Cappuccino Ice Cream Recipe and my Dinner Divas Appearance

Creamy Cappuccinno Heaven

Cappuccino Ice Cream fit for Diva’s

Settling the Nerves

Cappuccino Ice Cream : I wrote this post on 23 August, the evening of my elimination round in Dinner Divas when I got back to my hotel room.

I am an early riser as most of you know, but the looming Dinner Divas contest has been giving me broken sleep for about a month now. I have brontosaurus sized butterflies hurling themselves around my tummy like an entire preschool of children on a jumping castle. Combine this with welling excitement that one cannot avoid when partaking in any form of competition and it makes for quite a strange feeling. Like a child on Christmas morning I couldn’t stay in my bed a minute longer and was up, showered and watching the clock for the 6 am make up call, by 4.30am!

The crew all have their jobs to do and get to their tasks with focus and dedicated purpose. Hot coffee is passed around; Thuli (my co-entrant with whom I am cooking today) and I just really try and keep out of everyone’s way. She has such a bubbly attitude to life and a smile to match. I am a fan of her blog and www.msansistylecuisine.co.za/ and we have been paired to cook against each other as our blogs are viewed as reflecting food of different cultures. Thuli posts about traditional African cuisine and I blog mostly about classic Italian food. We plonk ourselves outside in the sunshine to compare notes and stories about the blogging world. I try so hard to concentrate on the conversation but can’t help myself from repeating my recipes in my mind and going through my plan for the cooking of them. Prepare the parmesan egg stuffing, cut open the chicken breasts, Parma ham first, then the cheese, then asparagus and don’t forget to season …..

Thuli and I clinging to each other for dear life …. there is strength in numbers!

Before long I find myself slipping into a surreal world of lights, camera, action upon which I just get cracking. The bronto-flies in my tum fly away the moment I get into my comfort zone, the kitchen. I find Skye, my camera man’s “oohs” and “aah’s” about how good my chicken is looking so encouraging and before long I am playing to the crowd. I don’t know about a Diva but there is an actress hiding in me somewhere. Dear sweet Thuli is asking me how I am doing and all I can do is smile back at her and crack on!

Super-Skye on the right – my camera man! He kept me going ! Thank You dear Skye for your constant support and encouragement darling xxx

How was I doing I thought to myself? Have I met the brief – a delicious family meal for 4 in 90 minutes, your blog on a plate? Well, this definitely IS my blog on a plate as a version of this recipe is on my blog already so I feel confident that my meal is a true reflection of my blog but what will the judges think of it? Before I knew it, time was up and I was staring at my eight plates of food with a happy grin on my face. I really enjoy cooking, but I just love to feed people.

My secret weapon … Marsala!

Time is called and Thuli and I are whisked off to the waiting lounge where we sit kind of huddled together in the freezing cold to await our fate. The judges take about an hour and a half to eat both meals, confer with one another and vote for the menu that best meets their criteria. Considering that any meal that I plonk our dinner table at home is usually gobbled up in a matter of minutes, this seems like an eternity. I sit wondering who these are and how I would cope with negative feedback? There are just so many unknowns and so many unanswered questions.

Michele, the host of the show calls us back into the kitchen and we are positioned facing each other to hear the outcome. And this is part that I don’t enjoy. My meal received the most points or votes which meant that I will be cooking in the next round. I am not comfortable jumping up and down for joy at my win when poor Thuli is going home. Forgive me if I didn’t look like I have just won the lotto, but it’s just not my style to celebrate in the face of one who has lost.

I just LOVED the crew … a dynamic and talented group of fun loving, very huggable angels.

After a few photos and a good chitty chat with the crew we left the set. The adrenaline in my body has subsided and my mind clears a little. When I get back to my hotel room – I throw myself on my bed and scream Yeeeeeeeeeeeehaaahhhhhh into my pillow and it feels good.

I get to cook another day!

I slept well that night!

