For the Kentucky Derby, you need Mint Juleps, right? Well for the Derby, or any time, this is a fabulous ice cream recipe for those Summer (or almost summer) days…

This gelato was inspired by our neighbors, Sara & Paul, and their wonderful mint juleps that they make for the Derby.  Their recipe is a little nontraditional, as it calls for lemon, but I like their version even better than then typical Mint Julep drink.

Gelato is healthier than ice cream because it has less fat in it, and it’s texture is just wonderful.  And while I don’t have a real gelato maker, I fake it by using my Kitchen Aid’s ice cream freezer attachment, and using the lowest speed.   (And if you like this, check out my Southern Iced Tea ice cream over on Foodwhirl, it uses a similar process.)

The instructions below take three days, but you can cheat and start today on this, to  have it ready for tomorrow.  Just skip to Day 2, and add your lemon/mint after you add your milk.

Ingredients

• 2 cups milk (I used 2%)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup sugar
• ~3/4 c mint sprigs, loosely packed
• 1 to 2 oz bourbon
• 1 teas vanilla extract
• zest of 1 lemon

Method

I took many of these instructions from the Ice Tea Gelato recipe, so refer to that more instructions, and more photos of the actual freezing process.

Day 1: Infuse the milk with mint & lemon zest

(Photos 1, 2, 3) Zest 1 lemon. Crush your mint leaves in your hands to release the flavors, and place all  in large glass jar with 2 cups milk.  Let sit overnight.

If you’re using an ice cream maker that requires freezing the bowl (like my Kitchen Aid) don’t forget to freeze your bowl.

Day 2: Make  your custard:

(4) Strain milk to remove mint /lemon (put the lemon/mint back in the jar and stick it in the fridge for later use).

(6) Combine egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and beat thoroughly with a whisk until lightened in color and smooth.

Heat milk and cream on stovetop until bubbles are just forming around the of your pot.  (7) Slowly add the hot milk mixture, a little bit at a time, continuing to stir.  When the all the milk has been added and the mixture is combined, return to the pot.  Cook over medium heat until mixture reaches 160 degrees, or had thickened enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon – note, for this recipe, mine never gets that thick, so don’t worry too much about it.

(8) Remove from heat, and place custard in an ice bath to chill.

(9) Return the mint and lemon to the mixture, and add your vanilla and bourbon.  Refrigerate overnight.

Day 3:  Make Gelato!

Strain your custard, and place in your ice cream maker (assuming your don’t actually own a gelato maker, of course).  Use the lowest speed possible–gelato ideally should be made at a lower speed, incorporating less air than icecream, to achieve it’s texture.   Freeze until a soft serve consistency is reached. (similar photos here.)

Either serve immediately soft-serve  if you like, or freeze for several hours to a more solid consistency.

(10) Garnish with a sprig of mint, and offer your guests a little extra bourbon for the top if they so desire!

Published on: May 4, 2012

As promised yesterday, here are more details on the Doctor Who Dalek Cake.  You know I’m a big believer in showing you that YOU can make a really cool cake, and I do one every year for the Boy’s birthday.  Past years: Angry Birds cupcakes, Dragon Cake,  Perry the Platypus Cake, and Clone Trooper cupcakes.  So, today I’ve promised some of the details of how to make this cake yourself.  Tomorrow I’ll try to get up some of the decor, and a wrap up :)

By the way, these techniques can be used to make any kind of Robot like cake, not just Dr. Who themed Daleks :).

This cake is really make in two parts.  The Daleks on top are ‘toppers’  and they are put on the cake at the end of the process.  They aren’t made out of cake, but
they are (almost) completely edible and tasty.  This makes everything much
simpler, as you don’t need to be able to store a really tall cake like this, and you don’t have to worry about it getting messed up before presentation.  I created the base and the toppers separately, and just assembled it the morning of the party.

So what are the Daleks made out of?  Well, the main body is an ice cream cone, the head/neck is chocolate, and it’s decorated in candy and fondant.  Neat huh?

