Lemon Ice Cream - a Forrest family recipe

I was a little shocked by the 10 eggs, but then I found out that it makes 4 litres.

There is a lot of whipping involved. First, you whip the egg yolks with half a cup of sugar.

Then you reduce 350 ml of lemon juice to 150 ml, adding 1/2 cup of sugar.   Mix with the yolks and the grated rind of 6 lemons. Whip 750 ml cream and combine. Whip the evaporated milk (1 tin) and fold in. Whip egg whites with 1/2 cup of sugar and combine.

Freeze for 8 hours. It is harder than commercial ice cream. The lemon makes it taste a bit like sherbet.

My first taste of Le Croissant

I was given a orange cake from Le Croissant (1204 Toorak Road, Camberwell) yesterday.  It was magnificent... I even loved the box and am going to keep it (repurposing it for cards/knick-knacks, because it is so pretty and a good size for storing things). Orange cake has a very strong orange peel flavour (which I like... it makes it seem less sweet... almost savoury).

I have heard about this shop and driven past it many times, but am yet to visit... This cake has made me want to visit even more.  I am not able to make cakes like that... so even and neatly decorated... I am definitely more of the rustic cook than the fancy pastry chef... This cake definitely had the WOW factor...

I have moved the candied orange on the cake (for ease of cutting)... it looked even better before.

The gateau for Lucy's Birthday

Ginny made an amazing gateau for Lucy's birthday on Saturday.  I have never seen a cake so tall and decadent.  It had flake on the top of chocolate icing with cream and fruit layered between the vanilla and chocolate cake.

The flavours were even more delicious the next day...

Home made ice cream sundaes

I enjoyed a week of luxury care at the Epworth Freemasons in East Melbourne.  Each morning friendly man with a bow tie knocked on our door to take our order for lunch, dinner and the following morning's breakfast.  This was no ordinary hospital food, mind you.  This was fine dining... better than some restaurants!  We were allowed to select entrée, main and dessert from a delicious menu.  I hopped in to turkey with cranberry sauce, roast beef sandwiches, steak, cheesecake (pictured below), while my better half tried out dumplings, chicken breast with coleslaw, chicken and avocado toasties (as shown below), pork belly and lamb rump.

The most exciting part of the meal was a tall glassful of home made ice cream with a long spoon!  We had 3 scoops of that day's flavours, including strawberry (with chunky strawberry pieces), chocolate (rich dark), mango (with sauce), raspberry sorbet, banana (reminded us of banana lolly flavour), as well as rum and raison (with cookie bits).

Chocolate chip mint whey whip

Today I tried the chocolate chip mint whey whip ice-cream and was pleasantly surprised.  The flavour is good. The presentation is unusual - all the choc chips are on the top rather than mixed in.  I assume this is due to the freezing process.

I was interested to see Leo's stocking a lot of single serve tubs of gourmet ice creams.  Is this a new trend?  The expensive gourmet brand single serve portion (rather than the family size tub)?  Will it help those with diabetes or does it just make you want to try more flavours?

Lemon Meringue Pie

My sugar levels have been a bit low, so I decided to try out a lemon meringue pie last night.  Mum used to make it with a cake base (rather than pastry).  I didn't get the lemon layer quite right, because it soaked into the cake rather than sitting separately on top of the cake and under the meringue (however I didn't wait for it to cool long enough either).

Needless to say, there were no complaints from the boss:

Sugar free ice cream is already on the shelves

Just when I thought I had come up with a great new business idea, I visit Leo's and find it already exists. Sugar free ice-cream is available in tiny tubs for $5.50 in burnt caramel, strawberry, banana and chocolate flavours: