my-speck

So. I have been on a cooking spree again in the past few days. I love my chickens, and I love their eggs too. I look at the pile of eggs in the fridge (4 a day at the moment, did I mention we got some new chickens a few weeks back? mmm… no, just a post about when we got #1 & #2..) everyday, and think of the yummy things I can cook. And since I’m obsessed with dessert, I’m on a dessert-making spree.

This week’s inspiration came in the form of Maleny Dairy cream, which the local fruit shop had in stock (I’ve been on the hunt for it for months after getting excited about great cream looking at Inner Pickle’s butter-making with her 2l of local fresh cream, and finding the Maleny one as the closest, minimally processed version I could find). I bought 3 bottles of cream, then decided to make icecream. Since it’s a new variety of cream, and the fat content is rather high, I thought I’d experiment with tried and true recipes first to see how it worked out. So a french vanilla icecream custard in the fridge cooling, I thought, well, better make another one as I’m going to have the icecream maker going anyway (yes, I have an expensive compressor-version icecream maker that doesn’t require freezing – so you can just turn it on and keep churning! It was a purchase a few years ago that I absolutely cannot do without now). So I also made a vanilla American/Philadelphia-style (for those of you not in the ice-cream making know-how, it’s an uncooked version without eggs). ….

mmm. That night when freezing my icecream I decided that I may as well use the strawberries that were in the fridge… So balsamic and strawberry ice-cream came out too…. because it is one of my favourite and is soo simple… (recipe tomorrow).

strawberry-balsamic-icecream... yum!

Then I decided last night that after dinner as the kids had both gone to sleep before 7pm (what a miracle), I had more energy. And wanted to use up some more eggs on a recipe I’ve been meaning to get to for a while: chocolate eclairs with fresh choux pastry. So I made the choux and baked them last night.. This morning made the creme filling, and will put them together for dinner tomorrow… Pics to follow. I suspect they won’t look beautiful but will taste divine.

choux pastry mini-eclairs - baking

and just to prove I don’t just eat dessert, the meal plan for the week just gone:

num num num. I love food!