A Frozen Treat on a Frozen Day

Brrr!  It's literally freezing here.  I'm talking negative numbers. -22 F when I got up this morning, it was up to -6 when I left to run our morning errands at 10 am.

You'd think it'd be a good time to cook and bake, and you'd be right, but it's also apparently a good time to make gelato.  We've been having this treat at least once a week for a couple of weeks now.  Perhaps it's because we never get our fill.  This recipe makes just a quart, which is barely enough to give everyone in our family of 5 a small bowlful.  Perhaps it's because it's just down right yummy, and easy enough to make often, even if you're 9 years old, like Hot Dog.



Basic Gelato Recipe

3 eggs
1/2 cup cream
2 1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
dash of salt
2 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk the 3 eggs in a pot until homogeneous
Add milk and cream, whisk again
Add sugar and salt, whisk again

Heat on medium or medium low heat whisking occasionally until thick and starting to bubble.  Cool in fridge (or outside on a freezing day) for 2 + hours (or a couple of days, if like me you get busy and forget about it)

When cool add vanilla, whisk one last time, and freeze in ice cream maker according to manufactures instructions.


Notes and Modifications

The other thing that's been making this addictive is that I finally learned how best to add chocolate chips - heat the oven on low (~200 F) put a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet and put ~1/2 cup of chocolate chips on the wax paper and set in warm oven until chocolate is soft and gooey.  Pull it out and scrape liquid chocolate into the cold gelato, whisk, then freeze according to instructions.  The chocolate hardens in ribbons that are lovely in the finished product.

You can vary the flavor - use almond extract, mint extract, orange extract etc... instead of vanilla
I want to try chocolate sometime, oooh, or maybe chocolate orange w/ bits of orange zest in it.   Yea, that would be good.  If I could ever not make the basic chocolate chip that we all keep craving.

Super Easy Pizza Dough

Easiest Pizza Dough Ever

1 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon bread machine yeast
4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt (kosher if you have it)
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning (optional)


Throw it all in the bread machine on the dough cycle.  You don't have to wait for the whole cycle, when it gets to the "rise" mode you can take it out and shape it.

Pre-heat oven to 500

Roll thin (~1/4")  and top as desired.

Notes and modifications:

One trick we learned is to bake it with just the sauce on it for ~3 min. then put the cheese  and other toppings on and finish it.  That cooks the crust a little bit more.
Also I like to sprinkle some extra pizza spice on the sauce, and minced garlic on top of the cheese.