Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

You will need:1 (18.25 ounce) box yellow cake mixFrostingSprinkles or other decorations of your choiceDirections:Prepare cake mix batter according to directions, or make any standard cake recipe batter (i.e. white, chocolate, etc.) Place flat-bottomed ice cream cones in the cups of a regular muffin pan.Pour enough batter into each cone to fill from 1/2 to 2/3 full. Bake at time and temperature as recommended for cupcakes. After they have cooled, frost with your favorite canned or home-prepared frosting recipe. Decorate with sprinkles or other decorations of your choice.

Ice Cream In A Baggie

Yes, it sounds dangerous and the potential for messes seems highly likely, but you’ll be surprised at the good, “clean” fun you’ll enjoy when you make ice cream.This recipe is enough for one person to make a dish!
    1/2 cup milk    1/2 teaspoon vanilla    1 tablespoon sugar    4 cups crushed ice    4 tablespoons salt    2 quart size Zip-loc bags    1 gallon size Zip-loc freezer bag    a hand towel or gloves to keep fingers from freezing as well!
Mix the milk, vanilla and sugar together in one of the quart size bags. Seal tightly, allowing as little air to remain in the bag as possible. Too much air left inside may force the bag open during shaking. Place this bag inside the other quart size bag, again leaving as ittle air inside as possible and sealing well. By double-bagging, the risk of salt and ice leaking into the ice cream is minimized. Put the two bags inside the gallon size bag and fill the bag with ice, then sprinkle salt on top. Again let all the air escape and seal the bag. Wrap the bag in the towel or put your gloves on, and shake and massage the bag, making sure the ice surrounds the cream mixture. Five to eight minutes is adequate time for the mixture to freeze into ice cream.Tips:Freezer bags work best because they are thicker and less likely to develop small holes, allowing the bags to leak. You can get away with using regular Zip-loc bags for the smaller quart sizes, because you are double-bagging.Especially if you plan to do this indoors, I strongly recommend using gallon size freezer bags.Here are some interesting tidbits:What does the salt do? Just like we use salt on icy roads in the winter, salt mixed with ice in this case also causes the ice to melt. When salt comes into contact with ice, the freezing point of the ice is lowered. Water will normally freeze at 32 degrees F. A 10% salt solution freezes at 20 degrees F, and a 20% solution freezes at 2 degrees F. By lowering the temperature at which ice is frozen, we are able to create an environment in which the milk mixture can freeze at a temperature below 32 degrees F into icecream.Who invented ice cream?Legend has it that the Roman emperor, Nero, discovered ice cream. Runners brought snow from the mountains to make the first ice cream. In 1846, Nancy Johnson invented the hand-cranked ice cream churn and ice cream surged in popularity. Then, in 1904, ice cream cones were invented at the St. Louis World Exposition. An ice cream vendor ran out of dishes and improvised by rolling up some waffles to make cones.

How to Make Homemade Ice Cream (Without an Ice Cream Maker!)

COLFAX, WISCONSIN ‘А” June is Dairy Month and what better way to celebrate than with homemade ice cream?When I was growing up on our small family dairy farm in west central Wisconsin 40 years ago, my dad would make homemade ice cream using cream and milk from our very own cows and a hand-cranked ice cream freezer. But you don’t need an ice cream freezer to make your own homemade ice cream. You can make ice cream with your refrigerator. Here’s how:Dad’s Favorite Recipe (From the book: Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam ‘А” True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm. Coming Soon ‘А” Fall 2004)
2 eggs    3/4 cup sugar    2 tablespoons cornstarch    1 cup milk    1 pint heavy whipping cream    pinch of salt    2 teaspoons vanilla
Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs for several minutes until thick and lemon colored. Add 1 cup of milk and blend into the eggs. Mix sugar and cornstarch in a large saucepan. Add egg/milk mixture to the sugar and cornstarch. Cook until thick (about 5 minutes) stirring constantly. Allow the custard mixture to cool to room temperature.When the custard is cool, put into a freezer-safe bowl. Blend in cream and salt. Freeze for 2 hours or until slushy. Add 2 teaspoons vanilla. Whip for 5 to 10 minutes with an electric mixer. Return to freezer and finish freezing (several hours or overnight).Variations:After you have whipped the ice cream, fold in 1 to 2 cups of fresh or frozen fruit, nuts and/or chocolate before returning the ice cream to the freezer to finish freezing.Here are some ideas for additions to your ice cream:
Strawberries    Blackberries    Raspberries    Peaches    Cherries (or Maraschino Cherries)    Chocolate chips    Butterscotch chips    Crushed Heath bars    Crushed peppermint candy    Chopped walnuts    Chopped pistachio nuts    Diced bananas    Coconut    Chocolate chip cookie dough (drop into the ice cream by small spoonfuls and carefully fold in)    Caramel or chocolate or fudge syrup (drop into the ice cream by small spoonfuls and carefully fold in)

