Piccolino, Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn

After a couple of gloomy autumn days, the sun came out on Sunday and we went for a long walk to Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn.  The destination was Piccolino, a gelato shop with a reputation for excellent pistachio ice cream.  It lived up to expectation.  The ice cream was amazing.

I had the pistachio (sweet, nutty, chunky) and hazelnut (salty, nutty) in a waffle cone:

The celebrity had mango (fruity) and cherry ripe (coconut, cherry, chocolate perfection):

Jemima had a taste of all the flavours and really cheered up after being a little snoozy in the mid afternoon sun.

Rhubarb, strawberry and rosewater ice cream

I stewed the rhubarb first and added cream, natural yoghurt, milk, caster sugar, chopped strawberries and a dash of rosewater.  It worked a treat!

Jock's gets approval from Jemima

We had ice cream at Jock's in Albert Park on Friday night and Jemima had a taste.  She enjoyed it very much.

I had a scoop of gingerbread and a scoop of fig (why have one scoop for $4.50, when you can have two for $5.50?):

James tried the summer pudding:

Lucy had something with chocolate...

Jemima did have a sugar high and would not go to sleep until 10:30pm, but she really loved the cold sweetness on her teeth (she has 5 teeth at 9 months of age):

Coconut ice cream

I used coconut milk (2/3 cup), milk (1 1/2 cups), cream (2/3 cup), desiccated coconut (1/2 cup), sugar (1/2 cup) and it turned out well:

It froze well after churning and has a creamy texture...

I added chocolate sauce (melted dark chocolate) for that lamington style dessert:

Raspberry and mango ice cream

Craig and Maz invited us for dessert last night and we tried their magnificent mango and raspberry home made ice cream.

Maz uses:
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup cream
3/4 cup yoghurt
Fruit
Pinch of salt
Teaspoon vanilla

The ice cream was creamy and delicious.  They used fruit from their garden.  Maz adds lime to the mango and this added a wonderful tang, as well as the yoghurt.

We had a wonderful home made plum tart with the ice cream:

Vanilla bean ice cream

After many failures, we finally bought an ice cream maker. It was on sale at Myer last week and we made vanilla bean ice cream over the weekend.  Luckily it was a great success.

Ingredients
1 cup of milk
1 cup of cream
1/2 cup of sugar
4 egg yolks
1 vanilla pod

First you chill the ice cream bucket for 24 hours. Heat the milk and cream in a saucepan with the vanilla pod, split and de-seeded. Beat the yolks and sugar until stiff, add heated milk/cream mixture and reheat, removing the vanilla pod. Allow to cool before placing in the fridge for 4 hours. Then churn for 40 minutes.  This makes 800 ml of ice cream, so 4 people polished that off in 2 sittings... (ie. equivalent of 8 scoops)

It was creamy and delicious... not too hard and just delicious. Yippee... the Razzaforino Scoopitable Scream idea may have life in it after all...

We had the ice cream with a chocolate raspberry brownie... it was yummy...