The Smoothie Method, results

The smoothie method turned out to be pretty much what I expected.  This is a milk smoothie, not ice milk.

Above is a picture of the mixture right after processing.  It does have the appearance of creaminess.  However . . .

. . . as you can see from this picture, it is still very lumpy.

Within a few minutes, it was already melting, as you can see from the liquid at the edge of the bowl.  It did not maintain its frozenness (Wow, that is actually in my spellchecker.) very well.

Upon tasting a few spoonfuls, the mixture was very chunky, like a smoothie not blended enough.  (Hmmm . . . now I'm beginning to wonder if I should try the same recipe in my smoothie maker instead of the food processor.)  I don’t think the idea of ice milk is to have to chew it.  I decided to see how it would freeze, so I covered it and put it in the freezer.  A few hours later, it was the consistency of a frozen foam, as I could put my finger through it.  Upon checking it 24 hours later . . .

. . . it had definitely hardened somewhat but not completely.  Using a spoon, I scraped along the top.  This resulted in something akin to a milk snow cone.  Now I really wish I could find some actual ice milk so I could compare the two consistencies.  At this point, though, this is not the type of result I would want for a milk shake.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Freeze-and-Stir Method, an explanation

The first method for making ice milk I found is what I will call the freezer method.  As long as you have milk, sugar, flavoring, a glass or metal bowl, a freezer, and a mixing device (whisk, spoon, etc.), you can apparently make ice milk.  The recipe comes from Food.com and is quite simple, really, but takes a lot of time.  Once simply pours the ingredients into the bowl.  (The reason to use glass or metal is to retain the cold, which plastic and other materials will not do.)  The bowl is then placed in the freezer until crystals form on the milk.  Once this happens, stir the milk. Return the bowl to the freezer for another 2-4 hours.  At some point not given by the recipe, the mixture is poured into an airtight storage container, such as Tupperwear®, sealed, put back into the freezer, and allowed to sit overnight.  I have posted a 4x6 recipe card to the web, which you can download here.

I do not have the hours right now to attempt this type of recipe.  I will attempt to do this on the upcoming weekend.  At that time, I will add another blog post with photos and opinions.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Pudding Milkshake Project

The first cookbook I decided to play with is Starving Student Cookbook. No author is listed by the book, but it was published by copyright by a company named School Mate® in 2002. There is no ISBN. Upon checking their website, the book was apparently a fundraiser, but this particular title is no longer available. Attached is a photo of the original recipe.

I created a 4x6 recipe card of the above recipe. The card can be downloaded here. If this link has stopped working, that is because I have updated the recipe card. Please check the other posts for Pudding Milkshake to find a newer link.

A trip to the grocery store revealed two problems with this simple recipe.

First, I have been unable to find a place to purchase ice milk. I remember it from when I was a kid, but no store in this area seems to carry the product. Therefore, I am forced to go off on a tangent to find a recipe to make ice milk.  You can follow my ice milk thread by clicking here.

Second, I have been unable to purchase a 4-oz. package of pudding. There is a 1-oz. book that produces 4 servings. There is also a larger box available, but I do not recall the exact size. It was not 4 ounces. Looking at the ingredient list of the pudding revealed the presence of aspartame. I am, unfortunately, one of the few who suffer headaches from intake of aspartame; so I may need to find a substitute for the pudding as well.

The Freezing Method, an explanation

The freezing method to make ice milk is rather simple in concept, and it comes from the Food.com website.  One simply puts milk in a freezer-safe container (a ceramic mug, a glass mixing cup, a metal bowl, etc.), seals it airtight using plastic wrap, and freezes the milk overnight.  The next day, the dish is to be left in the sun “for a little while” to soften to the point that it can be mixed, and then it is to be mixed.  This is supposed to result in ice milk.  I have posted a 4x6 recipe card to the web, which you can download here.

You can now see my results by clicking here.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Sorbetière Method, an explanation

So, that name may have confused you, but this is the old fashioned way of preparing ice cream.  A sorbetière is a covered pail with a cranking handle attached to the lid.  A type of sorbetière is pictured below:

This is also known as a pot freezer.  One placed salt and ice in the outside container.  The ingredients are put in the inside contain and get agitated, or churned, by turning the crank.  This is the same principle employed when using the coffee cans or Ziploc® bags method of making ice cream.  This is also very similar to the modern ice cream machine method.  The liner is either stored in the freezer or the machine contains a refrigeration unit.  Think of it as a double cooler instead of a double boiler.

Now, before anybody thought of attaching a crank to the bucket, the mixing was done by hand.  The by-hand method is the way I will be performing my tests.  To make sure I will be performing the technique correctly, I will first attempt to make ice cream this way before moving on to ice milk.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Smoothie Method, an explanation

This method uses a food processor to chip ice and then to whip in the remaining ingredients.  It comes from this website and is credited to someone named Holly.  What one does is use the grating of slicing blade of a food processor to chip up a tray of ice cubes.  The regular blade is then put in the processor, and milk, sugar, and flavoring is added.  Holly recommends putting in some non-fat dry milk to make a creamier product.  I have posted a 4x6 recipe card to the web, which you can download here.