Here are some action shots!

So, first we’ll talk supplies, then  how to construct your Dalek body, then how to decorate it, and then I’ll go into the cake base.  So let’s begin!

The Dalek Cake Toppers: Ingredients/Supplies

Makes 4 Daleks.

What you’ll need:

• Cake Ice cream Cones (like these).  I used the Publix brand, the ‘jumbo’ size which is a little larger than standard.
• 1 batch Marshmallow Fondant(Hint, use small marshmallows, and reserve 4-6 for future use.)
• 1 package White chocolate flavored candy coating
• Spray Food colour (I used Wilton Master Color Mist Food Color Spray in Silver.  If you’d like your entire dalek in metallics or black, you could get gold, black or other colors as well.  I just used the silver for accents. )
• Food coloring.  For mine I used some bright colors and black – these are good (Wilton Primary Candy Color Set)
• Icing (whatever you used to frost your base cake – you’re just using this for glue in a few places, you don’t need much).

Supplies:

• Clean styrofoam egg carton (or something similar to the shape of egg carton cups- used as a mold for the dalek head – you could also use a candy mold)
• Toothpicks (I used colored round ones)
• Microplane Zester/Grater (optional, but useful)

Candy I used – you can substitute similar:

• Mike & Ike (Tropical Fruit) (8)
• Dum Dums (4)
• White Tic Tacs (8)
• Melted chocolate
• Candy Dots on Paper (a bunch – 128 individual dots)
• Trader Joe’s chocolate Callets (you could probably substitute a similarly sized wafer cookie for this)
• Small marshmallows (4-6)

Prep Work – Dalek Bodies

Fondant:

We’ll be using Marshmallow fondant for this cake, and I’ve gone over how to make it and work with it in previous tutorials, so I’m not going repeat myself here.  Here’s all the details on how to make up a batch: Marshmallow fondant .   Do this the night before.

Split up your fondant (use a scale to make it easier, you’ll need about 2 oz for each dalek body/head, in the colors of your choice).  Go ahead and knead in your food coloring to the desired color for each 2 oz ball.  You’ll also need a ball of gray fondant (black foodcoloring) (maybe 3-4 oz).   Save the rest for covering the cake, and making up for mistakes.

Using paper, make a template for the top and bottom grey strips.  You’ll want a width of about 1/2 in for the top strip, and around 1 in for the bottom, but since cone sizes vary, templates help.

Roll out the gray fondant thinly, and use your template to measure and mark out the strips (4 of each size) on the sheet of gray dough (but don’t cut out yet).  You’ll probably want to add a 1/2 inch to the length of the strips to allow for shrinkage or sizing mishaps, particularly if you’re doing this over several days.  Spray the gray dough with your silver spray.  Remove the excess-even if it has silver on it, and knead back into a ball for later use.  Once the spray dries, cut out your strips.

Cones:

Melt your candy coating according to package directions in a tall cup.  You’ll be dipping your cone into it, so plan accordingly size wize. Dip each cone to cover the outside, and let dry.  The coating doesn’t have to look perfect, but it should be relatively smooth.

Head bases:

You’re going to use a styrofoam egg carton as a mold.  Pour a spoonful of your leftover candy coating into 6 cups (4 dalek heads plus 2 spares), to about 1/2 inch.  You’ll want the diameter of the exposed candy to be approximately the same size as your neck wafers.  You can trim later if necessary, but get as close as you can.  Refrigerate, and after the candy is solid, you can use your microplane to smooth up the top, and to flatten out the bottom to size as necessary.

Dots:

My dots were going to be silver, so I needed to spray them with silver spray.  If you spray them while still on the paper, they are much easier to do, but be aware, you’ll waste more spray with overspray.  If you peel them off, however, the force of spray can knock them around though.  I decided to use half yellow dots and half blue dots, figuring that if the spray didn’t completly cover, I’d have a consistent color.  (I used the yellow on the yellow & orange daleks, and the blue on the other 2).

