coconut ice cream ribboned with caramel and cinnamon-graham cracker crust and studded with fudge covered pecans

   I recently purchased a book. A magical book. Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. Slap me on the butt and call me, Charlie! Jeni knows what she's doing. And what she's doing is right.
   So, Jeni does not use eggs in her ice cream like I do. At first I eyed her with skepticism. But that quickly changed when I began to read about why she did what she did, and completely shattered when I tried her method for myself.
   Jeni uses science to make her ice cream perfect. And perfect it is (though I haven't exactly tried it yet, only tried her method). By brother in NYC has tried the real thing, and said it was fantastic. See, in NYC they have all the latest trends. Here in Tuscaloosa we have last year's trends.
   So, this new method uses milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, cream cheese, and corn starch. Jeni had my same views of Today's ice creams being too sweet, so she reduces the sugar amount. The corn syrup is a way to sweeten the ice cream with less sugary strength. I thought the cream cheese was crazy because it would give the ice cream a cheesecake flavor. But the amount is minimal, and instead it acts as a major emulsifier. The hero is the cornstarch. Corn starch acts as a water shepherd. When it is added it forces any stray water in the mixture to bind with itself, and therefore eliminates all chances for that water to turn into icy particles. How neat is that?
   That's pretty neat.


 

   The process began by toasting coconut in the oven until it golden tipped and its fragrant aroma filled my apartment. That's the best air freshener. I then steeped the coconut into the hot milk and cream for thirty minutes. This allowed the milk to wick out the flavor of the toasted coconut, leaving me with a slightly tan, coconut milk-cream. I could have stopped there and I know everyone would have still been satisfied with the taste.
   But I didn't.
   I strained most of the coconut out before I put it into the ice cream maker. I wasn't successful in straining all of it out, but I thought that the sparsely populated strands would be little flavorful presents for those lucky enough to find them in their pint.
   My new experimental way of making the ice cream turned out far better than I ever expected. If Jeni uses it in her ice creams, then I knew it was good enough for me. The texture and consistency was perfect, better than any store-bought or scoop shop ice cream I've had. It was creamy and smooth and no trace of ice could be found.

   It seems as though I have finally got my foot on my arch-nemesis, Isie. But that does not mean I will let up. I must press on to other flavors, unknown, and untested. Happy Eating and Happy Fall.

 
-Reese O'Shirey, Esquire

Talenti - Sea Salt Caramel

   As promised, here is the second of my Talenti flavor reviews, albeit delayed.

   Sea Salt. That is what caught my eye with this one. It is a BIG thing these days if you use sea salt in anything, even more so if you use it in a dessert. But wait. Salt in something sweet? Yes. Adding a touch of salt, especially high quality salt like sea salt, will enhance the natural sweetness of the dessert. If you say 'Made with sea salt' on your ice cream description, page, label, whatever, then people will flock to it "like the salmon of Capestrano".

   As with the previous Talenti flavor, this one was exceptionally smooth. I have never had a store-bought ice cream (gelato) with this kind of quality and texture. Cuts like butter. (I have to test that guar gum out for myself to see if it will work for me)

   The caramel base was a bit like sticking your nose into an oven that has charred food droppings lying in the bottom. It tasted like burnt caramel. That should be saved for the creme brulees of the dessert world. Yuck. Now, this ice cream was not quite that bad, but it did have hints of smoke. But you might ask, 'That's what caramel is, isn't it? Burnt stuff." No. It is burnt sugar, but you can burn caramel too. This is done by allowing the sugar to burn, making an amber caramel; then letting that caramel sit in the pan even longer until it too becomes burnt and a deeper brown color. That is when the taste becomes drastically different.
   The salt did add a great flavor to the caramel though. It was the saving grace. I am a huge fan of adding salt into my ice creams whenever I can. I think ice creams today are far too sweet, so I counter balance all mine with a touch of salt (a little more than a touch in my flavor 'Roasted Honey Nut'). The initial notes are of sweet, and partially burnt, caramel, but then the saltiness flows in like the great flood of Noah's day. Salt is where it is at.

   Ok. I thought the ice cream stopped there. No, sir. Unlabeled and unseen, these dark squares appear in my scoop. I checked the label again. 'Sea Salt Caramel'. Alright, then what is this?

   That, my friend, is a chocolate truffle. Very tasty little devils, I might add. They too had a touch of sea salt, and it worked marvelously with the dark chocolate. Sweet and salty: the greatest combo since peanuts and butter...
   Peanut butter.
   What I mean is, they were good. But only by themselves. The flavors clashed horrifically. The flavor of the salty caramel was powerful and potent. The salty chocolate truffles were equally powerful, though on a smaller scale. This gave rise to a epic war inside the mouth. A battle for top taste. As a result, I was the one wounded, and confused about which taste I wanted. I had no other choice than to take them together, which led to a re-battle!
   The caramel should have been the only thing in there. There was no need for them to add those chocolate truffle squares. That pushed this flavor over the top, and flew me over the cuckoo's nest.

 

  So, naturally, I crushed up some Oreo cookies for a little more action (expelling the white stuff). Talenti gelato is so incredibly smooth that is became obnoxious. I had to do something to balance it. CRUNCH. Ice creams are made to have crunchiness in them. Oreos are perfectly crunchy. Caramel and Oreo? Yeah, much better.

