Recipes Piled a Mile High

My husband and I have been caught up in a flurry of home repair, renovation, and basically doing chores we've been putting off for the last decade or so. Inevitably, when such projects are underway, tempers flare, arguments escalate, and harsh words are tossed around. It came up - the harshest word of all - "packrat."

What? Me? A packrat? Just because we have more bookshelves than chairs, just because we have books in boxes and books in drawers? That doesn't make me a packrat. I neeeeeed those books. The same for all my sewing supplies, fabric stash, unfinished craft projects, kids' kindergarten art work, and, oh, no, not another chocolate stash! Well, I can declutter with the best of them. I'll toss the.....kids' art work. They won't care.

I must confess, though, that I do have a wee bit of a tendency to hoarding when it comes to recipes. Why is it so hard to toss a recipe? Even if I ripped it out of a magazine ten years ago and have never made it. I might make it someday, so I'd better save it, right? Especially if it's got luscious, tempting pictures to go with the recipe.

In the spirit of purge that's flowing in our house right now, I decided to go through my folder of ripped-out-of-a-magazine recipes and do some culling. Calls for a box of pudding? Toss. I'd never get my family to eat it? Toss. I own the cookbook that has that recipe in it? Toss. But then I came to one that had a full page picture of ice cream and blueberries nestled in between halves of a biscuit with a lovely sauce drizzling down over the top. Rather than toss, I'd make it, blog it, and then be able to toss with a free conscience. Plus I still had more blueberries to play with!

The only downside to this excellent plan was that when I looked at the recipe accompanying the gorgeous photo, it was basically a biscuit recipe and you bought ice cream to put in there. Waaaaah! I wanted a blueberry ice cream recipe! So I had to sort of invent my own. And now that I've taken my own pictures I'm totally going to toss that other recipe. Even though their pictures were better. Maybe I'd better hang onto it, just in case I want to try for a redo later....

Blueberry Tallcakes

Your favorite biscuits or shortcakes
Blueberry Ice cream (recipe follows)
Fresh berries
Berry syrup or liquor for drizzling


Blueberry Ice cream

2 cups blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
2-3 Tbsp Blueberry or blackberry liquor*

1- Toss the blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice together in a mixing bowl. Cover and refrigerate, stirring every 30 minutes.

2- Place the blueberry mixture into a blender and blend until smooth. Set aside.

3- Pour 1 cup of the cream into a large mixing bowl. Set a fine mesh strainer on top of it. Have an ice bath prepared in a larger bowl (several inches of ice + water) to cool off the custard.

4- In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks.

5- In a medium saucepan, mix 1 cup of the cream with the milk, sugar, and pinch of salt. Set the saucepan over medium-high heat and warm the cream mixture, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved and little bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan.

6- Pour the warmed cream in a steady stream into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return the egg mixture to the saucepan and set it over low heat. Cook, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heatproof rubber spatula until the custard thickens slightly and coats the spatula ( drawing a finger through it should leave a line).

7- Immediately pour the custard through the strainer into the cold cream. Set the bowl into the ice bath and stir. Pour in the pureed blueberry mixture and stir till thoroughly mixed and cooled. Cover and refrigerate the custard at least 4 hours or overnight.

8- Stir in the liquor and freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

* I used Creme de Cassis and it did impart a very distinct blackberry flavor to the ice cream. My next quest - making blueberry liquor from my leftover Blueberry Lighter Fluid!