Saturday 3 November 2012

Well, there you have it – my first appearance in Dinner Divas! At the media launch for the show in Cape Town recently, Jane-Anne Hobbs of the totally inspiring blog Scrumptious and author of the cook book Scrumptious, asked me, with a furrowed and perplexed looking brow why I had entered Dinner Divas. My reply was to the effect that I wanted to drive traffic to my new blog, hunna hunna which WAS true but in retrospect, I really didn’t have an answer cast in stone. This may sound completely random and quite arbitrary but sometimes I am prone to doing such things just for the hell of it with little or no reason. Does one HAVE to have a socially acceptable or tantalising and meaningful response to such a question? The very same question was asked on the Dinner Diva entrance application …. and if I remember correctly I wrote something about ‘World Peace.!”

Nothing ventured nothing gained!

Lucky old me got given a beautiful Ice Cream Maker for my birthday. This is the perfect opportunity to share this Cappuccino Ice Cream recipe. I cannot claim it for my own, although, with time I hope to be proficient enough to produce my very own ice cream recipes. First things first though, I will practice ….. a lot!

This recipe is from my trusty Italian cook book, The Silver Spoon which is the English version of the 1950’s cook book Il Cucciao d’Argento! I have vivid memories of the flavours of an ice cream that was sold in a cup somewhere in the 1980’s. It was called a Cappuccino something or other! I have never found another ice cream quite so delicious. It ticked all my ‘ice cream’ boxes. Not too sweet, creamy coffee flavoured ice cream with a dark powdered coffee/cocoa flavouring on the top …. It was the toe curling, tongue tingling stuff that my dreams were made of and I have been craving it for the longest time. So, when I unwrapped my ice cream machine birthday gift I knew exactly what ice cream I would be making first.

Coffee Beans

Toe curling, Tongue tingling Cappuccino Ice Cream

Firstly, don’t panic if you don’t have an ice cream machine. You can make a fabulous Cappuccino Semifreddo which doen not require an ice cream machine! See below for this recipe.

Ingredients

Ice cream only requires a few ingredients.

200ml milk

1 vanilla pod

2 eggs

150g castor sugar

175ml espresso or extra strong coffee

100ml double cream

Method

Make the coffee in advance and set it aside to cool. If you don’t have an espresso machine make a cup of good strong percolated or instant coffee.

Pour the milk into a saucepan. Scrape the pulp from the vanilla pod into the mil and bring to the boil.

Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat the eggs with the sugar in a bowl until pale and fluffy, then add the coffee, followed by the cream and vanilla milk.

Mix well, then pour the mixture into an ice cream make and freeze for the recommended time.

Churn in your ice cream maker for the manufacturers recommended time.

And that’s it.

NOW, as I said if you don’t have an ice cream machine, don’t panic! Here is the semifreddo equivalent to the above.

For all these years that I have not had a machine I have been making semifreddo’s and they go down just as well as ice cream.

Coffee Semifreddo

Again, this is not my recipe; it’s by Sara Buenfeld’s recipe that can be found on the BBCFood website.

Ingredients

1tbs instant coffee

4 large eggs, separated

100g caster sugar

300ml cream

Method

Oil and line a 1-litre loaf tin with cling film. Put the coffee, egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and stir to dissolve the coffee. Put the egg whites in a large bowl and pour the cream in another.

2. Beat the egg whites until stiff with an electric whisk, then quickly beat the egg yolk mixture until thick and leaving a trail. Now beat the cream until it holds its shape. If you beat everything in this order, you don’t need to wash the whisks in between.

3. Fold the cream into the coffee mixture, and then carefully fold in the whites. Tip into the loaf tin. Lightly cover the surface with cling film. When frozen, overwrap in foil and freeze. Will keep for up to 6 weeks.

4. To serve, unwrap and turn onto a platter. Strip off the cling film and serve topped with the chocolate curls.

As always

Buon appetito