“Neck” Chocolates:

Stack 3 chocolate callets, gluing them together with icing (reserve some from frosting the base cake).  Mist the stack with silver spray.

Assembly

I recommend doing 1 full Dalek first, so you can get the technique down, then doing the remainder assembly line style.

Assembling the Body.

Roll out one of the colored pieces of fondant, and using ~3/4 of it, cover your chocolate dipped cone.  You can trim off excess at back and bottom, I didn’t worry if I had a seam in the back.

Place one of the wider silver strips on the bottom of your cone, just under where the ridge is.   Orient the strip so that the ends will meet on the seam side of your colored fondant.  Use water to adhere to the colored fondant, tucking the edges under the bottom of the cone if necessary.  Overlap the ends if necessary.  BE CAREFUL because the water you are adhering with will cause blotchy-ness on the silver painted side if you touch it with wet hands.

Place one of the skinnier silver strips along the top of the cone, leaving about 1/4 in of the colored fondant showing at the top.  Adhere with water, overlap the ends if necessary.

Adding the Silver Dots

Hopefully, you have room for 4 rows of dots between the top and bottom silver strips.  My first one, the white one, did not – so it only has 3 rows.  I modified strip placement on the subsequent Daleks to allow for 4 rows.  3 is fine too, of course, and is a little easier to do, but I personally liked the look of 4.

Put a small amount of icing in a dish to use as glue.  Using your finger, tap out 1 column of glue dots down one side of the body.  Place a silver dot on each one to adhere it.  Apply another column of Dots on the exact opposite side of the body.  Then fill in the rest of the top row (between your two columns) with 3 Dots, then continue down to complete the side.  Turn over, and fill in the rest of the top row on the other side with 3 Dots, then complete that side.  Let dry, and set aside your body.

Assembling the Head.

Place your molded candy head on top of an overturned shot glass.

Cover with a circle of colored fondant and gently smooth, tucking under the ends.

Use your icing glue to attach the head to the stack of chocolate wafers that make up the neck.  Let dry and set aside.

You’re now ready to add the final touches.

Final Assembly and Decorating

First we have create the eye stalk, the manipulator arm, and the gun stick.

Eye Stalk (make 4 of these):

Melt a small amount (~1/4 c) of chocolate or chocolate coating (you can use the white coating from previous if you like, and just spray it silver afterwards, but I had some chocolate so that’s what I used.)

Cut the pointier end of your Mike and Ike candy (the blue one) off, so you have about 2/3 of the candy left.  Using a toothpick, carefully stab through the center of the rounded end, so you can dip it in chocolate.  Dip most of the way, but leave the rounded end exposed, so you still see the blue.  Let dry.

Remove the toothpick, and reinsert it in the other end.

Use scissors to cut off the end of a small marshmallow, making a disk.  Stab it onto the toothpick and slide up.  Repeat so you have 2 marshmallow disks about a 1/4in from the eye.

Gun Stick (4)

Basically, take a blue Mike and Ike candy and insert a toothpick into the wide end.  I then painted on stripes of chocolate, meeting at the pointy end.  Let dry.

Manipulator Arm (4)

For the arm, My Handy Husband suggested a Dum Dum lollypop, cut in half.  He took a Dremel with a saw blade attachment and cut it, smoothly up any rough edges with the microplane zester. I then turned it cut side down and dusted the outside with silver spray (which was pretty much empty at this point!). If that’s too much for you, you can always use half a round chocolate candy impaled on a tooth pick.

Extra Fondant Touches

Using your leftover gray/silver fondant, add a small pea sized ball in the center front of the head where you’ll place the eye stalk, and a strip with two small balls on the front of the silver strip where the arms go.

Assembly

Using a toothpick to make a pilot hole, insert the stick of your Dum Dum into the left body fondant ball.  Stab the right fondant ball with your Gunstick toothpick.  Both should stick straight out, and will be held in place by the structure of the cake cone.

