Carrot Cake Ice Cream

Oooh, this is good, you guys. Really good. I swear, I’ve been looking for a good carrot cake ice cream for ages, and I’ve tried it at a bunch of excellent ice cream parlors, but this is definitely the best one I have EVER had. It starts with my carrot cake jam (which I really can’t get enough of, in case you couldn’t tell), which gets swirled generously into a no-churn ice cream that tastes like frozen cream cheese frosting. Add in a generous handful of graham cracker crumbs (you could add nuts as well), and you have a sinfully delicious scoop of creamy, gooey-chewy (that’s a word, right?), carrot cake-y goodness.

Once you’ve made the jam, this recipe takes almost no time at all to come together, and I guarantee it’s worth the effort. I’m already plotting when I can make my next batch, because I’m already reaching the bottom of the container on this one and can’t stand the thought of running out!

Carrot Cake Jam

I’ll start by noting that my decision to make this jam was mostly a happy accident– that being said, I’m so glad I did, because the results were *amazing*.

Anyway, I had some egg whites left over from my Dulce de Leche Flan, which made me start thinking about baking macarons to use them up (because why waste them on something easy?). And then I wondered what flavor of macaron I might want to make, and since Easter is coming up I thought about carrots, and carrot cake. But how to infuse carrot cake flavor into a macaron? Well, that’s where the carrot cake jam came in.

You’ll see the finished macarons later, but this jam is good for so many other things– it’s great with cream cheese on toast, delicious as a filling for cookies or tartlets, but my favorite use has to be for making the very best carrot cake ice cream *ever* (don’t worry, recipe to come).

The jam itself is sweet, spicy, and has a nice array of textures due to the variety of ingredients. I particularly like the pecans– without them the jam is awfully sweet, and they add a background savoriness that evokes the “cake” feeling of the original inspiration. You might also consider adding some shredded coconut, if you like it in your carrot cake generally. Either way, it’s sure to be sticky, gooey, and delicious!

Okonomiyaki

Ten years ago my husband and I took a trip to Japan, and it was there that we discovered okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is a Japanese pancake made of shredded cabbage and meat in a flour-egg batter, and often contains additional ingredients for extra flavors and textures. The restaurant we went to was in a tiny little town and was listed as a “hidden gem” in our travel guide, and it definitely spoiled us for all other iterations of okonomiyaki on our trip (because of course, having had it once we were dying to have it again!). The ingredients came in separate bowls that you combined to your own taste, and there were personal grills right at the table to cook the pancakes, which were served with pickled ginger, bonito flakes, and okonomiyaki sauce for garnish.

Oddly, despite searching for similar restaurants here in the States, we never thought of trying to recreate the recipe at home. However, I was in a local Asian market recently when I spied a bottle of okonomiyaki sauce (a tangy, savory sauce that’s kind of like a mixture of ketchup and Worcestershire sauce), and was inspired to try my own version of these!

Carrot Cake with Pepita Brittle

This past Easter I was in a baking mood (when am I not in a baking mood?) so decided to make– what else?– carrot cake.

I love a good carrot cake, though everyone seems to have a different idea of what to add to the basic flavor profile. Some people use raisins, some nuts, or crushed pineapple. Some people use carrot puree, others go traditional with grated carrots, and some cakes use shockingly low amounts of carrot to begin with. Last year I even made one that incorporated graham cracker crumbs in the batter. I decided this time to try a recipe from Alton Brown, who rarely lets me down when it comes to good basic recipes.

Carrot Cake with Candied Carrot Curls

This past Easter I was pondering what to bake– trying to decide between hot cross buns and cream-filled chocolate eggs– when I realized that I had a big bag of carrots languishing in the crisper drawer, leftovers from a delicious batch of bolognese sauce. I immediately discarded all other options in favor of carrot cake– a cake that I love, but rarely make for some reason. And I knew just the recipe– another Smitten Kitchen post that I’d bookmarked a while ago but never gotten around to trying, carrot cake with graham crackers.

That’s right, there are pulverized graham crackers in the batter, taking the place of some of the flour. Honestly, though, with all of the spices in the mix I couldn’t really taste the graham flavor, so I’m not sure how successful that element was in this case. But the rest of it was a very nice cake (a little heavy on the frosting, but some people like it that way), and since the top was looking a little plain once I assembled it, I made a batch of candied carrot curls to decorate!

Cold Asian Noodle Salad

Now that the weather is finally warming up, I thought I’d share one of our family’s staple summer dinners– cold Asian noodle salad. It’s tangy, refreshing, a little bit spicy, and the perfect dinner for eating outside in the evenings– perhaps with a cold beer or glass of white wine. Best of all, it comes together in a snap, with ingredients straight out of the pantry. (or if they’re not in your pantry, they should be!)