You can now see my results by clicking here.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

Ninja smoothie test

I am testing the Ninja™ Master Prep™ Professional (their italics, not mine), the ultimate food and drink maker, model #QB1004 30.  In this post, I am specifically using the 48-ounce pitcher, the largest unit of this 3-unit set.  This is the 6-blade container the company claims can turn ice into snow, so I am going to try it on a frozen banana smoothie.

At first, I thought the 6-blade design would interfere with the frozen bananas, but the slipped between the blades just fine.  The other ingredients include milk, cocoa powder, and ground almonds.  To see the recipe, click this link.

I pulsed the machine and had an immediate problem.  Liquid squirt out of the splash guard's covered pour spout.  How can such a design flaw not have been noticed this long?  What, did they design it just to make snow and not smoothies?  Immediately disappointed with the machine, I pulsed a few more times to get the frozen bananas chopped up.  I then ran the machine for about 15 seconds and then again for about 15 seconds. I noticed there was still some frozen banana floating in the mixture, so I ran it a third and fourth time.  After this, there appeared to be no more banana floating in the shake.

The first thing I noticed looking through the clear plastic of the pitcher was that the mixture was not very frothy.  It did not seem to have gained any volume, which the recipe does in my Oster Fusion smoothie machine.  Well, that just means it won't deflate during transport, which I consider a benefit.  On pouring out the smoothie, I noticed it had a thick lumpy texture.  These weren't clumps of anything; it just poured lumpy.  This is just an observation, not a complaint.

Drinking the smoothie through a straw produced two observations.  The first was that the texture was more like a shake than a traditional smoothie.  I like shakes, so I did not consider this a failure, only a difference.  The second observation was that there were still chunks of almond remaining in the drink.  With claims of making snow from ice, I consider the presence of almond chunks to be a failure on the part of the machine.

For clean up, it felt much easier than the Oster Fusion.  There was nothing to unscrew, there was no gasket to deal with, and there were fewer overall parts.  The hardest part to clean was the 6-blade stem.  I think I will buy a brush to make it easier next time.  I did notice another design flaw, however.  For people using a dishwasher to clean the Ninja™, there are many nooks and crannies in the larger parts where water will accumulate.  In fact, the entire bottom of the pitcher is recessed.  This, and the splash guard, will fill with water during the washing process.  You will have to wipe them out even after dishwashing.

Overall, the result of using a Ninja™ to make a smoothie are disappointing but not a real failure.  The consistency of the final product is more like a shake than a smoothie.  The two glaring problems are the remaining chunks of nut, which can possibly be fixed by running the machine more, and the leakage from the splash guard pour spout during operation.  That, more than anything else, make me want to go back to using my Oster Fusion.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

What I didn't know I didn't know about pie crust

I thought the first task in researching pie crust would be to discover what a basic pie dough contains.  However, I did not know there were different kinds of pie crust.  Yep, it is even more complicated than making the crust; you have to decide which type of crust is best for your purpose.  There is your well-known flaky crust, which is divided into long-flake and short-flake (Gisslen 287), and there is what is known as short crust.  These are two distinct outcomes (Tanis, “A Good Quiche”) that use the same set of ingredients.

The two major ingredients seem to be flour and fat.  The flour ranges from just “flour” (Perelman) to all-purpose flour (“Basic Pie Dough” 30; Tanis “Basic”) to whole wheat flour (Leake) to pastry flour (Gisslen 289).  For fat, most recipes use butter.  However, a few specify unsalted butter (Greenspan 172; Mollenkamp), while a few others advocate shortening instead (Drummond; Gisslen 289).  In 1872, the fat of choice was butter with soda and cream of tartar or “lard, sweet and firm (Harland 350-352).”  The use of lard still existed in 1896, and some alternatives at that time were “cocoanut” butter and a shortening known as cottolene (Farmer 386), made of beef tallow and cottonseed oil (“Cottolene”).  This produced what was called a paste (Farmer 386) rather than a dough.  Gisslen also speaks of a paste, where the flour and fat are blended completely (287).  In addition to the fat, some sort of liquid is also needed to help develop the wheat gluten, so most recipes include cold or ice water (Dana; Gisslen 289; Tanis), although this is sometimes replaced by cold milk (Winkler) or alcohol (Perelman).  Other repeated additions include salt and sugar (“Basic Pie Dough” 30).  To my surprise, egg does make an appearance in a few recipes (Drummond; Greenspan 172) and is referred to as enriched pie pastry (Gisslen 289).  One very interesting recipe is called “transparent crust” and consists of flour, butter, and egg yolk; but it is only recommended for “tartlets or pâtés (Harland 353).”

