Old Fashioned Ice Cream

I bought an old fashioned Ice cream maker a few years ago.  I didn't really know what it was, but the colour was adorable and whatever it was intrigued me.  The people at the thrift store were excited that I bought it and asked me what it was because they had no idea either.  These are not at all common here and I assume that it was bought in the States by some seaman who thought his wife would enjoy using it.  Since it is practically unused and mint condition, I'm assuming the wife didn't really think it was such a hot idea.

But I love it and I have so often planned to use it, but never taken the plunge.  It's so funny how doing something that I haven't done before is so impossibly difficult.  And then once I do it, it's really easy.  So I decided to make Rhubarb Ice cream in it.

I love Rhubarb ice cream.  Nobody else seems to, which I find very strange.  But I had some rhubarb and there was a family party and I offered to bring dessert.  The family was a bit skeptical.  My daughter confessed to having serious doubts beforehand, but once they tasted, they were converted.  Or at least that is what they told me.

The recipe for the ice cream is very easy, I posted it before here.  Except this time I used a whole Vanilla pod for the ice cream instead of the vanilla sugar/essence that is specified in the recipe.  It's not a lot of ice cream, probably about a quart (or 1 liter).  There were 8 of us and all had a nice portion each, but it was also served with Rhubarb soup and whipped cream.  I actually like smaller recipes of ice cream since I like to make more flavors rather than a huge amount.  Coffee ice cream is probably my favorite, along with the Rhubarb and of course real Vanilla.  The taste is just so much better.

Making ice cream from scratch is very easy.  I started with two egg yolks, one tablespoon  powdered sugar, seeds from half a vanilla pod and mixed it together with a fork.

Five stalks of  rhubarb are chopped into little pieces and boiled with a little bit of water and 3,5 oz sugar.  Or one can use rhubarb mash from making the rhubarb soup.  The rhubarb is cooled while 1 and 1/4 cup of whipping cream is whipped.  Once the rhubarb has cooled, it is folded together and poured into the ice cream maker.

I had never used this old fashioned ice cream maker before, so I had little idea how much salt would be needed, but I bought 4 kilos (8punds) of rock salt.  I used about half of that, 2 kilos (4 pounds) and all the ice I had, alternating a dash of salt and a smattering of ice.  But I did make this recipe twice, and could churn it with that amount of salt and ice.  (This meant that I had some ice cream that was for me only after the party.  Oh, joy.)

Then churning by hand.  The mechanism of this is really interesting and I would actually love to have a smaller unit to use.  This large bucket is just a bit too big for the kitchen and so it has to reside in the garage, even if the turquoise  colour is just fantastic.

I didn't really know how long it would take to churn the ice cream.  It actually took shorter time than I thought, but then the amount of ice cream was only about half of the capacity of the ice cream maker.  I think it only took 15-20 minutes to churn the ice cream.  I loved peering into the ice cream  maker and watch how it moves the ice cream so slowly.  It all looks a bit weird, but then suddenly everything starts to flow smoothly.  I took the thing apart, emptied out the container and put the ice cream into the freezer to store it until it was time to go to the party.

I served the rhubarb ice cream with the fabulous rhubarb soup and lots of whipped cream.

There is nothing in this world that doesn't taste better with lots of whipped cream.  And then it was sprinkled with dark chocolate.  Although some cocoa nibs are also very good with this.  As is chopped dark Toblerone.

Lupine dyeing - Lupinus nootkatensis

The Alaskan Lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis) is one of those invasive species that are impossible to eradicate.  But it is pretty with it's blue and violet flowers and it does give great colour as a dye plant.  The leaves will give a good yellow, but it is the flowers that are more interesting because they give very bright and beautiful greens.  Most of the time lime green.

I got some pretty amazing colours this summer.  I went with my daughter to pick them down by the river where they grow in frightening abundance.  We picked the darkest coloured flowers that we could find and stripped them from the stalks.  We were careful to remove all leaves, because we didn't want too much of the yellow colour.   After picking a few full plastic bags we went home and dumped them into a large pot and filled it up with water.  The flowers simmered for over an hour and then was left to cool a bit before squeezing all the liquid from the flowers.

The liquid is a very deep wine colour, but the most common colour that comes out of the dyeing in a strong lime green.  It never ceases to amaze me, the tricks that colour plays in this process.  I used alpaca yarn to dye, skeins of 50g /1,8oz.  I've been using that for most of my dyeing lately, since I want to knit a soft and comfy sweater.  The Icelandic wool isn't necessarily what one wants next to the skin.

Since I didn't have any pre-mordanted yarn, I decided to mordant simultaneously with the dyeing, something which I haven't done before.  And because I am forgetful I first dumped wetted yarn into the pot and started to heat it up gently (it's important to take at least an hour to heat wool up to the 80-90°C / 180-200°F or so that is needed to dye) only to realize that I had completely forgotten to put in the mordant.

I added 10% (5 gr.) alum and 2% (1 gr.) cream of tartar, which I dissolved in hot water.  And then proceeded to heat up the liquid to about 85°C / 190°F.  I kept that temperature for an hour.  When I lifted the yarn out of the pot, I was floored by the turquoise colour that I got.  I have never seen a  colour like that from Lupine, so I wasn't about to chance loosing by letting it stay in the dye liquid any longer.  Therefore I didn't let the yarn sit and cool, but took it up and let it air cool before washing it out in clear water and some detergent.  The second skein I put into the dye liquid turned a very pretty green, I added the same amount of mordant to the dye liquid.  And finally I put in a third skein and got a lighter green.

Now I had to repeat this to see if I could replicate the colour.  I was a bit nervous since I had not really been careful to write everything down as soon as I did it.  That is a big mistake in dyeing.  Really, seriously.  One needs to take very careful notes and write everything that one does, times, tempertures, any deviations from the norm.  Just write everything down.

I had to try to replicate what I had done and write down every step of the way and lo and behold, I did manage to get almost the same colour.  I haven't tested it to see how lightfast it is.  I guess I should do that.  I did however see a shawl that someone had done with beautiful yellows from lupine and greens from lupine overdyed with indigo.  And there was no sign of fading in that.  However, I realize that the flower colours are the ones that are the most likely to fade in strong sunlight.  But on the bright side, there has been very little sun here this summer, so that isn't such a huge problem anyway.