The True Hystory of Tiramisu

Open an old Italian cookbook, browse through the index and surprise! No Tiramisu’. My first encounter with Tiramisu’ was in 1985. I was in Italy at that time: A friend of mine told me about this new recipe she got. She was so enthusiastic about it that I felt compelled to try it immediately. The taste was unbelievably good, as never I had tasted before. Since then I fell in love with this dessert.
Everybody knows by now that Tiramisu’ means “pick-me-up” in Italian, for the high energetic content (eggs and sugar) and the caffeine of the strong espresso coffee. There are many different stories about the origin of Tiramisu’. It is a layered cake; therefore some place its origin in Tuscany, where another famous layered Italian dessert is very popular. It is called “Zuppa Inglese” (English Soup). It is not English and it is not a soup. Instead is a simple cake of ladyfingers or sponge cake, soaked in “alkermes” liquor, and alternated layers of chocolate and egg custard. Layered cakes have been around for long time. The brilliant idea in Tiramisu’ is not in the technique of layering, but in the components. The great invention of combining together coffee, zabaglione cream, and chocolate: This is the true innovation in Tiramisu’.
I love to study history of food. In my book “The Timeless Art of Italian Cuisine Centuries of Scrumptious Dining”, there is extensive information about culinary history of the various regions of Italy. I tried to trace the origin of Tiramisu’ investigating many Italian cookbooks. The first clue is by the famous Italian gastronome Giuseppe Maffioli. In his book “Il ghiottone Veneto”, (The Venetian Glutton) first published in 1968, he talks extensively about Zabaglione custard. The name of this cream originates from Zabaja, a sweet dessert popular in the Illiria region. It is the coastal area across the Adriatic Sea that was Venetian territory for long time during the golden age of the “Repubblica Serenissima” (The Most Serene Republic) of Venice. Zabaglione was prepared in those times with sweet Cyprus wine.
“The groom’s bachelor friends”, says Maffioli, “at the end of the long wedding banquet, maliciously teasing, gave to him before the couple retired a big bottle of zabajon, to guarantee a successful and prolonged honeymoon”.  “The zabajon”, Maffioli continues, “was sometimes added of whipped cream, but in this case was served very cold, almost frozen, and accompanied by the baicoli, small thin Venetian cookies invented in the 1700’s by a baker in the Santa Margherita suburb of Venice”. As we can notice, the addition of whipped cream, the serving temperature, the cookies, all these elements are close to the modern Tiramisu’ recipe. And even the allusion to the energetic properties of the Zabaglione, seem to refer to the Tiramisu’ name.
Later in my research the oldest recipe I could find was in the book by Giovanni Capnist “I Dolci del Veneto” (The Desserts of Veneto). The first edition was published in 1983 and has a classic recipe for Tiramisu’. “Recent recipe with infinite variations from the town of Treviso”, says Capnist, “discovery of restaurants more then family tradition”.
But the final word on the origin of Tiramisu’ is from the book by Fernando e Tina Raris “La Marca Gastronomica” published in 1998, a book entirely dedicated to the cuisine from the town of Treviso.  The authors remember what Giuseppe Maffioli wrote in an article in 1981: “Tiramisu’ was born recently, just 10 years ago in the town of Treviso. It was proposed for the first time in the restaurant . The dessert and its name became immediately extremely popular, and this cake and the name where copied by many restaurants first in Treviso then all around Italy”. Still today the restaurant “Le Beccherie” makes the dessert with the classical recipe: ladyfingers soaked in bitter strong espresso coffee, mascarpone-zabaglione cream, and bitter cocoa powder. Alba and Ado Campeol, owners of the restaurant regret they didn’t patent the name and the recipe, especially to avoid all the speculation and guesses on the origin of this cake, and the diffusion of so many recipes that have nothing to do with the original Tiramisu’.
I tried countless different recipes form the infinite variations of Tiramisu’, but the classic one, (the recipe I show on my website), the recipe from the “Le Beccherie” restaurant, is still the one I prepare today and the one I prefer.
As an example of one of the many delicious variation of Tiramisu’ I am showing on my website a step-by-step recipe for the “Tiramisu’ with Mixed Berries” that is quickly becoming a new classic.