Wet the end of a tic tac, and carefully press into the head, one on either side, to make the lights.

Then press your eye stalk toothpick into your fondant ball in the center of the head, sticking straight out.

Using some icing, glue the head assembly to the body assembly.  Let dry.

Place your daleks in a cool dry safe place (do not refrigerate) until time to assemble your cake.

The Cake Base

The cake is simple a tall round cake in my example, but you can of course use anything you like, since you’ll be topping it with Daleks.  In fact, feel free to cheat and buy a purchased premade cake if you like–the Daleks are enough work, you won’t feel that guilty!   But me?  I have to make mine, because I just don’t storebought cakes that much.  So I’ll walk you through what I did, and you can modify it to your own needs &/or time constraints.  Note, you should make the cake first, even though it is last in these instructions.

For my cake, I did ‘cheat’ and go for boxed cake mix.  I can (and do!) make cake from scratch, and it’s not significantly harder or more time intensive, but in this case, I was saving my effort for the decorations.  So, 2 boxes cake mix.  I split into 4 layers, coloring each layer differently with candy color, just for fun.

Supplies:

• 2 boxes cake mix plus extra ingredients, baked into multiple layers.
• 1 batch cream cheese frosting (1 pkg cream cheese, 1 stick butter, 1 lb of powdered sugar, dash vanilla extract – combine in mixer and beat well)
• Part of our fondant batch (maybe 12oz?)
• Vanilla Wafers sprayed with gold/silver spray
• Gold food spray

Level the layers as necessary*, then stack and ice each layer with a thin coat of frosting. Don’t worry too much about how it looks, just get it as smooth as you can.  You’ll be covering the whole thing up anyway.

*Now, I was being quick and lazy, and didn’t level off my cakes after they cooked… which you can get away with if you only have 2 layers.  But LESSON LEARNED you really have to level out when you’re stacking 4 layers.  So I had cake failure, when the Crack in the Universe manifested itself on the top of my cake.  

After my cake failure, I removed the top two layers (set aside for later eating, they still taste great!) and replace with another batch of cake.

Let the icing on your cake dry out a bit so it’s not wet to the touch (I waited until the next day) and then you’ll cover the whole thing with your marshmallow fondant.  I colored my fondant with a little bit of yellow food coloring to make it a better base for the gold spray, but in retrospect I don’t think it was necessary.

So, we’re now going to cover the whole darn thing with our marshmallow fondant.  This takes patience and time, so don’t skimp on either.  Role out a thin sheet of fondant large enough to cover the cake (good tips on how to size here), and carefully place centered on the top of the cake.

Gradually smooth out the sides, flaring out the fondant, so it covers without wrinkling.  This is really hard to explain so I just found a good video on how to do this.  Watch this first, then try it on your cake.  Mine wasn’t near as neat as the one on this video, but it was close enough.  I added snake of fondant around the bottom to hide any sins.

I’ve never covered an entire cake in fondant, but it worked pretty well for a first time.

Also, you could just skip the whole fondant thing, and just ice the cake as you normally would.

I then sprayed the entire cake with gold food spray.

Final Cake Assembly

The morning of the party, I used icing glue to attach a row of gold/silver sprayed vanilla wafers to the side of the base cake, just for fun.

Place your Daleks on your cake, pressing into the fondant layer to steady them.

Since the top of my cake was a little bit rounded, I also used a vanilla wafer under the front of each Dalek to level it out.

And there you have it!  The completed Dalek Cake.  If you’re going to try this yourself, please read through all the instructions first.  I’d suggest planning to do this over several days.  Day 1: Bake & ice your cake, and make your marshmallow fondant.  If you have time, go ahead and dip your cones.  Day 2: Do all your prep work.  Day 3: Assemble everything else.

Let me know if you have questions!

