Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [118]
2. Heat the sugar and ½ cup water in a small saucepan, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves. Add the gelatin mixture and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat.
3. Pour the hot syrup into the bowl of a stand mixer, add the vanilla, and whisk until snow-white and cool, about 15 minutes.
4. Scoop into a storage container, such as a glass jar or resealable gallon plastic bag. Store in the freezer, where it will remain soft and scoopable indefinitely. Don’t try to keep it for more than 1 or 2 days at room temperature, as it will begin to weep and disintegrate.
Makes 2½ cups
CHOCOLATE SAUCE
This is my sister-in-law Laura’s recipe and it could not be easier.
Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: None
Cost comparison: Homemade: $0.12 per tablespoon. Hershey’s: $0.13 per tablespoon.
2 ounces (2 squares) unsweetened chocolate, chopped
¾ cup sugar
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1. Melt the chocolate with ⅓ cup water in a small saucepan over very low heat, stirring constantly. Add the sugar. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly, until the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture thickened.
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and vanilla. Cool slightly and serve warm over ice cream. This can be stored in a jar in the refrigerator, but it is best eaten all at once, warm.
Makes 1 cup
ICE CREAM CONES
A tuile is a superthin French cookie that you slide off the baking sheet the instant it comes out of the oven and manipulate into a cone shape (or any shape you like) before it has a chance to harden. A few minutes later, it is stuck forever in that shape, crispy and delicate. (Tuiles is French for “roof tiles,” which in France are, apparently, often curved.) If you can make tuiles, you can make ice cream cones.
I can’t make tuiles. Whenever I have made tuiles, I have ended up with one or two tuiles and a small mountain of crumbs.
Once, I made some delicious, buttery ice cream cone crumbs and a single functional ice cream cone using a recipe from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. My friend Susan reported success making cones with her pizzelle press, which is a machine used to shape decorative perforated Italian butter cookies. I made some pizzelle batter and tried to replicate her results with a waffle iron but the grooves were too deep and I ended up with a colossal mess. Occasionally I buy ice cream cones, but at home we usually eat ice cream in bowls. If nothing else, it makes a trip to the ice cream parlor more of an occasion.
Make it or buy it? Buy it.
CRYSTALLIZED GINGER
My mother treated crystallized ginger as a sweetmeat, something dainty and refined to be savored after dinner as a treat, like a Godiva cherry chocolate or a glass of port. I always assumed crystallized ginger must be a luxury item and was convinced I could save money by making it at home. One day, I bought some fresh ginger root and made the hottest candied ginger I’d ever tasted. It reminded me of a sticky Chinese ginger confection people insisted would cure morning sickness, but didn’t. The home-candied ginger was fantastic, but a few days later it hardened into tooth-cracking nuggets. I tried another recipe that involved boiling and rinsing the ginger root repeatedly, then simmering it for hours in syrup. This was tedious and after all that the sugar formed warty clumps on the surface of each piece. One day at Safeway, after I put some fresh ginger in my cart to give it another go, I decided to check the price of candied ginger. The candied ginger cost exactly the same per pound as the fresh ginger. A few days later I checked at Whole Foods. There, candied ginger cost less than fresh ginger.
Make it or buy it? Buy it.
BIRTHDAY CAKE
I like to bake and I’m a show-off and for Isabel’s second birthday many years ago I baked a banana cake from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, which may be the most finicky and intimidating cookbook I own. Even before I served it, I