splendid lemon ice cream sandwiches

i recently stumbled upon jeni’s splendid ice creams at home.  i immediately began to drool.  when i got the book home, i read it from cover to cover (okay, i didn’t read all of the recipes, but i did read all of their descriptions and i flagged a few recipes that i knew i had to try out (salty caramel was a no-brainer, but i also marked maple ice cream with salty buttered nuts, watermelon lemonade sorbet, baked rhubarb frozen yogurt and her recipe for macaroons to make ice cream sandwiches).  but for my very first ice cream to try out, i decided on the lemon cream ice cream.  i wanted to try out her ice cream technique which incorporates cream cheese, but no eggs and promised to be smooth and scoopable.  i’d tried making ice cream at home before (this ice cream maker was a wedding gift to us, twelve years ago!) but it never seemed to work.  the ice cream always sort of fell apart, melting before it was fully frozen and never really recovering.  the lemon cream recipe looked pretty simple (vs. salty caramel, whose recipe begins with the word “danger!” in red letters because she uses the dry-burn technique which can pop and sputter when the cream is added to hot melted sugar) and i had all the ingredients on hand. it did take me awhile to get started (oh yeah, the lemon syrup needs to be cooked, then cooled.  oops!  the cream cheese is supposed to be room temperature. etc.), but once all the ingredients were ready, it actually went fairly quickly.  and it froze like a dream!  turns out, there wasn’t anything wrong with my ice cream freezer, just with my recipes.

i also tried out the macaroon recipe.  these aren’t like coconut macaroons, think french macarons, but simpler.  i was a bit nervous about working with that many whipped egg whites and not accidentally over-whipping them, but it wasn’t actually that difficult (piping the swirls was fun!) and the cookies turned out great!  i wouldn’t necessarily eat a bunch of them by themselves (they mostly taste like sugar, kind of like an ice cream cone), but they make a lovely handle for super rich ice cream (although you should not forget to factor in time to freeze them solid before packing ice cream onto them!  the first ones i made got a bit smooshed).  and this ice cream is super rich.  creamy doesn’t really begin to describe it.  sooooo smooth.  looking forward to trying a second recipe!