Coconut-Cheese Ice Cream with Thyme, Cranberry Sauce and Spiced Walnuts

Growing up in the tropics, cheese really didn't feature much in our everyday diet. We had durians and fermented shrimp paste (belacan), and that was enough odorous foods for one culture to have to endure. It's all very different the kids growing up in this more global world now, of course. 

Coconut milk, on the other hand, does feature a lot in our tropical cuisine, from breakfast snacks, main meals and desserts. Saying that, however, our use of it nowadays is in more measured amounts due to the high oil and sugar content (coconut cream especially).

Like chalk and cheese

I've been toying with the idea of mixing one of the most Eastern ingredient with one of the most Western and finally came up with this Coconut-Cheese ice cream recipe. My tastebuds know for a fact that thyme goes extremely well with cheese so that was thrown in for good measure. On its own, this creamy, distinctively Cheddary ice cream is already worthy of a gasp. But try eating a spoonful of it drizzled with warm, cinnamon-scented cranberry-orange sauce and topped with spicy, gingery walnuts, and you're bound to hear absolute silence as the world around you stops moving! Trust me when I say this, it is that good.

 Top: Cranberry-Orange sauce,  Bottom: Spicy walnuts

 

Out of the oven - spicy, sweet, crisp walnuts with ginger and cayenne pepper

Next time you have guests over for a party, be daring enough to serve this understatedly sexy, elegant and complex dessert all rolled into one. Oh, and remember to print out copies of the recipe as your guests will be asking for it!

If you're making this dessert for any adorable tiny tots, just substitute the coconut milk with regular milk and leave out the salt and spices.

Coconut-Cheese Ice Cream with Thyme, Cranberry Sauce and Spiced Walnuts

Ingredients:
Coconut-Cheese Ice Cream with Thyme
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 125g (4oz) cheddar cheese, grated
• 125g (4oz) cream cheese, diced
• 1/2 teaspoon ground thyme
• 3/4 cup honey
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Cranberry-Orange Sauce
• 1 cup dried cranberries (or 2 cups fresh berries)
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/4 cup brown sugar or honey
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon water

Spiced Walnuts
• 1 egg white
• 1 teaspoon water
• 2 cups walnuts
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper or chilli powder

Method:
Coconut-Cheese Ice Cream with Thyme

1. In a small heavy bottom sauce pot, bring the coconut milk and heavy cream to a boil.

2. Remove from heat and whisk in the cheddar cheese, cream cheese, honey, thyme and salt.

3. Blend this mixture in a blender until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, then cool completely before freezing mixture in ice-cream maker.

4. Transfer to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden, at least 2 hours. Let ice-cream soften 5 minutes before serving.

Cranberry-Orange Sauce

1. Combine cranberries, orange juice, sugar/honey, vanilla and cinnamon stick in medium saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves; boil for 1 minute.

2. Strain into bowl. Reserve cranberries. Return juices and cinnamon stick to the same pan. Mix 1 tablespoon water and cornstarch in small bowl; stir into juices in pan. Stir over medium heat until juices boil and thicken, about 1 minute. Mix in reserved cranberries. Chill compote 2 hours.

Spiced Walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 120°C/250°F.

2. Whisk together egg white and water in a large bowl until frothy and stir in nuts. Stir together sugar, ground ginger and cayenne pepper/chilli powder and stir into nuts, coating well. Spread nuts on a lightly buttered pan and bake in middle of oven until dry, about 50 minutes. Cool and chop into bite-size chunks.

Assembly

To serve, scoop ice cream into sundae glasses, top with cranberry-orange sauce and chopped spiced walnuts.

Muffin Shortbread Cookies With Nutella-Cranberry Filling

Yes, I know. I've disappeared, gone on hiatus for about a fortnight. What can I say? The well sometimes run dry, I wasn't even the inspired to write about stuff not related to food. Such as why I've disappeared, for example.

But today, today I'm back. At first, I thought of writing about my various kitchen disasters to date as I'm sure someone out there would be interested. Who doesn't like to be reminded that we food bloggers are only human, after all? Then quite suddenly, a simple new recipe I came up with turned out to be a success. A cookie recipe at that. So I'm going to write about this instead and save the exploding kitchen story for another day. I'm sure you guys can wait.

I've called these Muffin Shortbread Cookies because I decided to bake the shortbread dough in mini-muffin pans. They held the distinctive muffin shape but melted in the mouth like typical shortbread once you bite into them. As for the Nutella filling, hey, who needs to explain away Nutella? It's just plain good to have it in any recipe, that's my opinion. Since Christmas is just around the corner, chucking in some chopped cranberries along with the Nutella elevates this humble shortbread to the likes of the Festive-Cookie Brigade!