Thanks for reading. I now have another Talenti flavor in the freezer, so watch out for it.

-Reese O'Shirey, Esq.

P.S. Can anyone name the movie I quoted at the end of the first real paragraph?

Flavors for the Fourth

   The Fourth of July is the common name for Ice Cream Day. Not many people know this, but it's a fact. Everyone knows it's America's birthday, but a select few realize that the greatest way to celebrate America's forthcoming is to make and eat ice cream.



   Every year Grace Life Church of the Shoals holds a Fourth of July picnic (even if it's not on the 4th). This pleasant gathering is accented with blow-up items for the kids, Swamp Johns catered food, music, and wholesome family fun. But what brings the whole night together are the tables off to the side laden with buckets and buckets of homemade ice cream.

   Ah, the cold, creamy joy that is held in each bin can be felt as 6:30 approaches slowly, and the lines begin to form well in advance. This year, Shireshack made it's first appearance (last year I had the help of one of my partners, Austin Shirey, and we went under the alias 'Shirey Bros. Ice Cream Co.') Same ice cream, different name, different flavors, better quality. I took it upon myself to make two batches for the special occasion because I wanted to get my flavors out there, and also because I've had raving feedback about them and more and more people have been anxious to try it ("be anxious of nothing...except ice cream", I think it says.) The two flavors were a celebration unto this country, despite not having any patriotic colors or names. I used my favorite food ingredient: the peanut. Peanuts are widely and bountifully grown in the great state of Alabama, so I took advantage of them heartily.

1. Yellow Brittle Road - vanilla malt ice cream paved with homemade peanut brittle.

   I've been developing this flavor mindfully for sometime now. I've had Ben&Jerry's and Haagen Daaz's versions, but they left me in want for something greater, something tastier that would do the old, classic snack justice. My Grandpa used to make his own peanut brittle, and, as a kid, I ate some much of it that it made me sick one night. I hadn't eaten it in nearly 10 years. Couldn't stand the thought of it. Since then I've matured and wisely began eating it again. I missed out for a long while.
   Peanut brittle is elementary to make, but difficult to perfect. This was my first time testing it out. I had been talking over its inclusion into ice cream with my counterparts, and we decided that a unique way to introduce it would be to crush it into small pieces, so that it resembles Butterfinger in texture (not taste). And this is what I did. To facilitate this, as if it (the peanut brittle) knew what I intended to do with it, it came out slightly softer in form than the normal peanut brittle. Usually it is like a brick, and can crack a tooth. Mine, after it had hardened, had the crunch, but chewed like hard taffy. This worked perfect for what I wanted to do.
   I chose a malt base because vanilla alone was too simple, and plain. But vanilla malt added another element of flavor that would not complex things; rather, it would intensify them by creating a canvass in mild taste and flavor. It worked perfectly. I have to tweak a few things, like its inclusion amount, to make it a flavor I would sell in a scoop shop. The peanut brittle was the star of the ice cream with its huge crunch (a highly desired aspect for me) and bold taste, but it was supported by a brilliant base.

2. Roasted Honey Nut - extra-salty peanut butter ice cream ribboned with caramelized honey folded with roasted peanuts.

   Peanut butter is my favorite ice cream. Now that that is out there, we can proceed, and you can get an idea about why and how I do what I do with the amazing nut.
   Over the years I have grown tired of tasting pints of candy ice cream, and ending with dissatisfaction. By candy ice cream I refer to their "fake" taste fostered by their usage of liberal amounts of sugar. So, I chose to counter this commercial mistake by adding salt to my ice cream. You might be saying to yourself, "Hey Reese, there's already a bunch of salt in peanut butter." Well you're right, but not enough. Not enough for ice cream, that is. You see, ice cream contains sugar, it has to, or it would be tasteless cream. I add extra salt, and lots of it, to not only counter-balance this sugar effect, but to enhance the peanut flavor and to over-balance that sugar/salt scale so that it weighs down onto the salty side as opposed to the opposite outcome. If you had the pleasure of trying this one, you'll then know what I am talking about. It's salty. And it's good. It's the best ice cream I've ever had. Not to toot my own horn...but "Toot, Toot."

   I caramelize the honey by pouring an entire jar into a pan, heating it to boiling, and allowing it to cook there for several minutes. This does magical things to honey. Its color deepens to a dark amber; its flavor ripens and intensifies to a richer, sweeter, more powerful taste, which is recognized when it begins to aromatically release in warming waves from the stove top. That is when you have achieved greatness with honey. To this I had home-roasted and salted peanuts, and let them cook for a bit with the honey to let the flavors seep in and out.
   This ice cream is the essence of salty and sweet. That was the hope, and that is the outcome. Very salty counteracted with very sweet. It lights the taste buds up. It tricks the mind, and as a result you are rewarded with unparalleled tastiness.

   I had great, positive feedback about the flavors. Thanks to all who tried them out, and to those who were to afraid of them and settled for the bins of icy, plain, in-the-box, eggless, vanillas and chocolates, then I am sorry, and I urge to you take a step of faith and reach out toward greater things.
   This weekend my Research Director in NYC comes home to the Shoals, and together with our eldest brother, who is in charge of design, we will be churning out magic. Call us Wizards of Ice Cream if you want. Check back later this weekend for details, thoughts, and processes of our churn outs. Thanks for reading.

Eat more ice cream.

-Reese O'Shirey Esq.