Published on: Jun 20, 2012

Here are the cookies I made as shower favors.  They weren’t overly difficult, but a tad time consuming. I’ll post the recipe in a later post if anyone is interested, but basically it’s a non-leavened sugar cookie, covered with royal icing.  With small skewers for sticks, inserted before the cookie is baked.

The octopus is drawn on freehand, and it doesn’t take artistic talent… Everyone is cute, unique, and just a little bit ‘wopty’!

See below for the how to.

The Base

First just ice the white circles.  There’s many good tutorials for this, but they generally involve using a stiffer icing around the edge, and filling in the center with a more runny version.  I didn’t do that neat a job with mine.  Let that harden before you do the octopus.

Here’s a great tutorial from Wisdom of the Moon on working with royal icing, with a ton of pictures, so you can get the idea.

How to draw the octopus head and arms.

You’ll need your royal icing to be a little runny (but not as much as fill icing typically is), so that it will expand to fill a little bit, but not too runny or it will just flatten out (leading to fat legged octopuses without as much dimension).  Add a little water to thin, and practice on a spare cookie or parchment. Let them dry before you move on to the real ones, as it may take a few minutes for the icing to flatten.  If the icing doesn’t merge together when you draw two lines next to each other, then thin it a bit and test again.

Now, here’s a picture of how to draw the octopus – it’s just 4 lines.  The head is created when the lines merge together.

Adding Accents

You can decorate the octos any way you want, but I’d suggest at least adding eyes.  Here’s what I did.

Eyes: 2 large drops of white icing, topped with tiny dots of blue.

Spots:  Random drops of blue

As you can see, they are all different, and not quite perfect, but that really added to the charm.

If you try this, I’d love to see!

You might also like…

I just realized I never posted the actual finished invitation, but the illustration for the invitation is here, along with instructions on doing a quick neat photoshop coloring job:

Published on: Feb 2, 2011

• Chocolate Pretzel Creep Fingers
• Creepy Cakes from “They’re Coming to Get You Barbara”
• Eyeballs!
• Sweet Sushi

My dear creative friend, Chad, made this for the Halloween party …  and was kind enough to give us a tutorial, so we can all make our own!

Published on: Oct 3, 2009

Here is the Cake.  I decided that I would go relatively simple — a fondant covered floating island… with Candy Clay Chompies.

I do have a bunch of cool pics to show you guys from halloween (I assume you still want to see the awesome food and costumes, even if I am 2 months late?), plus some cool stuff for xmas coming up.  I’ll really try to be better this month!  I also have a cool giveaway coming up, as soon as I put the post together, so stay tuned for that.

And I’ve been trying to get in shape (a better shape than round) and I’ve been working out 4 times a week (that’s going from 0 times per week, so you see it is a bit of a change)–I’ve been doing FitWit for the last 2 months, which I’m really liking… well, as far as Dot could like anything related to exercise.  And now, this month I’m try to actually add eating healthy into to mix and see if I can lose five pounds by the end of the year.

Oh yeah, I promised a recipe:

Speaking of eating healthy, I posted a great roasted chicken and roasted cauliflower dinner over on Foodwhirl — super easy and tasty and healthy.  If you have any recipes I should check out, let me know, or post them to Foodwhirl too!

And book recommendations:

It seems to be the fashion these days, at least in my intown Atlanta circles, that everyone belongs to a wine… er I mean book… club.  So I figured you guys might like to know what I’ve been reading, and maybe you have some suggestions too?  Cuz that would be awesome, I need some new books to read!  :)

So for book club, we’ve read both of these lately, and both of which I’ve enjoyed:
Gone Girl: A Novel     Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

Very different books, but both excellent reads…  And good ‘book club’ books with lots of discussion possibilities.

Not for book club, but because I needed more stuff to read and libraries exist, I’ve also been reading this:

(The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making)

Which I’m totally unsure of how to describe, but it inspired the title of this post. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland (or maybe the Wizard of Oz), and I read it, then promptly started reading it to my 7 yr old son for a bedtime story (although the language is definitely on the high end of child reading comprehension). I have no idea if you would like it, but read the first page, and you’ll know if it’s your kind of book.

