Summer

Summer's about over in the Northern hemisphere and I'm just about starting to blog about my misadventures with making ice cream. But hey, over here on the equator, summer's never ever over. It's summer 365 days a year, and you think 100 days of hot, humid weather was more than enough. (Warning! This post is heavily loaded with photos under the cut!)

A couple of months back, I very luckily chanced upon fresh raspberries on sale at Carrefour and happily totted 2 punnets back home. Fresh raspberries are one of those things that I always wanted to buy but just too stingy to fork out a premium for. I ran through a list of recipes I thought I could try with them and thought an Ispahan-inspired cake would be great since my uncle had bought a basket of lychees as well. A lychee pound cake didn't turn out all that well, so that plan fell through. Then I turned to making ice cream.

Even though I bought this ice cream recipe book about 2 years (or was it 3) ago, it was the first time I looked at it seriously and tried a recipe from it. Partly because it was in Japanese and 2 years ago, my Japanese was just about kindergarten level. So this year, I finally picked up on the homemade ice cream bug (I think I go through phases of wanting to make different things), especially after looking at Chika's ice cream adventures.

Anyhow, my first attempt at making my own ice cream from scratch wasn't as successful as I had hoped for. Even up till now, I've still no idea what exactly was the problem(s) since there were many points where I sort of messed up. I don't know if it was the fact that I didn't cook/cool my custard enough, or was it the plastic container I stupidly use to freeze the ice cream, or was it the fact that my fridge was on the verge of a "meltdown". On the whole, the taste of the ice cream was quite good, though it just wouldn't freeze properly and the ice crystals were quite large. So, we'll all notice that the pictures aren't so pretty, but let's just not talk about that.

The recipe I followed was originally for a strawberry ice cream, which I simply substituted strawberries for raspberries. Because whipping cream that I got came in 200ml packages, I upped the quantities of the other ingredients so that I could use the whole pack of cream. I'd probably down the quantity of fresh raspberries a little if I ever made it again (which I doubt since raspberries cost a fortune) because raspberries have a stronger flavour than strawberries.

I don't have a recipe this time round because 1) I'm not very confident to translate detailed Japanese instructions into English, 2) I don't have an ice cream maker and the instructions for making an ice cream without it is horrendously long and 3) ok, I'll admit that I'm just lazy. I'll so much rather be eating the ice cream.

In place of the recipe, I shall leave you with some of the photos I took during my recent trip to Korea in August. These are just a tiny fraction of the collection and are all shot old-style, in film. The digital ones should, hopefully, come in a while. The coloured ones were taken with my very own Gakkenflex (which I have JUST thought I would name gakki) and the B/W ones with Popeye Camera Mint Cyan (which is actually a Vivitar Slim x Wide).

Enjoy!

Yongin Everland Theme Park

Yongpyong Dragon Valley

 On the cable car to Seorak-san

Almost at the peak!

  Oak and maple

   Calves at Yasan Farm

   Tangerine orchard

  Super windy day at Seongsan Sunrise Peak in Jeju

  

 

  

The view from my hotel in Jeju

Yongduam Dragon Rock

Myeongdong, Seoul