Which of these ingredients causes the flakiness of a pie crust?  It is the fat.  As the fat melts in the oven, steam escapes causing air pockets that result in flakiness (Perelman).  Walnut-size pieces of fat create what is called long-flake, while hazelnut-size pieces create what is called short-flake (Gisslen 287).  While visible chunks of fat usually equal flake, another recommended trick is keeping the fat cold for as long as possible (Perelman; Tanis, “A Good Quiche”).  Some recipes even instruct refrigerating the dough again before rolling (Gisslen 289).  When it comes to which fat to use, it is really a matter of choice because chemically a fat is a fat.  Even though Drummond claims “butter just will not work,” Perelman says “it won't matter which fat you use.”  In fact, some of what have to be short-crust recipes use liquid oil (Elizabeth) or melted butter (Leake).  However, these are for quiche crusts, so they don't necessarily have to be flaky, do they?

So, what is the difference between a not-flaky short crust and a flaky crust?  It is all in how well blended, or unblended as the case may be, the fat and flour are.  According to Gisslen, one should only cut in the fat until “the shortening is the size of peas or hazelnuts” to achieve a flaky pie crust (287).  This echoes Perelman's assertion that the butter should be visible.  The short crust, in contrast, is blended until “the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal.”  There are many pie dough recipes which instruct mixing the ingredients to a coarse meal appearance (Tanis, “A Good Quiche”).  These are technically short crusts, also known as mealy pie dough (Gisslen 287).  And when should one choose a short crust?  Short crusts are “less likely to absorb moisture from the filling and become soggy (Gisslen 287),” so they are favored for bottom crusts of fruit pies and other soft fillings.  Pre-baking either type of crust diminishes the chance of mushiness (Gisslen 287; Tanis, “A Good Quiche”).

As for whether to make the dough by hand or with a food processor or other machine, Perelman states "it is so much harder to overwork your dough and overmix your butter by hand than it is when you use the food processor."  Besides, making the dough by hand burns calories.  It is said 2 hours of baking activities, such as rolling and kneading, can burn 471 calories (Novak).  You want a reason to reward yourself with that high-calorie crusted treat, then do it without the machine!  (Okay, you fellow math geeks out there have already figured out that comes to 3.925 calories per minute, so a 5-minute pie crust would burn only 19.625 calories, and there is no such thing as a 19.625-calorie slice of pie. Shhhh!)

By now you are wondering where on earth I am going with all this.  To do a good crust, one should know the options.  If I have discovered all the options above, my choices are actually quite simple.  By all accounts, I should be able to achieve a pie crust using just flour and butter, so that is going to be my starting point.  As I progress, I will add other ingredients, starting with salt and ice water, until I obtain the desired outcome.  I would like something flaky and not soggy, so pre-baking is a necessity.  And I have no desire to pull out a food processor, so the dough will be made using a pastry cutter, although it would be interesting to see what a Ninja™ Master Prep™ Professional would do.  My Facebook friend says she uses this recipe, although I like this recipe as a better starting point.  With the exception of water in the former and sugar in the latter, they are quite similar in ratio.

So that is my dissertation on pie crust.  Next time I have a hankering for a quiche, I will just whip out my flour and butter and create another post.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

References:

“Basic Pie Dough.” Everyday Food Nov. 2006: 30-31. Print.

“Cottolene.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 19 May 2013. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Dana. “Butter Flaky Pie Crust Recipe.” Allrecipes.com. Allrecipes.com, n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Drummond, Ree. “Perfect Pie Crust.” The Pioneer Woman. The Pioneer Woman | Ree Drummond, 22 Dec. 2007. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Elizabeth. “Quick N Easy Quiche Crust.” Food.com. Scripps Networks, LLC, 27 Jan. 2002. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Farmer, Fannie M. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. 1896. Reprint. “The Original Fannie Farmer 1896 Cook Book.” Italy: Ottenheimer Publishers, Inc., 1998. Print.

Gisslen, Wayne. “Pies.” Professional Baking. 5th ed. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley, 2009. 286-315. Print.

Greenspan, Dorie. “Mushroom-Shallot Quiche.” Bon Appétit Oct. 2006: 172. Print.

Harland, Marion. Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. 1872. Reprint. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House, 1985. Print.

Leake, Lisa. “Recipe: Quiche with a Super Easy Whole-Wheat Crust.” 100 Days of Real Food. 100 Days of Real Food, 26 Apr. 2010. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Mollenkamp, Aida. “Basic Pie Dough Recipe.” CHOW. CBS Interactive Inc., 26 Nov. 2008. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Novak, Sara. “7 Activities to Counteract the Thanksgiving Calorie Overload.” TLC. Discovery Communications, LLC, n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Perelman, Deb. “Pie crust 102: all butter, really flaky pie dough.” smittenkitchen.com. Smitten Kitchen, LLC, 24 Nov. 2008. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Tanis, David. “Basic Short-Crust Pastry.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 24 Oct. 2013. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
  --  "A Good Quiche Needs Good Pastry." Diner's Journal. The New York Times Company, 19 Oct. 2012. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.

Winkler, Katy. “Quiche with a Perfect Crust.” Food o' del Mundo. N.p., 15 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.