Eggnog Ice Cream

There are really only two foods Charisse won't eat: raw celery and eggnog. Eric on the other hand? Loves eggnog. Raw celery? Well we're not as different as it seems. Now when Charisse started mixing up our ice cream for this post, there was a small shock when she said she was making eggnog. Looks like she does love her husband after all. Now the last time we made ice cream we ran into the problem that it was too icy, we'd tried to make a egg free ice cream and it just wasn't creamy enough. The egg really smooths the ice cream out and lets it keep that traditional ice cream consistency. We were putting together a fun little dinner just the two of us and Charisse wanted to take another crack at the ice cream maker and Eric had a hankering for eggnog. This time, it was perfect: creamy, a little spicy and very festive. At least that's what Eric said while he sat with the bowl between his legs, eating the last of it with a spoon straight from the mixing bowl. He also said it was cold. Don't worry, we won't tell him that theres no actual eggnog in this one until he's finished it, Charisse needs a clean bowl for her next ice cream adventure!

Extra! We have a winner from our contest last week: Food Hound! Food Hound, contact us and we'll send you your jar of bacon marmalade!

Cherry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

When we got married, Eric's parents gave us a Tangerine Kitchenaid mixer with an ice cream making attachment and we were so excited about it. You have to freeze the bucket a day or two ahead of time so its nice and frozen for churning the ice cream. So we tossed the bucket in the freezer and let it get nice and solid and got ready for some home made ice cream! But it was cold, so we waited for it to get warmer. Then we moved. Then we got busy working on the house. Then it was winter again. Then we were working on the house again. Then it was memorial day weekend almost 2 years later and we finally pulled out the bowl and got to churning. We had the good fortune of finding a great year-round fruit stand about 5 minutes down the road from us who had Cherries on sale, lost of cherries, not much money, so we went for it and brewed up a Cherry Ice Cream and tossed in some mini Chocolate Chips for that extra something. Check it out after the break and tell us what you think!

Apple Crisp

The other night we were getting ready for dessert and we're looking for toppings for the big container of Vanilla Ice Cream we had in the freezer and wanted something different. Chocolate syrup? A classic, but not in the mood. Gooey caramel? Too sticky. M&Ms? We ate them for lunch. We started talking about all the other toppings but still couldn't find something that fit the mood. After a few minutes, Charisse wondered why we didn't put the topping UNDER the ice cream. Now we all know that Charisse is about as smart as they come, so it was no surprise that her explanation for this silly sounding idea was very much genius: we would make an Apple Crisp! 


Charisse's Apple Crisp is a Farnsworth Family staple, great tasting, fairly easy to make, and it has apples in it so it must be healthy! (maybe). Full of oatmeal, apples and cinnamon (with brown sugar and butter of course!) an apple crisp is a perfect fall dish, but it works just about any time of the year when a cold front has moved in!
Pictures and recipe after the break...

Peanut Butter Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwiches

Last weekend we had our good friends Cherelyn and Dave and their two kids Jake and Joey over for dinner. We had a great time as always, but got stuck on what to do for dessert. Grownup desserts that are amazing and can rock your world sometimes fall flat when put in-front of pair of pre-teen boys. Tres-Leches cake is amazing, but very different and different does not always pair well with kids. Especially when you try and explain that soaking their cake in milk for an hour makes it taste good. We talked about what to serve and tried to think of all the desserts we liked as kids. Charisse was a weird kid and liked all that fancy grown up food, but Eric was more of the Ice Cream, Cookies and Birthday Cake kind of kid. We had some ice cream in the freezer but that would be a terrible blog post:


Ice Cream: Open container. Scoop into bowl. Get brain freeze. Repeat. 


Just not going to work. Cookies we could do, but we wanted to get creative and were kind of pushing the limits of what a typical kid might like in a cookie (and thats tough to do). We thought about peanut butter cookies, which is kinda fancy (Okay, its more fancy then Toll House Chocolate Chip) but still not dramatic enough for us. Then Charisse found some sprinkles in the back of the cabinet, and asked if the kids would want Ice Cream Sandwiches. Eric's exact quote was something like "The kids? Heck, I want an ice cream sandwich!" Thus, Peanut Butter Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwiches. With Sprinkles. Trust us when we say its all about the sprinkles, they make the difference between a thrown together dessert, and a gourmet well planned out conclusion to a high class meal. There really is no better combination than peanut butter and chocolate, especially frozen. The whole meal, everyone kept glancing at the freezer, waiting for a chance to dig in and let the brain freeze work its magic. And it did. As soon as the sandwiches hit the plate, the kitchen (we didn't wait to sit back down) was filled with "Mmmm"s and "Oooh"s and "Augh Brain Freeze"s. And later when the kids pulled themselves away from their video games, they liked them too. 


Pictures and Recipe after the break