I’m a big fan of Young Adult Fiction, so I’ve also recently read The Maze Runner which was an interesting apocalyptic YA book with a boy hero, and The Scorpio Races which I also liked.  And because I managed to check it out on my Kindle from the library (which you can’t ever find any books ‘in stock’) I got The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I’d never heard of, but it was a pretty interesting fantasy book with a female heroine.  Not a ‘oh my god awesome’ book, but a nice read.

So, you have any suggestions for me?

PS as always, support Dabbled for nothing by using my affiliate links above if you wanna buy these books!

The curse of Halloween food blogging is that many of my Halloween delicacies, made up for the Halloween party, are done at the last minute.  So I can’t write them up very well before Halloween, and it seems silly to post the recipes AFTER Halloween.  So I was noticing that some of my really cool Halloween treats are relegated to quick photo posts, rather than giving them the treatment they deserve.  To fix that, here is the ‘how-to’ on my world famous Mozzarella Eyeballs, classy enough for the fanciest Halloween dinner party!

Recipe/Technique: How to make Marinated Mozzarella Eyeballs

Supplies:

• Big firm olives (black & green).  Try the olive bar at your local grocery, or you can go for the canned stuff.  The olives need to be firm, not squishy.  Jarred black olives work perfected fine for the pupil.
• A large diameter drinking straw (I find McDonalds straws to be the perfect size) .
• Marinated mini mozzarella balls.  I get mine at Trader Joe’s.
• Optional: jarred red pepper slices.

My original version of this just used sliced pimento stuffed green olives, but then I saw the Evil Mad Scientists and their Eyeball Caprese, and adapted that technique to my appetizer.  You basically use the olives to make your nice rounded iris and pupil.  For the most rounded, slice of the end of a green olive, then use your straw to punch a hole in the center.  Then slide of a piece of black olive, and use the straw to punch out a plug of black.  Then place the black piece in the hole of your green olive.  If it does stay level with the green, you can use a little cream cheese stuffed in the open end of the olive to hold the black in place.  You can also do slices off the side of the green olive, but be aware they will be slightly oblong.  you can see I did a little of both for mine in the photo.

So, the how-to and the recipe:

The recipe is super simple, and surprising healthy, as far as dips go.  It’s popular with both kids (my 7 year old loves it) and adults!

Ingredients:

• 1 package Cream or Neufchâtel cheese – leave a room temperature to soften.
• 1 6-8oz piece of salmon, cooked (Just sprinkle with salt & pepper, and cook in whatever manner you want.  You could grill it, or put in under the broiler, or cook it stove top)
• 2 Tablespoons Sour Cream
• Optional:  Sriracha sauce, or Tobasco, to taste.
• Lemon juice

Remove skin from the salmon, and break up your salmon into small pieces.  The finer your salmon is, the more it will look like brains, but honestly, I prefer to keep the chunks a little larger.

Stir up your cheese and sour cream, and add your salmon and sraracha, and a few squirts of fresh lemon juice to brighten the flavor.

The next step is to mold it into a brain shape.

Form two balls, one for each half of brain, and press together. Use wet hands to smooth the surface. Use a chopstick to etch out the lines of the brain using a picture for reference. Use wet hands to smooth.

Place in the middle of your favorite silver platter, add slices of french bread or crackers, and serve to your favorite Zombie!

I don’t normally cross post between here and Foodwhirl, but since I’ve been such a slacker at posting either place lately (I know, I know, I’ll do better this summer, I promise!) I figured you wouldn’t mind too much.  Plus this technique is soooo cool.  It’s super easy, no-mess, and really quick.  You don’t have to shuck the corn before hand, which I love.

Anyway, I wrote it all up at Foodwhirl, so go check it out:

Corn on the Cob: Fast, easy, & No Mess!

Enjoy!