Roasted Cherry Coconut Ice Cream

I tried my first real cherry a week ago.

My childhood had been scarred by cherry flavored medicine. My parents could only make me take it if cookies were promised and in full view. I will argue that it is the single worst thing I have ever tasted. From that point on, I avoided cherry popsicles, cherry koolaid... anything that even looked red (including holiday oreos with red colored filling). I had always assumed that real cherries would have that same awful overly sweet bitter taste. At the ripe age of 22, I figured it was time to find out the truth.

Real cherries tasted nothing like the branded generic cherry flavor. It was a revelation! An inspiration! I indulged in the flavor, the texture, and the intricacies of this new and exciting fruit (eating half a pound in the process). Then and there, the fates decided that cherries would have a presence in my life.

This roasted cherry coconut ice cream is absolutely divine. It is so easy to make and tastes gourmet. The roasted cherries are sweet and glorious and I can't stop talking about them. The ice cream itself has a fairly intense coconut flavor and can stand alone if need be, but the cherries really round out the flavors in the ice cream. This is, quite possibly, the best ice cream I have ever eaten.

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Blueberry Lime Panna Cotta

Let's face it, my first attempt at panna cotta was truly a failure. It was the wrong texture, the wrong taste... the elusive panna cotta was out of my grasp.

I do not deal with failure well, especially when it comes to cream and sugar. I needed to redeem myself and so I gave panna cotta another chance. Oh, I am glad I did.

This panna cotta has exactly what a classic Italian panna cotta should have: a creamy texture, light taste, and is incredibly simple to make. I call it a success. However, the blueberry lime sauce takes this panna cotta to a completely different level. The blueberry and lime flavors dance together in a very delicate and curious tango. This entire recipe takes less than twenty minutes to make, sauce and all. Now you have no excuse not to get cooking!

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Strawberry Panna Cotta

Every once in awhile I come across a recipe that looks delicious, quick, and simple to make. Strawberry Panna Cotta seemed like one of these, needing a mere 20 minutes of elbow grease. Despite all of this in my favor, I managed to butcher my poor panna cotta. It was a complete and utter disaster. My panna cotta (translation: "cooked cream") was not so panna and had the texture of cotta-ge cheese.

However, I find a cooking failure to be just as interesting as a cooking success (though remarkably less tasty), which is why I am sharing this with you. Failures become a mystery to solve--where did I go wrong and, more importantly, why? I hope you can learn from my mistakes and have a finished product that you can be proud of (and that I will be envious of).

It really is important to run the mixture through a fine sieve. I ran mine through a medium sieve since I have yet to invest in a fine grain sieve. This was mistake #1. By running it through the fine sieve, you can eliminate all of the strawberry seeds which makes the panna cotta very smooth and creamy. My panna cotta was littered with strawberry seeds.

Also, when the recipe states to let the gelatin to stand for 1 minute in the milk, it really means 1 minute. During this step I got distracted by heating the cream and let it stand for several minutes. Mistake #2. By letting it soften longer, the gelatin started to do what it does best--gelatinize. This meant that I had little lumpy gelatin bits in my finished panna cotta. Since panna cotta is known for being smooth in texture, this mistake brought me great shame.

Now do me a favor and don't bring shame upon your panna cotta. Do I as I say, not as I do, okay?

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