 

Before I get on to the recipe, I'm doing another post tomorrow. It seems strange to post two days in a row after my recent absence, but it's for the International Incident Party hosted by Penny of Jeroxie.com.  Catch this blog again tomorrow, you won't be disappointed!

Muffin Shortbread Cookies With Nutella-Cranberry Filling
Makes 48-50 cookies
Ingredients:
Shortbread
2 cups flour
1 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Filling
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup Nutella
1/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped finely

Method:
1. First, make the shortbread. I do it the stressfree way - just place all the ingredients in a food processor and blend it for a minute or so until the dough forms into a ball. Remove dough, place in a bowl and chill in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.
2. For the filling, add butter and flour in a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs, then add the Nutella and dried cranberries and knead into a ball with your hand.
3. To assemble the cookie for baking, make small round balls with the shortbread and press into the base of a non-stick mini-muffin cup. Crumble the Nutella-cranberry filling on top, then place another larger ball of shortbread on top and press down so that its surface is even with the top of the muffin cup. Do this with the remaining shortbread and filling.
4. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 10-12 minutes (depending on the size of your muffin tin) until the shortbread dough turns a light golden brown. Leave to cool completely in the pan. To remove muffin cookies, turn the tray over and give it a firm tap against a hard surface. The muffins will pop out easily. Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

Brunch and Lunner: Of Capsicum, Eggs Benedict, Red Cabbage & Cranberries

Brunch

Lunner

When I awoke today, it was a bit too late for breakfast. So for want of a better word to describe my morning meal, I had “Brunch”. Looked around in the fridge and found a leftover from my Capsicum Icecream recipe – half of a red capsicum. Hmm… not exactly breakfast food, is it? But then, this is not breakfast, it’s errr… “brunch”.

I’m not sure why that word tickles me so, perhaps it conjures up in my mind the hoity-toity ladies of leisure who have a penchant for dining out with their friends during the day for “Brunch” or "High Tea". Sad really, because for a minute there I might have been describing MYSELF! That is, if I could afford to dine out all the time like other, real Divas of leisure.

Anyway, for my own leisurely brunch, I settled for something that vaguely resembled eggs benedict, with a twist. I stuffed the bottom of the half-capsicum with small chunks of wholemeal bread and then broke a raw egg over it (inside the capsicum). Sprinkled some grated Parmesan cheese, sliced some black olives, poured a teaspoon of virgin olive oil over it and placed the whole thing under a hot grill for about 10 minutes. For the side-kicks, I toasted some more slices of the homemade wholemeal multigrain bread (phew, a mouthful!) and sliced some green apples. The whole combo was oh-so-thumbs up!

The uncooked egg buried underneath all the Parmesan and black olives.

Then I skipped lunch to do some errands, and when I returned it was a bit too late for lunch but too early for the so-called High Tea. So I don’t know what to call the meal one eats at about 2.30pm but that’s when I had it. My meal was a simple, quick throw-everything-together affair but still fairly healthy – I think. What I had, I shall call it “Red Cabbage Vermicelli with Dried Cranberries”. The colours rocked! See for yourself.

The ingredients I used

Boiled the vermicelli (this looks like just a thinner version of spaghetti) for about 6 minutes and drained the water. Then I chopped some garlic and a shallot, fried those in about 2 tablespoons of virgin olive oil. Tossed in the red cabbage, which had been sliced thinly beforehand, added a tablespoon of dried cranberries, a teaspoon of ready-made pesto and cooked all that for about 2-3 minutes. I seasoned mine with river salt flakes (hey, since I have it, why not?) and ground pepper, then it was ready to plate. All in all, it took less than 10 minutes to prepare and the colours and taste were simply mind-boggling! If I had fresh basil, I would’ve used that instead of the pesto, but I didn’t so this was the improvisation.

I'm fascinated by the mysterious cabbage folds...

Sliced cabbage, stir-fried with garlic, shallots, pesto and dried cranberries

Aren't the colours just fabulous together?

To wash down the meal, I made a drink out of frozen raspberries blended with skimmed milk plus a teaspoon of brown sugar - just because. Then to round everything off, I had about 2 (ok, it was more like 3) scoops of the ginger-orange-chocolate icecream I made the other day, and Mamma Mia, that was some “Lunner” (what I've decided to call the meal between lunch and dinner). Tomorrow I'm going for a 10K run with my friend, LAZsie so this will all be worked off. No guilt in advance!

Ginger-orange-chocolate icecream drizzled with homemade caramel sauce. Yummsy!